All eyes on JNUC as Apple’s IT crowd heads to Denver

With the annual Jamf Nation User Conference (JNUC) taking place this week in Denver, we can expect more news about Apple in the enterprise. The event, which has become a traditional launching pad for Apple/enterprise news announcements, is expected to attract Apple IT pros from around the world, as it does each year.

What to expect at the show? That’s not always predictable. After all, who else remembers when then-IBM CTO (now Cisco CIO) Fletcher Previn finally proved Macs are cheaper to run and more productive to use when deployed at scale? 

Changing enterprise tech, one seat at a time

Not every announcement can be as significant as that one six years ago, but the event is always proof positive of Apple’s growing status in business. That growth is beyond skin deep, with recent analyst reports showing that Apple’s Mac sales are rising at the highest rate in the business. 

Amid all these changes, one thing taking place is a steady proliferation of device management and security companies aimed at the Apple-in-the-enterprise ecosystem. That’s great, as it means there is a plethora of alternatives, each offering something that might be a useful answer to the needs of your business; it also means that side of the Apple environment is becoming more competitive.

The growing Apple enterprise ecosystem

We’re bound to hear more partnership news from JNUC. For example, last week we learned about an integration between Parallels and Jamf Marketplace that will make it much easier to migrate Windows-based businesses to Macs by supporting easy deployment of Windows as virtual machines. Just two weeks ago, we learned of a similar arrangement between Jamf and automated support system Moveworks. More recentl,y Ukrainian developer MacPaw, announced a similar partnership for the deployment of optimization and then automation tool CleanMyMac Business.

These and many other partnerships effectively turn Jamf Marketplace into a useful enterprise-focused Apple App Store. (We’ll also likely learn more about the work Jamf has been doing with Managed Service Providers and channel partners.)

Not just who does it, but what we do

Like so much of Apple’s enterprise story across the last decade, it’s not just the wider business-focused Apple ecosystem that’s expanded, it’s also the scope of what’s happening in the space. 

One way to reflect on this is to consider the number of sessions made available at JNUC 2025 compared to the same event a decade ago; while that one had “over 40” sessions, this year’s expo hosts 162 of them. And, of course, the company’s offer is also mutating from a one-size-fits-all application approach to more AI-friendly services and services access tools and solutions.

That’s a clear reflection of the increasing depth to which Macs, iPhones, iPads, and the rest are proliferating in business. Logically, the more deployments occur, the more questions need to be resolved — and that’s reflected in the number of answers available at JNUC 2025. The growth in Apple’s enterprise status is also reflected in the growing number of security products and services made available for the platform.

While the platform remains inherently far more secure than anything else, that doesn’t mean it can be left unsecured, particularly for business users — especially as ill-informed authoritarian governments erode digital security with a war on encryption.

More players, more games, more competition

Jamf might have been the first big hitter to emerge from the evolution, but it’s by no means alone: Moysle, Addigy, Fleet, Kandji, Hexnode and others — including Microsoft InTune — are all growing in the space. 

Apple recently reflected this growing complexity when it introduced tools to make it easier to migrate between MDM systems. It means IT can more easily move between device management systems than before, useful for price negations and takeovers when two MDM systems become one.

They say competition is a good thing, but it may not always be the case. After all, in a tech market driven by the needs of big business, competition may lead to consolidation, changing the offer even while the names remain the same. It’s certain whispers on the JNUC show floor will reflect that, given recent speculation that Jamf might be up for sale. That will matter to the JNUC “vibe,” which has for years been renowned for being the most Macworld Expo-like jamboree in the business. Will that side of the corporate culture pay the price of any such sale? Or will an acquisition, if there is any truth to those rumors, help accelerate the evolution of the Apple-based enterprise by giving Jamf additional resources to scale?

Perhaps we’ll find out during the JNUC keynote on Tuesday. 

Follow me on social media! Join me on BlueSky,  LinkedIn, and Mastodon.