Addigy Takes on Jamf, Plots MSP Expansion for Apple Device Management

ADDIGY SUMMIT — As the number of Macs used by commercial and enterprise users incrementally rises, the opportunities and options for managed service providers (MSPs) to support the Apple ecosystem is also on the ascent.

In the latest sign of that growth, about 100 Addigy partners and customers are gathering in the company’s home market of Miami for a conference to learn about its technology road map and business vision. Addigy is a little-known, but rapidly growing, provider of device management tools for Apple Macs, iPhones and iPads.

The company, in its fifth year, is starting to show signs of customer and partner growth. Addigy is overshadowed by its much larger rival, Jamf, which has also benefited from the increased usage of Macs in the workplace. Jamf recently reported that its revenues grew 30 percent and the number of Apple devices under management increased from 9 million to 12 million. Jamf says the number of its commercial and enterprise customers surged 57 percent, now at 20,000.

While Addigy hasn’t shared financial or customer growth information, it’s a much smaller player. Founder and CEO Jason Dettbarn isn’t intimidated by his larger rival.

“I think there’s a there’s a lot of room out there for all of us,” Dettbarn told Channel Futures, during an interview at its second Addigy Summit in as many years. “There are plenty of deals and the market will mature. Competition is good.”

Addigy’s Jason Dettbarn

Dettbarn, who led global channel sales at Kaseya, launched Addigy in 2014, seeing a need for a cloud-based platform to manage Macs and iOS devices.

“A lot of managed service providers use us because, as a multitenant platform, we’re the only thing they need to manage all their customers and their relevant accounts with Apple all under one roof,” Dettbarn said.

Because of that multitenant platform, if an MSP needs to implement a change that impacts multiple accounts, they can do it in a streamlined manner, he said.

“With any other platform, they have to log into different accounts for each customer and duplicate all the work, where with Addigy you can do it top-down across everybody,” he said.

Addigy’s management plane runs in multiple public clouds, notably Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform. But it also includes a local agent. More than a year ago, Addigy began implementing a new architecture that that is microservices-based.

“Now anytime we have a new feature and service, it is actually a new service piece itself, with its own data segment, so it makes us much more secure, and the overall reliability, a lot better,” Dettbarn added.

Now, Addigy is doubling down on expanding its partner base. In January, Dettbarn tapped former Jamf channel sales exec Adam Segar as its VP of channel sales.

“As we started doing more with these partners, they’re going to have more opportunity for us with us,” Segar told Channel Futures.

Conference attendee Richard Russell, principal consultant with MacWorks360 in Morristown, New Jersey, is among those that has offered the tool to manage endpoints for his clients from the company’s early days.

“It just keeps getting better and better and Jason [Dettbarn] appears committed to expanding the platform,” Russell said.

As the conference kicked off, Dettbarn revealed the new Addigy Community Center, for device fact/script sharing, allowing customers and partners share their custom device facts and scripts with the ecosystem, once verified. Released for attendees at the conference, it will be formally announced next week.

The company also plans to announce expanded mobile device management (MDM) configurations, new peer-to-peer caching for high availability with a feature called LANCache. Addigy also is readying single-sign-on integration with Okta, the new Google Sign In service and Jumpcloud Directory.