In a support document, Apple announced it will discontinue its Fleetsmith mobile device management (MDM) solution later this year.
Fleetsmith — a provider of “secure, automated Apple device management” solutions — was acquired by Apple in June 2020. And there was some debate after the tech giant unexpectedly disabled the Fleetsmith third party app catalog.
Among Fleetsmith’s products were FleetSmith Intelligence, Dashboard, and Audit Log. FleetSmith Intelligence With Fleetsmith Intelligence, IT administrators can answer critical security and compliance questions such as which devices are assigned to each employee, which devices are running out-of-date OS versions, and whether requirements like disk encryption, strong passwords, and screen lock are being met across the fleet.
Dashboard proactively surfaces issues across the entire corporate device fleet so that administrators can pinpoint and address problems in a few clicks. It’s included in the free Fleetsmith Intelligence product, letting admins see the state of their device fleet at no cost.
Audit Log is a record of actions taken within Fleetsmith that helps teams stay accountable and simplifies compliance with standards like SOC 2. The log will include: actions taken and a description of what was performed; who made a change (username of the administrator taking an action in Fleetsmith); and when the action happened (timestamp).
As of April 21, 2022, Apple has discontinued new signups for Fleetsmith. Existing Fleetsmith customers can continue to use the service until October 21, 2022, at which point:
- Existing Fleetsmith customers will no longer be able to log in to fleetsmith.com.
- Devices will no longer receive configuration profiles from the Fleetsmith server.
Apple says that to help you migrate from Fleetsmith to other MDM solutions, learn about choosing an MDM solution and planning your MDM migration.
