CODEWITHSUNDEEP
iphoneiosdistributionenterprise
User382
User382

Reputation: 874

iOS enterprise distribution MDM vs OTA

We have to deploy an enterprise ios app to employees. I came across multiple ways of doing it (http://www.apple.com/business/accelerator/deploy/app-distribution.html).

Either the MDM or the Over the Air(set up your own server for distribution) suits our need. We have to choose between these two. I would like to know .....

  1. What are the best MDM tools for distributing an ios enterprise app.
  2. What are the advantages of using MDM tools over direct OTA

Thank you

Upvotes: 5

Views: 4444

Answers (3)

Node4Life
Node4Life

Reputation: 11

What are the best MDM tools for distributing an ios enterprise app?

Different persons have different thoughts and expectations about MDM. So, "best MDM tools" are different for different users.

I recommend you to refer any online articles (beware, there are paid ones among them) or feature comparison charts like:

Find the one that best suits you and ask for a demo version. Most of them have a 30-day full feature demo, while some have a 14-day or 15-day demo.

What are the advantages of using MDM tools over direct OTA?

If there are more devices to which apps are to be installed, then I recommend using an MDM software because you can bulk push app to devices with MDM.

Upvotes: 1

Dan
Dan

Reputation: 5173

A lot of this depends on the number of devices you plan on deploying to as well as whether or not you want some sort of "control" over your devices. If you could care less about harvesting the status of each device (offline, online, compliant, etc) in your fleet or controlling security settings, email settings, etc I would say skip MDM altogether. You could easily just setup a landing page (ala an App Store) via HTML, CSS, JS, etc and just have your users hit it to consume the app.

As eluded to above if you DO want to do things like see what devices are online/offline, push specific security rules to them, setup Exchange accounts, remote wipe devices, etc then definitely run with an MDM.

The answer really depends on your environment, what you wish to accomplish and how long you have before your deadline.

Regarding the "tools" everyone is playing by the same set of MDM rules set forth by Apple - the meat of the solution depends solely on how the MDM provider implemented the MDM capabilities. I'd recommend looking into AirWatch or MobileIron but understand that both typically take some spin-up time. If you need a quick solution try one of their SAAS models.

Upvotes: 3

Richard Brown
Richard Brown

Reputation: 11436

Take a look at this list.

OTA is easy to set up but difficult to 'manage'. If you need to do any kind of version control or asset management MDM is your best bet. The alternative is to add this via code in the app itself.

Upvotes: 0

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