Why Use Apple Business Manager for iOS MDM?

Apple Business Manager is a web-based portal to provision iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV devices. Businesses can easily give employees access to Apple services, set up device enrollment, and distribute apps, books, and custom apps—all from one place.

The Autopilot for iOS device onboarding

With the Apple Business Manager (ABM), companies have the opportunity to connect all their iOS devices to the company and thus to a management system such as Microsoft Intune. This connection ensures that the iOS devices report to the management system via the ABM during commissioning and thus automatically receive the company’s configurations and app assignments.

In addition to the advantage that the devices register automatically, the company also has „protection in the event of theft“, since the devices cannot be used for anything else because they will register with the company again and again.

Supervised Mode

By registering with the ABM, you can (and should) activate the supervised flag in the operating system. This flag greatly expands management capabilities.

For example, if we look at the „Device restriction“ profiles in Microsoft Intune, then you can see that most configurations can only be used on devices in supervised mode.

Volume Purchase Program

With the Volume Purchase Program (VPP), companies have the opportunity to buy apps in large numbers (including free apps) in order to roll them out on company-owned devices without user interaction. To do this, the apps must be purchased in the ABM portal

Apps purchased here must then be integrated into the management system by linking the VPP token and can then be assigned to the devices there.

More information can be found on Apple’s ABM website: https://www.apple.com/de/business/it/