On April 14, 2026, Apple is making one of the biggest changes to its business platform in years. Three separate portals — Apple Business Manager, Apple Business Essentials, and Apple Business Connect — are being retired and replaced by a single unified platform simply called Apple Business.
For the vast majority of Advisory clients, nothing changes. But there are a few things worth understanding whether you are a customer or not.
What’s Actually Changing
Apple is consolidating its fragmented business tools into one platform with four core pillars: device management, people management, brand management, and email and calendar. The new platform is free and available in over 200 countries.
The headline feature that’s generating the most buzz is the built-in MDM (Mobile Device Management) — device management, baked right into the free Apple Business platform, no third-party tool required.
That sounds significant. And for a certain type of business, it is. If you’re already working with Advisory, or even another MSP, you’re ahead of the curve, and this likely doesn’t solve for your business needs.
The Built-in MDM Is Designed for the Unmanaged — Not for You
Let’s be direct: Apple’s native MDM is a lightweight tool built for small organizations that currently have nothing in place. Think a 10-person startup handing out MacBooks with zero policies, no patch management, and no security baseline. For those businesses, Apple Business is a genuine step forward. Apple is essentially saying: there’s no excuse anymore for unmanaged devices. If you’re expecting a plug-in-and-forget experience, keep reading.
If you’re working with Advisory, you’re in a fundamentally different category. Here’s what Apple’s built-in MDM simply cannot do:
- Compliance and security depth. Platforms like Jamf Pro offer hundreds of granular configuration options that Apple’s native MDM doesn’t touch. If your organization is working toward SOC 2, ISO 27001, Cyber Essentials, or any similar framework, Apple’s MDM cannot generate the audit-ready compliance reports that an auditor requires. Jamf Pro can.
- Security integrations. Jamf integrates directly with CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, and Microsoft Defender and more. Apple’s built-in MDM does not. For organizations where endpoint security is a priority — which is all of our clients — this matters enormously.
- Increasing complexity, multi-tenant management, and scale. Advisory manages IT environments across dozens of client organizations simultaneously. Enterprise-grade MDM platforms are built for that complexity. Apple’s native MDM is not. This becomes more relevant as your business grows and naturally becomes more complex – you’ll want a system that grows with you.
- Custom security baselines and automation. CIS benchmark enforcement, bespoke workflow automation, staged patch rollouts, smart group logic — none of this is available through Apple’s native tool.
Your Existing Setup Is Safe
If you’re currently running Jamf (or another third-party MDM) through Apple Business Manager, your environment migrates automatically. Device enrollments, app licenses, and Managed Apple Accounts carry over without disruption. The MDM relationship between Apple Business and your existing platform stays exactly as it was. You don’t need to do anything.
The One Thing to Watch
Apple is also rolling out a companion employee app — think a self-service portal for installing work apps and viewing a company directory. It sounds useful, but it requires iOS 26, iPadOS 26, or macOS 26, which means it won’t be widely usable until later this year at the earliest. We’ll update you when it’s relevant.
The Bottom Line
Apple making device management free and accessible is good for the industry – no doubt about it. It raises the floor for what businesses expect from IT management, and it validates what we’ve been telling clients for years — unmanaged devices are a liability.
But raising the floor isn’t the same as raising the ceiling. For organizations that take security, compliance, and operational continuity seriously, enterprise-grade MDM isn’t a nice-to-have — it’s the foundation everything else is built on.
If you have questions about how this transition affects your environment specifically, reach out to your Advisory team. We’re happy to walk through it.
