Apple Configurator makes it easy

Leido en Aerohive Blog

But there was one less “popular” part of the announcement that tips Apple’s hand a bit on how important the enterprise and education market is and their focus on the solutions that didn’t get too much coverage. An app for the Mac was released today called “Apple Configurator”. From the App Store, the description reads:
Apple Configurator makes it easy for anyone to mass configure and deploy iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch in a school, business, or institution.

"mass configure” is a pretty key phrase there. The iOS devices can now easily be company-owned (known in some circles as consumerization of IT) and deployed widely as a corporate or schoolwide standard. What is mass configured? Well, it’s designed to do 3 things – prepare devices, supervise devices, and assign devices.



Again from their description:

Prepare devices

• Configure up to 30 devices at a time
• Update devices to the latest version of iOS
• Create and restore a backup of settings and app data from one device to other devices
• Import apps into Apple Configurator and sync them to new devices*
• Use the built-in editor to create and install iOS configuration profiles
• Enroll devices with your Mobile Device Management solution for remote management

Supervise devices

• Organize supervised devices into custom groups
• Automatically apply common configurations to supervised devices
• Quickly reapply a configuration to a supervised device and remove the previous user’s data
• Import apps into Apple Configurator and sync them to supervised devices*
• Define and apply common or sequential names to all devices
• Restrict supervised devices from syncing with other computers

Assign devices

• Add users and groups manually or autopopulate via Open Directory or Active Directory
• Check out a device to a user and restore the user’s settings and data on that device
• Check in a device from a user and back up the data for later use, possibly on a different device
• Apply custom text, wallpaper, or the user’s picture to a device’s Lock screen
• Import and export documents between your Mac and Apple Configurator
• Sync documents between assigned devices and Apple Configurator

From all this, it’s clear as day that when the question is asked, “What is or will be the iPad for the enterprise?” The answer is simple: It's the iPad! This gives you a little more insight into Apple’s mindset as well as the motivation for Aerohive’s deep focus on iOS devices in the enterprise.

BYOD and consumerization of IT will be dominated by iOS devices for a long time to come. And when you’re a company that would rather define the finish line than cross it, you’re usually best to focus on seamless, simple, and large scale facilitation of the company that seems destined to dominate computing for a long time to come.