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With more people working from home than ever before, Apple has acquired remote IT management start-up Fleetsmith.
On Wednesday (24 June), San Francisco-based IT management start-up Fleetsmith announced that it has been acquired by Apple.
In a blogpost, the company’s co-founders Zack Blum, Jesse Endahl and Kenneth Kouot announced the news, stating that they are “thrilled” to join Apple. The start-up did not reveal the financial terms of the acquisition.
Founded in 2016, Fleetsmith enables companies to put device management on ‘auto-pilot’ by automating device setup, inventory, patching and security for companies using Macs, iPhones, iPads and Apple TVs.
Fleetsmith’s tech has been used by companies such as Robinhood, Segment, HackerOne and Clearbit. Prior to the acquisition, the start-up received more than $40m in backing from Menlo Ventures, Tiger Global Management, Upfront Ventures, Index Ventures and Harrison Metal, among others.
The acquisition
The co-founders wrote: “We started Fleetsmith to balance the management and security needs of IT with the experience users love about Mac, iPad, and iPhone. We’re proud of the incredibly talented team we’ve built, and that we’ve stayed true to our mission: to make powerful, secure Apple fleet management available to everyone.”
The founding team said that Fleetsmith shares Apple’s values of putting customers at the centre, without sacrificing privacy and security. By joining Apple, Fleetsmith’s co-founders said that they can now “truly” meet their mission, delivering Fleetsmith to businesses and institutions of all sizes around the world.
“To our community of customers and everyone who has been part of our journey so far, thank you! We look forward to continuing to deliver Fleetsmith to existing and new customers,” they wrote.
The acquisition comes at a time when IT fleet management may be more complicated than it had previously been, as many companies are now working fully remotely. With workers no longer in a centralised office, IT teams have to deal with new risks and challenges that come with distributed workers and machines.
TechCrunch remarked that the shift to remote working and the need for new, creative solutions to solve new problems has likely informed Apple’s decision to purchase Fleetsmith, which uses Apple’s Device Enrolment Programme so IT departments can bring new machines online from the very first time they are powered on.
