One thing I’ve been saying to pals and colleagues over the previous few months is the pattern I see rising amongst IT professionals is the flexibility to fireside a vendor at any given level. Should you get to a spot the place you’re primarily locked right into a vendor’s platform or product, you lose the higher hand in terms of pricing when renewals come round. Even exterior of pricing, if stated vendor is now not assembly your wants, you completely want the flexibleness to deploy alternative options. With iOS 17, Apple’s Return To Service MDM characteristic will get a pleasant improve that can make it simpler to vary to new machine administration distributors.
About Apple @ Work: Bradley Chambers managed an enterprise IT community from 2009 to 2021. By his expertise deploying and managing firewalls, switches, a cellular machine administration system, enterprise-grade Wi-Fi, a whole bunch of Macs, and a whole bunch of iPads, Bradley will spotlight methods during which Apple IT managers deploy Apple units, construct networks to assist them, and practice customers, in addition to tales from the trenches of IT administration and methods Apple may enhance its merchandise for IT departments.
Every thing with machine deployments in 2023 should be totally automated. Sure, I stated the whole lot. As organizations have expanded their utilization of Apple units (Apple is on monitor to turn out to be the highest enterprise endpoint by 2030), handbook options don’t scale.
How Return to Service works in iOS 17
When machine administration distributors deploy Apple’s new RTS performance for iOS 17 and iPadOS 17, they’ll be capable to give clients the choice to deploy a Wi-Fi profile with the command to wipe the machine. Utilizing your current MDM, you possibly can ship the Erase System command and choose a Wi-Fi profile to make use of so the machine will mechanically activate and re-enroll in your MDM. After sending the erase command to the machine with the Return to Service possibility and the Wi-Fi profile chosen, the machine erases all information on the machine and can mechanically proceed to the House Display, enrolled and prepared for use. As a part of this course of, the beforehand chosen language and area are additionally utilized to the machine. If the machine is a mobile machine (iPhone or iPad with mobile), it’s endorsed by Apple to protect the eSIM information plan when erasing by deciding on the choice “Protect information plan after the wiping.” This feature will make it simpler for finish customers to get again up and operating.
Migrating MDM suppliers for iOS and iPadOS units has historically been a difficult and time-consuming course of. After erasing units with the previous MDM, IT directors should depend on Automated System Enrollment to enroll the units on the brand new MDM. Nonetheless, this course of nonetheless required handbook steps, comparable to deciding on a Wi-Fi community and typing the password. This usually led to IT directors asking customers to return their units for the migration, which may take weeks of steady work to finish for big organizations.
Return to Service addresses this problem. With Return to Service, MDM migrations will be totally automated. A easy erase command despatched by the previous MDM will set off the method, and the machine will be mechanically enrolled on the brand new MDM in only a few minutes. It is a actually game-changer for Apple clients, making MDM migrations quicker, simpler, and extra environment friendly.
Alcyr Araujo, CEO Mosyle
If the machine is registered in Apple College Supervisor or Apple Enterprise Supervisor, you’ll need to ensure that the machine is pointed to the brand new MDM server forward of the erase. When you ship the erase instructions with the Wi-Fi profile, it’ll mechanically activate, enroll, and get the consumer again to the house display screen with apps, books, and content material downloaded from the brand new machine administration vendor.
Wrap-up
Mosyle not too long ago launched a beta characteristic to start testing this characteristic. Because it’s a part of the iOS 17 MDM spec, it’ll probably come to all machine supervisor distributors this fall. Going again 10+ years, I’ve been speaking concerning the challenges of migrating MDM distributors exterior of a brand new deployment, and with iOS 17 – Apple is making the complete course of so simple as level and click on.
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