Heads-up, Apple-in-the-enterprise admins. One of the biggest annual events for Apple IT professionals, Jamf Nation User Conference, rolled around this week in Austin, TX.
Led by new CEO John Strosahl, the company offered up a range of announcements, improvements, and insights from third-party presenters, including Cisco CIO Fletcher Previn. Michael Covington, Jamf vice president of portfolio strategy, discussed the advance of the Mac into the enterprise space, and stressed how his company’s solutions help provide the kind of digital business stability — even for remote enterprises — that businesses need today.
Here are the highlights of this year’s event.
Macs are good for business
Previn is famous for his work launching a highly successful company-wide employee choice scheme when he was at IBM. That effort proved that Macs save money and boost engagement and productivity. He returned to JNUC to share his experience at Cisco, where 60% of employees now use Macs (and 24% of PC users switch platforms when they get the chance to upgrade).
Based on Cisco data drawn from across a 130,000-strong workforce, he detailed why it’s shrewd business to go Mac:
Macs are up to $395 per machine cheaper to run than PCs.
Sales teams using Macs outperform PC counterparts with 9.8% more deals.
Software engineers generated 11.5% more code on a Mac.
Employees using Macs and iPhones had 83% IT satisfaction.
And Mac users see almost five times fewer cyberthreats — and nine times fewer virus issues — than PCs.
Jamf Pro 11 gains usability and more
The pride of the company’s portfolio, Jamf Pro, is thesomething Apple administrators use every day. Announced at the event, Jamf Pro 11 sports an easier-to-navigate user interface, better accessibility tools, new shortcuts to get to the most popular workflows, and built-in support for Apple’s Declarative Device Management (DDM).
The latter makes for significant improvements in software update management workflows. Devices could defer updates before, which meant admins had to pursue users to upgrade — particularly when handling security challenges. With DDM support now in Jamf Pro, administrators can specify a date and time for updates, ensuring successful execution while promptly notifying end users.
That means IT can schedule and enforce the installation of software updates on managed devices, including Apple’s Rapid Security Response upgrades.
For new users, the onboarding system is now more transparent so new hires can see what’s going on; the company also streamlined its support for user enrollment and single sign-on.
Generative AI comes to Apple IT
For many, generative AI feels like it burst onto the scene at the beginning of 2023. Today, most companies, including Apple, are exploring the technology. Jamf is no different and is using this kind of AI to help power its support services.
The idea is that Jamf admins can ask it questions and receive answers to help resolve…
2023-10-01 03:24:03
Original from www.computerworld.com rnrn