Jamf Cloud

Watch this JNUC session in its entirety.

Going to the cloud makes sense for any organization looking to address the expense and resources of building out additional infrastructure, maintaining existing infrastructure or scaling back that infrastructure to use resources elsewhere. If you are new to managing Apple devices or have an Apple footprint that is growing daily, Jamf’s cloud-hosted offering can help you. Today’s session discussed the real possibility of eliminating the burden of obtaining and maintain hardware while scaling your environment. It’s all done securely by utilizing the capabilities of Jamf Cloud.

Plus, no one ever said, “I want to run a data center.” Let’s be real. People want to focus on their businesses. They want easier and more efficient ways to manage a global and/or remote workforce. And they don’t want to spend countless hours configuring and maintaining internal servers. It takes time and money, and both can be saved with Jamf Cloud.

Casper Suite Product Manager, Joe Bloom, said, “When people think about cloud solutions, they usually think about the ease of rolling it out and the scalability it provides. They think about the benefits of outsourcing the infrastructure and the resources of maintaining it. But they also see barriers. Our goal is to remove the barriers so more organizations can go to the cloud. What are those barriers? It usually comes down to security. That’s why we’ve focused on cloud features that allow you to be more secure in the cloud.”

At the forefront of Jamf’s cloud offering is Single Sign-On (SSO) for the Casper Suite login, an LDAP Proxy Server to allow administrators to leverage the power of LDAP scoping without exposing their internal LDAP and a robust cloud distribution service for software packages.

“Jamf Cloud is a pain-free solution for so many organizations that want to focus on what really matters,” Bloom said. “There’s no longer a need to waste precious time and money on hardware that holds your business back instead of propelling you forward.”

So what are the Jamf Cloud features?

• Jamf Cloud Distribution Service (JCDS)
• Identity Provider Integration (Single Sign-On using SAML 2.0)
• LDAP Proxy
• 99.9% uptime
• 24/7 availability with multi-tiered backup

Bloom went through a Single Sign-On (SSO) demonstration to show how to configure SSO in Casper Suite and what you can use it for.

He then talked about Infrastructure Manager, an easy-to-install component that houses the LDAP Proxy Server. The Infrastructure Manager is typically installed in the DMZ. The LDAP Proxy Server inside can then talk securely with the Jamf Cloud and your organization’s internal LDAP. It is easy to configure, and provides a simple method for leveraging LDAP integration.

Bloom also talked about the Jamf Cloud Distribution Service (JCDS). Jamf supports multiple cloud-based content delivery networks. With Jamf Cloud as the distribution service, you get an easy way to provide software packages across widely distributed locations.

Ending the session with news about Jamf Cloud and its global expansion, Bloom said, “At Jamf, we were so excited to recently open our first international data center in Germany. This provides additional stability, scalability and performance opportunities for all of our global customers.”