Some of the things
- Auto app installs: We have a lot of apps people need for work, like the VPN, Outlook, Teams etc. And apps they need for their specific location or job role. The MDM takes care of installing those so the user doesn't have to figure all this out.
- Autoconfiguration: There's a facility called AppConfig where you can push config settings to apps that support it, making things easier on the end user.
- Network (and other settings) configuration: Pushing all the certs people need to connect to our wifi. And we push Per-app-vpn settings for the apps that need it.
- Security validation: Do people not have outdated company apps or OS? Do they have the security app (Lookout)?
- Security settings management: Make sure people have their phone encrypted and a pincode set so important data is not lost in a taxi.
In fact wiping is one of the things that happens very rarely. Especially as we enforce encryption and a decent PIN, it's not as much of an issue anymore to wipe a phone as soon as we can. A lot of users get hung up over our ability to do this, but on Android we can only wipe the work profile anyway (and even on Apple we don't normally wipe the whole device, just the company apps). Unless they call us and ask us to wipe it because they lost it :P But a lot of them seem to think we're just sitting there all day wiping phones for fun.
In the 'old' days, there was an app called device admin which would control the phone. This app would be supplied by the MDM vendor. This could leverage APIs from various vendors. Samsung had Knox but almost every phone vendor had their own plugin.
This was a huge PITA because each MDM feature only worked on manufacturers A and B and very often was limited to OS versions Y and Z. It meant we had to validate each phone and OS version and have a long list of what phones people could and couldn't use. It was a nightmare as an admin. Users hated it because they often only found out after they'd bought the phone. Samsung was indeed one of the best here, I have to agree.
Since then Google has thrown this overboard and started afresh with Android Enterprise. Controlled only by Google, and offering new ways of management like the work profile which is basically a kind of "phone inside a phone". Have your work profile managed by work and the rest of your phone to yourself.
For company-owned phones they also still have more comprehensive management options like COBO and COPE. But as long as the phone supports Android Enterprise, it supports everything.
Sadly some vendors in particular Samsung are fighting this approach because they feel they have invested too much in the old method. For example Samsung won't support Google Zero Touch auto-enrolment, having instead their own alternative Knox Mobile Enrolment. This is again making things more difficult for admins. But because Samsung is such a big party, and KME is free, we have gone for it anyway (Also Google Zero Touch is not available very widely yet, each reseller has to support it)
As an Admin I'm glad to see the end of the old management model. It's deprecated as of Android 11 (and already severely limited in 10) but we've already dropped it altogether.
And no, for managing Apple phones you don't need a Mac. You just need this for manual installation of management profiles, if you use an MDM you don't need it.
However if you want to manually supervise phones (instead of using Apple DEP / or Automated Device Enrolment as they call it now), you do need one. But this is really rare now.
Only supports Apple though! Not Android.
I'm always interested as it's my work so I'll probably give them a spin.
Android only:
Apple only:
https://github.com/cmdmnt/commandment
Both:
I've been using Intune at home because I use it at work too and I already had a personal O365 setup. It was nice to have a fully owned instance when I was learning it, but I'm trying to scale back my costs now so something like this might just suffice.
A lot of them do not block apps (or remove them).