Apple Business Essentials

Name: Apple Business Essentials
Price: 8.25 USD
Rating: 8.4 (26 reviews)

Score8.4 out of 10

26 Reviews and Ratings

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What is Apple Business Essentials?

Apple Business Essentials is a subscription service that brings together device management, 24/7 support, and cloud storage. It enables small business to manage every iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TVs throughout the business.

Categories & Use Cases

Mobile Device Management (MDM)

Verified User

Technician in Information Technology (1001-5000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We automatically import devices that we purchase from resellers (Verizon, CDW, etc.) into our Apple Business Essentials Manager account. Once they're imported, we assign them to the MDM of our choice, purchase application licenses, and import them into our MDM for incredibly easy management and configuration of our Apple devices. Apple Business Essentials facilitates easy device management with other MDM providers and allows us to control every aspect of corporate iPhones and iPads.

Pros

Asset management
Application license management
MDM enrollment
Ease of use

Cons

Admin management (limit of 5 admins/account)
Location configuration is not very intuitive
Lack of new features/feature development

Return on Investment

Better application spending metrics
Reduction in repurchasing application licenses due to applications being purchased on personal accounts
Better device retention due to built-in asset management

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Samsung Knox Suite

Other Software Used

Cerner Millennium, NextGen Healthcare EHR

Verified User

Technician in Information Technology (11-50 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We only have a few macs in our environment but this software has made it really easy to manage that small amount. The biggest help is the automated deployment of settings once the device is connected to the MDM. We just upgraded our network infrastructure and it made it easy to push the new wi-fi network to the devices.

Pros

It is quick at pushing policy updates
It is a relatively low cost and doesn't have a minimum
It stores filevault keys in an encrypted form but makes it easy to recover macs if needed.

Cons

I would like it to be easier to deploy apps to computers

Return on Investment

Significantly reduced deployment time of new machines

Usability

Andrew Vo

Director of Operations in Information Technology at Jones IT (11-50 employees employees)

Pros

Ease of use to manage. Some other solutions can be a little hard to navigate. Fleetsmith is intuitive.
DEP Enrollment is really nice. If you are shipping a laptop out to the user you can set their password and when they turn on their computer they will have access.
Adding software to be pushed out. Pretty easy to do.

Cons

The list of native software to be deployed isn't as large as it could be.
Pushing out custom software would be a good workaround but that doesn't seem doable.
Clients frequently tell me they dislike the reporting capabilities.

Return on Investment

Fleetsmith has allowed us to do more with less.
Our clients have saved more because Fleetsmith makes us more efficient and that makes for a lasting partnership.
Fleetsmith helps limit liability by enforcing security policies.

Other Software Used

Zendesk, Trello, Harvest

DeMarcus Ketchum

System Administrator in Information Technology at OCuSOFT (201-500 employees employees)

Pros

VPN Configuration
Easy Setup

Cons

We were told that this was in the works and it would be implemented at the beginning of the year 2019. That has still not happened and whenever we ask about this functionality we cannot get a good answer.
Management of devices that are already in the field—we were told that in order to use Fleetsmith as we would like (pushing apps to devices) we would have to get each device and set them up from a Mac.
Integration with Windows.

Return on Investment

Positive due to the fact that we were grandfathered in.

Alternatives Considered

Jamf Now

Usability

Pax Whitfield View profile

Chief Technology Officer in Information Technology at Winston Preparatory School (201-500 employees employees)

Pros

Escrow of FileVault keys
Managing of common 3rd party software apps (Office, Zoom, 1Password)
Hardware reporting - battery, storage use, etc.
Zero-touch deployment of newly purchased machines

Cons

Handling of updates and/or communication about undeployed updates on Macs with limited storage space
I hope they're working on a way to do automatic macOS user account creation as part of a hardware 'refresh' when reassigning a unit from one staff member to another.
Easier/more customization options for deploying in-house and other custom softwares

Return on Investment

improved security posture
painless application updates
zero-touch remediation of recent Zoom security issues
happier users

Usability

Omnissa Workspace ONE UEM

Jamf Pro

Addigy

Apple Business Essentials

What is Apple Business Essentials?

Categories & Use Cases

Reviews