Airwatch 9 vs Jamf Pro

[jwojda]

Our mobility team went to the Airwatch conference where they touted the enterprise management features of AW9. Has anybody looked into this? I know there was that comparison of the Enterprise Device Mgmt tools a while ago floating around, but several versions later.

Can anybody think of any thinks to look critically at or questions to ask?

[perrycj]

From what I've heard and/or read, AW is still inferior to JAMF for Mac management.

However, if you aren't already, I would encourage you to jump on Slack and join the MacAdmins channel. Within there, they have a specific AW channel and you can ask any questions you like. I asked them a bunch of questions a few months back and they were super helpful.

[obi-k]

Ask them to demo packaging, patching and deployment -- not just slides, but actually show you a push from scratch to finish. Have them demo Self Service.

Ask about zero-day support for macOS. Have them define their support or phone support model (the quality is very different from jamf). Ask them what kind of issues they've had with on-premise or Saas options, and what they've done to fix it.

[mjsanders]

my 2 cents:
For Mac management: Go for Jamf Pro. For iOS management: both are limited by the standards of Apple of what can be managed.
AirWatch is capable of managing Android and others too, and has more solutions for other OS's plus a large installed base with VMware backing. Personally I don't think (any) tool can be both best for macOS/iOS, and best for all platforms. (see backup software, cloud software, management tools, scripts, fontservers, etc) So in general I recommend a tool (best in class) for each platform.
A good demo and/or proof of concept is your best test.

[PAC]

I have worked with both Airwatch and Jamf over two jobs and rolls.

I loved aiwatch. Working in a roll that was managing 56 schools with their own iPad deployment and BYOD setups it was amazing.
But could not do Mac management.

Now a title called 'Jamf Now vs Airwatch' i would say Airwatch hands down.

But if OSX management is a requirement then JAMF Pro is the only option for that.
To get the best of both worlds of true MDM with android, Windows, IOS and OSX then you would need both setups and more employees.

[Dafydd_Watkins]

To echo what other's have mentioned, if you want enterprise grade management of macOS then stick with Jamf Pro. If you estate is going to be apple only, iOS/macOS, stick with Jamf Pro. If you want android,windows 10, (insert anything else) in additional to macOS i'd have Jamf Pro for that coupled with AirWatch for everything else.

We currently have around 3000ish mobility devices on AW and 800ish Macs on Jamf Pro. The split works very nicely, I wouldn't change either for their respective purposes.

Cheers

[roiegat]

Is there a feature guide of Airwatch vs Jamf for Mac management somewhere? Looking at Airwatch's website I'm not getting too much information from them. I'd like to create a comparison for management to show that JAMF is better for Mac's, and to utilize Airwatch for iOS and everything else they want to do with it.

Looking to compare our everyday work now on our team and others using JAMF to Airwatch. So for instance, we have groups that own applications and package them. Does Airwatch have a composer equivalent? Looks like Airwatch can do configuration management, but can it do policies like Jamf can?

I'm sure some of you guys have already done this research so wanted to see what you guys found.