If you manage mainly Apple devices Jamf Pro should be your choice
March 28, 2018
If you manage mainly Apple devices Jamf Pro should be your choice
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Jamf Pro
We currently use Jamf Pro to manage our fleet of 700+ lab, faculty, and staff systems as well as 600+ student systems. This is a large variety of laptops, iMacs, and Mac Pros. We use Jamf Pro to configure settings across company-owned assets and push updates to the operating system and third-party programs. We do this with policies that are set to run at certain times as to not intrude on a users work. This helps us maintain a certain level of security by keeping everything patched. We also utilize the imaging side of Jamf Pro which, for the moment, allows us and our techs to completely provision a system simply by booting to a network install.
Our clients use the Jamf Self Service program to install third-party applications on-demand. Having this functionality is useful for our offices and lab systems as it allows them to install software or run scripts without the need to be an administrator.
Our clients use the Jamf Self Service program to install third-party applications on-demand. Having this functionality is useful for our offices and lab systems as it allows them to install software or run scripts without the need to be an administrator.
- Jamf Pro offers an all-in-one stop for mobile device profiles, system configurations, DEP, and software delivery.
- Jamf customer support is typically very good, they respond in a reasonable time and they're mainly based in the US.
- Jamf Pro works on Windows, Mac OS, and Linux and also runs very well virtualized.
- Jamf does not have a bug tracker for the various issues with the Jamf Pro Server.
- Jamf Pro is still very far behind some competitors with patch management.
- While the UI has been updated several times, I believe that it might be in the wrong direction. They seem to be focusing more on looks than functionality, and some previously working UI functionality is now not working or removed.
- Deployment and configuration time of our labs has been considerably cut down. We have 2 full-time staff members managing all 1500 of our machines very easily.
- Overtime is nearly non-existent because all work can be scheduled to run on weekends or overnight automatically.
- It's much easier for us to troubleshoot issues on systems due to the logging that the Jamf Pro server does. Ticket resolution times are much lower for our Mac OS clients.
Jamf Pro just does more and it does it better.
The issue that I have found with many other mobile device management systems is that they try to do too much. Most other MDMs allow for management of Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, and maybe more; the issue is that they typically lack features in place of supporting more systems. You can configure settings and deliver apps for iOS devices, but you can only deliver apps for MacOS. You can manage systems already set up, but you cannot utilize DEP for provisioning new systems.
Most of the other systems also seem to focus more on iOS than macOS, if you're managing macOS you don't want a product that added that support as an afterthought.
The issue that I have found with many other mobile device management systems is that they try to do too much. Most other MDMs allow for management of Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, and maybe more; the issue is that they typically lack features in place of supporting more systems. You can configure settings and deliver apps for iOS devices, but you can only deliver apps for MacOS. You can manage systems already set up, but you cannot utilize DEP for provisioning new systems.
Most of the other systems also seem to focus more on iOS than macOS, if you're managing macOS you don't want a product that added that support as an afterthought.