Today's Jamf Announcement

[deanhager]

Dear Jamf Nation,

As you may have heard, Jamf has entered into a definitive agreement to receive a majority investment by Vista Equity Partners (“Vista”). I’m certain you have a few questions, which is why I wanted to take this opportunity to reach out and provide clarity.

How will this impact you?
It won’t. Most of you probably weren’t aware of Jamf’s prior ownership, which was comprised of several different entities, none of whom owned greater than fifty percent. This majority investment simply means that Jamf’s owners sold a controlling number of shares to Vista. Jamf is still an independent, stand-alone company and its mission, team, multi-year plan and passion to serve you has not changed.

Who is Vista?
Vista Equity Partners invests in, empowers and grows software, data and technology companies that are reinventing industries and catalyzing change. With more than $30 billion in cumulative capital commitments, Vista invests in software companies with a long-term perspective. Vista’s track record is incredible, contributing professional expertise and investment capital intended to accelerate growth for all companies in their portfolio.

Why did Jamf decide to partner with Vista?
Jamf’s momentum in recent years has been substantial. We now have over 700 team members helping more than 13,000 organizations succeed with Apple. As a result, Jamf attracted significant interest from potential investors. We were in the unique position to be highly selective in engaging with only the best potential partners. In Vista, we felt we had a unique moment in time to partner with a company that shared a deep understanding of the software industry and what makes a great technology company. We believe this partnership with Vista will help Jamf accelerate its mission, products and service to you. For more information please see the news release.

In summary, you will have the same team, with the same products, pursuing the same mission. In other words, we are still Jamf – both in name and in spirit.

Thank you,

Dean Hager
CEO, Jamf

[donmontalvo]

Can't stop a moving train! Kudos to Jamf for providing us a fully supported solution...and for our weekends back. :)

[blackholemac]

Wow...hoping to hear more at JNUC

[tnielsen]

Great! I hope our yearly fees and issues stay low! :)

Good work JAMF

[CGundersen]

Not sure how I feel about this. More resources great (e.g. QA, support, dev ... perhaps not throw it all at marketing?). Losing controlling interest (w/out losing soul) makes me a bit anxious.

[jeffkh]

This makes us very nervous. Vista does not have a good history of "empowering" or "growing" tech companies. They typically increase prices, decrease developers, and outsource support. Check out what another software company has to say about being acquired by Vista: https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Kibo-Software-vista-equity-Reviews-EI_IE1285286.0,13_KH14,26.htm

I hope JAMF does not suffer a similar fate, we rely on it and really like it as it is.

[BVikse]

Great, so now another company has veto power over Jamf's plans if ever they should deviate from what Vista things Jamf should do. I hope we as Jamf customers don't end up paying for this. I've seen to many mergers and controlling interests start with all the best interests and very quickly end up killing the acquired company, whether the acquisition continues in name or not its dead inside. This better not happen to Jamf!

[scottb]

One thing I've noticed lately is that cases are "replied" to via some bot, and not a human. I update the case, but get emails like this one below which tend to annoy me as they don't acknowledge my updates nor come from a thinking human.
I'm happy Jamf is growing and all, but I too have seen how these things can be a mixed blessing...
I hope it works for everyone.

[gachowski]

Hey hey hey,

Let give the Jamf team and the Vista the befit of doubt. Growing a company is hard and being a company that is dependent on Apple is almost impossible. The Jamf team has done something that IBM, AirWatch, Mobile Iron, Centrify and many many others have tried and failed.

Will things change yes, I am betting on things will get better. Sure we might loose somethings along the way and will mistakes be made.

However we have to believe that everyone involved knows how special Jamf is and the team will always be trying do the right thing.

C

[jeffkh]

@gachowski I have no doubt that the JAMF team is dedicated to providing the best product they can to their customers. Everyone that I've interacted with at JAMF has been a pleasure to deal with, and the product helps us tremendously. The worrying thing is that those great people are no longer in control, and the ones who are now in control have a frighteningly consistent track record of basically gutting companies to maximize bottom line, and then selling them off. I like JAMF, but don't get it twisted, this not good news.

[donmontalvo]

I've been through the nightmare of building a dependency on a management product, and having the rug pulled out from under me...but that company was spiraling downward.

Jamf is growing at an astonishing pace, so this second infusion of money is what's needed to keep their momentum, and to keep up with Apple.

[david_yenzer]

Not knowing intricate details, I'll just say that hopefully this is a great thing. Overall, I'm still extremely happy with the Jamf product in our environment of K12 education. There's a few wishlist things down the road that I'd love to see. I think support tends to fluctuate a bit, particularly first response tier 1 kind of stuff that has it's ups and downs, currently it seems like a down swing - but that's just a variation of interpersonal relationships where sometimes you just get along with someone better before they move on/up in the world. I have no doubt that they have all the answers, it's just a question of how to get to the right person to resolve it.

Anyway, hope to hear more about it at JNUC!

[gskibum]

I've seen quite a few of my iPhone apps and Mac App store apps improve after acquisitions. Adware Medic to MalwareBytes turned out well.

I think, or hope, that Vista knows JAMF is a gold mine in large part due to the culture behind the terrific product.

[casper_ghost]

And here is the result of JAMF jumping into bed with Vista Equity Partners:

$3.33/iOS device per month
$6.67/macOS device per month

Subscription-based pricing that will serve to price a majority of School Districts away from them.
For instance, we have approximately 1300 macOS devices and nearly 600 iOS devices. Do the math.

And I can find no discussion of this new pricing model anywhere here on JAMFNation, and especially among education customers.

[jmahlman]

Wow, if that pricing is accurate...

[dgreening]

I do believe that pricing is for Jamf Cloud. Even so, that is a drastic price increase.

[TKroger]

Hello,

The pricing on Jamf's website is the standard list price for Jamf Pro and it doesn't reflect our education pricing or volume discounts. If you are new to Jamf and you'd like to learn more about our education pricing please reach out directly to me at taylor.kroger@jamf.com and I will connect you with someone from our sales team. If you are a current education customer and have questions about our pricing please reach out to your account specialist or myself if you don't know who that is.

We apologize for any confusion.

Best,
Taylor

[tomt]

Gotta pay for the VCs and fancy new building somehow.