Parallels Mac Management 5.0 adds Apple Device Enrollment Program (DEP)

An increasing number of companies find themselves with too many Macs to ignore, but not enough to hire a full-time Mac admin. For a number of years, that's been Parallels sweet spot, and now the company is unveiled a host of updates that better help Windows admins bring Macs into the fold.

Macs are everywhere, said Carlos Capó, senior manager of Global Business Solutions at Parallels. It's not just creative professionals. We have over 50,000 entities using our business edition.

But while Macs may be everywhere, they're not everything, and managing a minority of Macs has long been a headache for many companies, often involving two different device and software management stacks that take time and money to learn and maintain.

The alternative, which some companies have gone on to regret, is to let the Macs simply run relatively unmonitored and unmanaged.

Parallels has spent the last several years working helping come up with a better solution, with software that lets Macs be managed right within Microsoft SCCM, meaning that Windows admins can use the environment they're used to manage both worlds of device users.

Our sweet spot where there's too many [Macs] to manage manually and too few to have dedicate IT resources around, said Capó.

In Parallels Mac Management 5.0, the company has a number of new tricks that its bringing to admins.

Apple Device Enrollment Program (DEP) Support

With what the company says is a unique offering for Microsoft SCCM, the new update includes Apple Device Enrollment Program (DEP) support, meaning that provisioning can happen without IT even having to have physical control of the computer (the user can just buy it at an Apple story under their DEP and get started). That means fewer points of contact, and lower costs, all around.

The new version also offers support for remote script execution, on-demand device inventory tracking, and push client installation to make enrollment easier.

The majority of those tools are implemented right within the traditional SCCM interface, meaning that there's not a lot that admins experienced with it need to learn.