iPhone Management System?

Gammawolf

Gammawolf

Gammawolf

Associate
Joined
15 Nov 2007
Posts
2,365
Location
Sheffield, UK
Does anyone have any experience with an MDM system for iPhones? It might be a tough one though as there are some extremely stringent requirements..

Basically we need to have complete control over the corporate devices. To the point where users cannot install or uninstall their own apps. They will have a pre approved list of apps preloaded/pushed. It needs to be extremely locked down, so no iTunes access etc, so that the only uses are business use essentially.

I've had a look at Meraki, but from reviews it didn't seem to fit the bill in terms of strict management. I've also looked at Mobicontrol, but I can't seem to find any good solid answers if it can fufill these requirements? The user base is only small, so no more than 20 or 30 devices at maximum.
 
maas360 seems to be most recommended. You can get free version with new Spiceworks 7 app. Paid version is about £4 per month for each device.
 
You know you can do all of the above with the iPhone Configuration Utility.

Granted you'll be doing it manually rather than with any form of centralised management.

Alternatively, we use Centrify Mobile, which is superb, but all it's really doing (bar creating Active Directory containers for the devices) is automating the policies that you can set yourself with the iPhone Configuration Utility.

Note though that none of this stops a user shoving the phone in DFU mode and reflashing with a blank iOS release.
 
MobileIron always ranks very highly in the enterprise reviews, be prepared for the costs though! We use Soohos Mobile Control and it seems to do the trick for us, integrates with the Sophis AV suite and the Sophos web filtering we use.
 
Give Meraki Systems Manager a go. It's free so worth a look at least.

The university I work at uses AirWatch. Just bear in mind, if a user resets their iOS device, MDM on that device is gone. Up to now, Apple prevent persistent MDM solutions. The best way to handle this scenario is to set up warnings when MDM is uninstalled.
 
Last edited:
Last time I looked at the Meraki MDM solution is was pretty weak, but that was a year ago now. Good is the opposite of it's name, just a horrible UI on top of bad functionality, and not really MDM.

We use Casper, it's great, and inexpensive.
 
Thanks for the advice, i've tested a few including MaaS360 and also revisited Meraki. At the moment Meraki is looking good, considering it's free!

I've just one question about it as we're moving from blackberrys to iphones.. what is the best practice for deploying them in regards to Apple ID's? To get the it into MDM it'll have to be activated with an ID first? I don't want to be creating multiple IDs, and sharing one ID for many (up to 10?) devices seems a bit dodgy when it comes to paid apps.. I just can't seem to find any solid information in this aspect
 
Paid Apps from the App store are allowed on up to 5 devices per Apple ID. Went through all that non-sense with Apple when deploying 100 iPod Touches for a small project. Took a long time to get a solid legit answer.
 
Much to my dismay, it seems no matter what I do with multiple MDM's, the user can always just uninstall the profile and reset the restrictions.. Is there anyway to to actually lock down an iOS device and use an MDM for remote app installations?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom