Solution for Managed Apple ID's and Directory Integration SSO for Schools

bughollow
New Contributor III

I have five K-12 schools in REMOTE locations in Northern Canada. Total of 600 users - 350 computers, 250 iPads. Currently running computer labs with shared devices, authentication via OpenDirectory on OSX (10.10 or 10.11). We got out of the Windows business a few years ago and now Apple has deprecated many of our services - by not updating we still use home sync. I bought a solution to replace it, bad investment! Since I have to change and implement something, now is the time to ask for guidances from the education community.

I am starting from scratch and would appreciate a template for using shared computers! I would use a Cloud solution, but it needs to cache locally too as internet outages are frequent and the pipe is small. Always a catch in this business.

I have Apple School Manager configured and connected to PowerSchool - works great, I have not deployed it to the schools as ideally I would merge/sync/bind those Apple ID's to a Directory Service and use a single sign on.

I am not having much luck finding a solution. I have seen some articles on integration with Active Directory and Google Apps, but nothing for Apple. If I could match Apple ID's to Google ID's to make the directory work, I would try it. Someone has to have thought of this for schools? somewhere?

My question, issue, please is for a solution of where we go from here! I need a simple (cheap or free) solution that will work via a 2 mb satellite link and 5 mb DSL links. I like the School Manager Promise of local caching of iCloud content, making it usable in our locations, unlike Google Docs, but also need an authentication solution for my Macs.

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