Apple just made a big play for the small business market with the release of Apple Business Essentials
And I can’t help but wonder if they have more ambitious plans for the enterprise market in the future.
When you think of markets that have traditionally not been kind to Apple, business and “enterprise” might well come to mind. I’ve been supporting Apple devices in the education and enterprise markets for most of the last two decades, and early in my career Macs were held in disdain by the IT field. That’s really changed dramatically in the last several years. Armies of college graduates who used a Mac in college have asked to use one at work, and cloud computing and browser-based workflows have erased much of the software catalog advantage long enjoyed by Windows.
Apple has mostly left it to third parties to make the software and services for managing fleets of Apple devices, and entire companies have come into being to provide IT teams with these tools. Apple clearly wants a piece of that business, and to that end they unveiled a new product this week called Apple Business Essentials. As someone whose profession is managing Apple devices, this is of particular interest to me.
First of all, I didn’t find it at all surprising that Apple would make this kind of push. Apple has developed a lot of tools and systems over the years that IT departments leverage to manage their Apple devices. Automated Device Enrollment makes it so that when a company buys a Mac, it can be automatically enrolled in a mobile device management (MDM) service, which can then perform automatic setup tasks like installing software, configuring settings, and enabling security features. Apple also has a volume purchase program that allows businesses to buy Mac and iOS App Store apps in bulk. And Apple builds a lot of tools into its operating systems that allow these third-party MDM vendors to create tools for sending a whole host of useful remote commands to Apple devices.
Now Apple wants to be an MDM vendor, at least for small businesses. They actually purchased an Apple-focused MDM company about a year and a half ago called Fleetsmith. Apple Business Essentials looks very much like a marriage of Fleetsmith and Apple’s existing Apple Business Manager suite of tools.
Apple Business Essentials lets businesses create users and roles, provision managed Apple IDs, deploy App Store apps, and enable settings and security features in just the way each business would want to. It also includes iCloud storage, and can be paired with AppleCare+ to add in 24/7 support, even including onsite repairs.
Right now this is aimed entirely at small businesses. Apple Business Essentials is capped at 500 users per company. And they’re specifically targeting small businesses with either no IT staff or minimal IT staff. “It’s like having a large IT department without having a large IT department,” they say in their introductory video. And for companies that don’t have a large IT department, this is going to be a really valuable service.
Pricing breaks down as follows: $2.99 per user for users with a single Apple device. $6.99 per user for users with up to three Apple devices, and includes 200 GB of iCloud storage. $12.99 per users for users with up to three Apple devices, and includes 2 TB of iCloud storage. No word yet on what it will cost companies to add AppleCare+ to this mix of pricing. The pricing, while not cheap, isn’t too bad all things considered. A company with 100 employees would spend about $16,000 per year if they opted for the top tier. When you consider that this could potentially allow a company to greatly expand their Apple device management capabilities without necessarily hiring a dedicated IT professional, it’s almost a no-brainer.
While we’ll have to wait and see about the AppleCare+ pricing, it may well be worth it for a lot of small businesses given that they can facilitate giving their own employees the ability to request repairs and other support services from Apple right from an Apple Business Essentials app on their iPhone, iPad, or Mac.
Right now large companies can’t take advantage of Apple Business Essentials and wouldn’t benefit greatly from the specific set of features it offers. For example, app management for Macs in ABE is limited to App Store apps, so if (for example) you have any Adobe Creative Cloud users, it offers no way of centrally managing those apps. For now large MDM vendors like Jamf are safe, but one can’t help but wonder if this isn’t the first beachhead in a larger enterprise strategy on Apple’s part. I’ll be watching with great interest!