John Strosahl became Jamf CEO in September. He isn’t a new face and was one of the first employees then-incoming (now former) CEO Dean Hager hired eight years ago. Together, they managed the company’s transition into a leading Apple solution integrator across the enterprise, medical, and education industries.
I caught up with both men to talk about Apple’s growing place in the enterprise and Strosahl’s plans for the future of Jamf.
The culture thing
Mac admins like to say that Jamf has a unique company culture, which is particularly visible at the company’s public events.
“It’s our secret sauce,” said Strosahl. “Of all the companies I’ve worked for, the Jamf culture is really unique and reflects our two values. Selflessness, to think of others, to be helpful, and relentless self-improvement. Those values have really gotten us here, and if I have one task during my tenure it will be to maintain that.”
Hager, who will remain on the board, added: “We co-led the company for the last eight years. And we (Jamf) are very fortunate that John (Strosahl) has a child young enough that he needs to work for a while. The company is in very good hands.”
“Dean and I have worked together for such a long time, and this transition was well planned,” said Strosahl. “My biggest hope is that we continue to do what we’ve done by not losing the culture that we have, and that is because our culture is our secret sauce that has really gotten us here to where we are today.”
The IBM effect
Apple has become an enterprise company in the last decade. Looking back, Hager took note of three key moments that drove this transformation. “Not the least of which was that first presentation from [then] IBM CIO Fletcher Previn,” he said. (Previn, now at Cisco, recently confirmed significant TCO benefits at Cisco through a move to Apple products.)
The “IBM effect” really generated increased interest in using Apple products in the enterprise. “The Mac becoming truly recognized as a business machine was one of the changes we went through,” Hager said.
Jamf began to focus on specific usage cases, offering unique solutions. And where they exist, employee-choice schemes continue to favor Apple at “almost a two to one ratio,” said Strosahl. “The other big transformation would be us recognizing that there’s more to an enterprise solution than management. We wanted to be the complete Apple enterprise solution, which started with a huge investment in security and identity.”
“Our purpose is to simplify work, and we think the best way to do that is with Apple’s consumer simple devices,” he said. “They make the best devices on the planet. They’re easy to use, intuitive, and we kind of take that from that point to what the organization needs in order to be successful.”
Securing the Apple enterprise
When speaking with its customers, Jamf found that even when companies wanted to adopt more Apple products,…
2023-11-08 02:41:09
Article from www.computerworld.com rnrn