Regardless of the size of your business, you’ll be leveraging some form of technology in every aspect of your daily work life. No matter the industry, you and your team will be utilizing mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and more. If you’ve chosen Apple devices for your workforce, you’re already ahead of the curve. iPhones, iPads, and Macs are considered the most reliable, secure, and easy-to-use devices on the market.

But now that you’ve got your Apple devices in place at your business, there’s the matter of managing them daily. You’ll want to make sure the devices are up to date, secure, and have all the apps your team needs at a moment’s notice. 

Even for the most tech-forward businesses, it can be easy for device management and security to fall to the bottom of the list of priorities. It’s understandable! Most people don’t think about how vital those devices are until something goes wrong. That’s when it’s the IT department’s job to swoop in and save the day. 

However, most businesses don’t employ a dedicated IT department. Sometimes it’s just one person, and often they have other responsibilities. Not all businesses have the luxury of hiring an entire team of IT admins just to keep everything running smoothly. You do what you can with the resources available, and you try to make it work.

But can you make it work with just one person? Let’s walk through a daily scenario of trying to manage your business’s Apple devices singlehandedly and see if it’s doable.

First, let’s try it the manual way.

It’s 9 a.m. on a Monday, and you get to the office bright and early because you know you’ve got a long day ahead of you. Your company just hired 10 new employees, and it’s your job to make sure all their brand-new devices are up and running as quickly as possible. Between their company-issued iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks, you’ve got nearly 30 devices to unbox and set up. But first, don’t forget to pull up your spreadsheet and write down the serial number for each device and the employee those devices are assigned to.

About 30 minutes and a couple of papercuts later, you’ve finally managed to unbox every device and have them stacked all over your office, so you don’t lose track of which department is getting which device. Now it’s time to start turning them all on, going through the setup process, logging onto your Wi-Fi network, and finally begin to manually download each app. 

You’ve barely made it through 10 devices when you get a phone call from one of your work-from-home employees who somehow forgot his Mac password, and now he can’t get any work done. You spend the next 45 minutes on the phone walking him through the process to regain access to his device.

By the time noon rolls around, you think you’re finally done setting up those devices. Then it dawns on you: you forgot to remove the Apple ID you normally use to install apps from all the iPhones.Looks like it’s time to order takeout because you’re working through your lunch break.

You quickly chow down on lunch (being careful not to get any on those shiny new devices), when you get a text from the sales manager. It turns out that a few days ago, some account executives, eager to jump into a potential new bid they received on their work email, downloaded and opened a malicious PDF using a link on a phishing email, and now their Macs are “acting weird” when they browse the internet.

Knowing how critical this can be, you rush over to the sales office and end up manually wiping and redeploying 5 Macs.

As the afternoon goes on, you wind up running from one end of your business to the other, completing simple but time-consuming technical tasks as you go. One employee needs their Mac updated to the latest OS. Another is having issues logging into the Wi-Fi. You get a frantic phone call from a salesperson; they lost their company MacBook.

By the time you get back to your office, it’s nearly 5 p.m. and you finally get a chance to check your email, realizing that you’re way behind responding to the helpdesk tickets that have been piling up throughout the day. Looks like you’ll be staying late again tonight.

As you can see, the answer to whether or not you can manually manage an entire fleet of Apple devices by yourself is a definite “No”.

That is, unless you take advantage of the secret weapon available to businesses utilizing the Apple ecosystem, an Apple Unified Platform.

An Apple Unified Platform is a software solution for remotely managing and securing Apple devices within a business environment. It allows IT administrators to fully automate all the aspects of deploying, managing, and protecting Apple devices used at work. 

A leading Apple Unified Platform such as Mosyle Fuse normally integrates a complete and automated Apple Device Management, a Mac-specific Next-Generation Antivirus, Mac-specific Hardening and Compliance, Mac-specific privilege management, Mac identity management, Apple-specific Application and Patch Managements, and an Encrypted Online Privacy & Security solution.

By unifying all solutions on a single product, an Apple Unified Platform not only simplifies the management and protection of Apple devices used at work. It also offers a level of automation and integration that is impossible to be achieved by independent solutions stitched together.

Now let’s go through that same “one-person IT team” scenario again, this time utilizing the unique benefits of an Apple Unified Platform.

Monday morning rolls around and you get to the office excited to meet the new employees your business just hired. Because you’ve been using a leading Apple Unified Platform, the 30 brand-new devices those employees have been assigned are ready to go right out of the box. 

Automated Device Enrollment and Zero Touch Deployment means that as soon as they turn on the devices and connect them to Wi-Fi, the devices immediately receive all the apps, security configurations, web clips, and everything else they need based on which department they’ve been hired for. The devices even get a custom lock screen wallpaper with their name and the company logo for a personalized touch.

After handing out the boxed devices at the employee orientation, you get to enjoy a cup of coffee while getting to know your new coworkers. By the time you get back to your office, you check the Apple Unified Platform portal, and you can already see the new devices popping up in the Device List with the names of the assigned employees, ready to be used right away.

Just then, you get that text from the work-from-home employee, and before you even reply, you’ve already found his device in the portal and have sent a quick command to reset the password. By now, you have more than enough time to tackle those customer emails that have come in.

With the day running so smoothly, you and the new employees decide to treat yourselves to the new gourmet taco shop across the street for lunch.

Later in the afternoon, you receive an email from the sales manager sharing that after downloading a suspicious PDF file from an email, a few account executives received an alert that malware was identified and neutralized, so they just want to confirm all is fine. 

You already know about that because real-time alerts were sent to your email as soon as the malware was identified and quarantined by the Apple Unified Platform so you ensure that everything is ok and that they can continue to work normally but remind them that they should be more cautious when clicking on links in unexpected emails.

You get to spend the second half of the day focused on your other work responsibilities, and when you get that frantic phone call about a lost device, you remotely turn on Lost Mode and Location Services so you can track it. Turns out they left it in the break room.

By 5 p.m. you’re ahead of schedule, and you head home knowing those new devices will automatically be kept up-to-date and secure because you took advantage of an Apple Unified Platform.

As you can see, managing your Apple devices by yourself is an impossible task unless you take advantage of an Apple Unified Platform such as Mosyle Fuse. 

Mosyle is an industry benchmark in the Apple-only MDM space, and their Mosyle Fuse service has been pioneering the concept of an Apple Unified Platform. Mosyle Fuse brings together security, automation, and ease of use, giving you the power and flexibility to handle your company’s Apple IT solutions singlehandedly. 

With a Free tier for companies with less than 30 devices, as well as options for as little as $1/device, managing your Apple devices has never been more affordable. So when you’re ready to leverage the full capabilities of your Apple devices, make sure you take advantage of a powerful Apple Unified Platform such as Mosyle Fuse.

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