On-Premises JAMF Vs Cloud JAMF

rkatoch
New Contributor

We are very new to JAMF solution in our enterprise, and still in learning phase. All have been going smooth until our Management advised us to go for On-Premises JAMF solution. We are not sure how smooth it will if we opt this On-Premises JAMF solution, can anyone shed some light which one would be the best solution - Cloud instance or an On-Premises solution.
We need strong evidences to convince for Cloud instance.

9 REPLIES 9

rderewianko
Valued Contributor II

It depends on what your org requirements are. Does the data have to reside somewhere specific
Do you need to maintain and own the data?
If you go cloud, how does your org feel about a LDAP connector (jamf infrastructure manager)
Do you have the resources to actually run it on prem?
Whats your pipes in each office, will you be hosting your own distros or using jamf cloud distro?

supson
New Contributor III

From our perspective, a large public school district with 40 locations spread over a 100 sq mile area with 1120 Macs, and always short on staff and funding, why would we take on yet another server that would require management? With JAMFCloud we don’t even have to think about that, the team at JAMF has people dedicated to only that, freeing us up to manage our macOS environment.

gachowski
Valued Contributor II

There are a lot of variables in on-prem vs hosted solutions. As someone that has done both... Me and my org are beyond happy with the Jamf hosted environment.

I would recommend, that you find out why specifically your management advised on-prem. I think it would be very easy for Jamf to help you overcome your management objections.

C

PS In our org, most everyone's objections were just old school thinking... I asked a few of our team members that objected why they thought we could manage a Jamf Pro server environment better than the Jamf as they are the experts.

Look
Valued Contributor III

One thing I haven't researched as we are unlikely to move due to already having a working implementation is the impact of Cloud on distribution points, we have lots of very large packages so we pretty much have to have on prem distribution points including the primary. If Cloud was to make this arrangement more dificult we would probably steer away from it, if it's pretty easy to manage this arrangement then Cloud would be my preffered option, it's just one less thing to worry about.

Hugonaut
Valued Contributor II

We are a Public Cyber School, We support students that are all across the state of Pennsylvania, Corner to Corner. We use On Prem & Not Cloud. We like to have full control of our server environment =)

No Problems! On Prem FTW!

________________
Looking for a Jamf Managed Service Provider? Look no further than Rocketman
________________


Virtual MacAdmins Monthly Meetup - First Friday, Every Month

cwaldrip
Valued Contributor

There's also the cost differences...

joshuasee
Contributor III

We started on prem because it was the only option at the time. We've kept it because the cloud didn't seem to make much economic sense with our well developed server architecture. I've appreciated the ability to customize the UI, and also being able poke at the database when necessary, though that advantage is slowly fading as the API advances.

eosrebel
New Contributor III

We are running a publicly available on-prem instance hosted up in AWS that mimics the Jamf Cloud offering as we had a requirement to own the data. Cost also was a factor in this as over the lifespan of our devices it was cheaper to maintain the op-prem pricing model than to switch to Jamf Cloud.

scottb
Honored Contributor

Every org I've worked for has had layers and speed bumps between what needs done, and what gets done.
On-prem means total control, but depending on your org, that may or may not be good.
Where I've worked, all the different areas are segregated and have different approval/management pools. Getting approvals for things takes forever, and oft times, we can't even get access to the servers that a JSS is hosted on as well as the DP's, if any.

The cloud means Jamf owns it's up-time and I can access it from anywhere, no hoops to jump through. While it is not cheap, neither is down time, or other hurdles. It also means you HAVE to keep up to date with your JSS - no running 8.73 in 2019!

I've done both, and there are +'s and -'s to each, I seem to like the cloud as it allows me to focus on workflows rather than the points mentioned above by me and others.

Good luck.