Plow Networks offers platform-agnostic device support with Jamf

The challenge: security and scalability

For rapidly growing organizations without centralized management, adding new employees and, therefore, new devices has become a cumbersome process. At Plow Networks, a Managed Service Provider (MSP) and Jamf Partner based out of Tennessee, we provide services to make scaling up device fleets easier. With security at the forefront in today’s world, a customer wanted to get a better understanding of their overall security posture through patch status. The company was also interested in determining how many Mac versus Windows devices they had in their environment, in order to better enable strategic planning.

The approach: discovery, MDM, RMM

We at Plow Networks performed a discovery of this company’s environment that helped them gain a better understanding and scope of the number of devices they had, and on which operating systems. Once Plow Networks was in possession of this information, we enrolled all current devices into mobile device management (MDM) and remote monitoring and management (RMM) to provide a firm foundation for the company’s Apple and Microsoft fleets.

“Our goal is to give our customers peace of mind when it comes to the devices they have in their environment – regardless of whether a device is a Windows desktop computer, a Mac laptop, an iPhone or an Android tablet. Our customers need to know that all their devices are secure, up-to-date and configured to be used effectively – and through our partnership with Jamf, we can do that flawlessly.” – Bryan Link, EVP of Products & Services

Delivering a seamless employee experience, regardless of OS

The customer told us that they wanted a similar experience across the organization, regardless of the OS the user is working from.

Through partnering with Jamf, Plow Networks was able to suggest a solution: Jamf Connect Sync. This offered the company a way to have their Mac users sign on with identity provider (IdP) credentials to marry their device and Office 365 accounts. Jamf Connect Sync acted as a form of authentication itself, as it ensured their local device and Office password consistently matched. This automatically improved their security stance all around. We also deployed the same solution on their Windows devices with Azure AD. Without this management in place, their Windows and Mac devices were encrypted to the specific user, not the enterprise, posing a security risk for the business.

Further securing devices with standardized configuration

With security top of mind, Plow Networks worked with the company to develop a standardized configuration for their faculty. This meant placing guidelines on device configurations to ensure all devices were equipped with the tools the faculty needs to excel at work.

While some devices might ultimately be configured in a slightly different manner to accommodate their specific purpose, the underlying basics are all configured identically, so our team engineered the process for both one-to-one and shared machines. We pushed out new machines with the custom basic configuration and in turn reduced the overall onboarding legwork.

To fasten their devices even further, Plow Networks secured all of their endpoints with antivirus and web filtering.

Empowering scale at a rapid rate

When the company was first onboarded as a client, they had approximately 200 devices between their staff and students. We utilized the Jamf Device Enrollment Program in conjunction with Jamf Pro to automate the standard configuration setup of their devices. This streamlined the onboarding process and enabled the organization to scale quickly.

Today, the company has more than 330 Windows devices. They also boast 2,188 Mac devices and 1,498 mobile devices across their staff and clients, enrolled and secured by Plow Networks, with Jamf.

Ongoing support and reporting

As the company continues to grow and add more user devices to their lineup, our support team is trained on both Windows and Mac OS to support their team’s Tier 1 and Tier 2 support issues. We have in-house Apple, Windows, Jamf and Datto/InTune specialists on hand to resolve their support issues.

The organization utilizes our unique 7 to 7 support with Tier 1 after-hours services for ongoing guidance and endpoint management. This means the team continuously monitors their devices via antivirus management, patch management, end-user device management and software management.

The company has access to all this management information through reporting dashboards. They can use these custom dashboards to check whether their devices are in or out of compliance. If a device is out of compliance, our team remediates the issue and helps to advise and enable the company to move forward. The company can also view their service levels and performance goals, software standards and more on their reporting dashboard.

In a world where we know employee choice matters, Plow Networks doesn’t want employers to worry about whether their employee devices are Windows or Mac. This saves time and money, since their clients don’t have to hire two different vendors to manage each type of device. In fact, Plow Networks holds the devices to the same compliance performance standard of 90% adherence to software, antivirus and patch management. We are proud to partner with Jamf to provide platform-agnostic solutions.