Apple's Business Manager provides web-based IT management, launches this spring

In a move that flew under the radar with this week's iPad launch and education announcements, Apple began the quiet promotion of a new web-based business management platform to deploy and manage iOS, macOS, and tvOS devices.

A web-based portal that lets administrators configure device settings, create accounts, and buy and distribute apps and books, Business Manager is currently in beta, but Apple says the new platform will launch in earnest in late spring.

Seemingly built on existing mass device deployment (MDM) frameworks, the new service integrates features already seen in the Device Enrollment Program (DEP) and the Volume Purchase Program (VPP). The ability to create accounts and manage devices is very similar to Apple School Manager, which first saw light of day in 2016.

Over the past few years Apple has slowly expanded the availability of its existing DEP and VPP business management programs to additional countries. A web-based portal should bring those tools up to speed with offerings from third-party firms.

Apple has been concentrating on a buildout of its business and education verticals recently, with additional education management features announced just last week. Apple started offering MDM for iOS devices back with iOS 7.1.

Another recent move to increase Apple's enterprise foothold has been their growing partnership with IBM and the MobileFirst initiative. Apple just recently added new machine learning integrations to the project through Apple's coreML and IBM's Watson.

Apple's in-house MDM solution for enterprise has needed improvements for some time, leading third-party solutions like JAMF to flourish. JAMF, which now manages more than 9 million Apple devices, saw record growth last year as Apple pushed further into the enterprise market.

Business admins can learn more about Apple's new Business Management platform in a support document published this week (PDF link). Existing users of Apple's DEP and VPP programs looking to try out Business Manager can contact the company to request an account upgrade.

18 Comments

deepinsider 10 Years · 67 comments

About 6 years ago

“mass device deployment (MDM)”

Did you mean to say mass device management, or did you mean to use MDD throughout the article?

GeorgeBMac 8 Years · 11421 comments

This, along with the school program, have the potential to open up whole new worlds to the Apple Ecosystem. And, with their cloud based services, security, hardware & software reliability and their ecosystem, none are better positioned to step into this role than Apple.

Managing a business system goes far beyond the hardware device. It's like having a kid: simply buying him a pair of shoes is really just the start: then you have to continually oversee and manage how he uses them and where they go -- and make sure that kid and shoes are adhering to your guidelines...

And, I am happy to see Apple partnering with IBM -- who mastered that paradigm decades ago and became the gold standard of business systems. Apple and IBM have the potential to do very, very well together and create products and systems that will benefit the world.

macxpress 16 Years · 5913 comments

deepinsider said:
“mass device deployment (MDM)”
Did you mean to say mass device management, or did you mean to use MDD throughout the article?
Unless the article was fixed, I only see MDM used throughout the article which I always thought meant, "Mobile Device Management".

vannygee 7 Years · 61 comments

I'll be happy if this replaces OS X Server

mjtomlin 20 Years · 2690 comments

GeorgeBMac said:

This, along with the school program, have the potential to open up whole new worlds to the Apple Ecosystem. And, with their cloud based services, security, hardware & software reliability and their ecosystem, none are better positioned to step into this role than Apple.

Managing a business system goes far beyond the hardware device. It's like having a kid: simply buying him a pair of shoes is really just the start: then you have to continually oversee and manage how he uses them and where they go -- and make sure that kid and shoes are adhering to your guidelines...

And, I am happy to see Apple partnering with IBM -- who mastered that paradigm decades ago and became the gold standard of business systems. Apple and IBM have the potential to do very, very well together and create products and systems that will benefit the world.

This is one reason why I think Apple should eventually buy IBM. If Apple wants to push further into the enterprise, buying IBM would give them the "in" they haven't quite been able to obtain themselves - although Tim Cook has been doing a fairly good job so far. Not to mention they could finally bring their data centers and cloud services completely "in house" removing their dependency on Amazon, Google and Microsoft. Then there's Watson AI and, of course, their world renowned research and development division.

If there's one thing I've noticed with Apple is that they tend to release products and services with a lot of fanfare, but some of them they let fall by the wayside. Watching the recent education event was exciting, but at the same time, I remember the last one... Everything announced then eventually fizzled out.

I think if Apple had IBM under the roof, a lot of these initiatives and services wouldn't languish as they seem to do.