Jamf in the age of agentic IT: An interview with CEO Beth Tschida

Jamf, a pioneer in Apple device management since 2002, has grown to manage 35.2 million devices across 78,000 organizations. CEO Beth Tschida recently shared the company's vision for the future, which centers around artificial intelligence (AI) and human-centric deployment. Tschida emphasized that "AI runs better on Apple, and Apple runs better on Jamf."

This philosophy is reflected in Jamf's response to the challenges of shadow AI, which occurs when employees feed confidential data to cloud-based AI models. To address this, Jamf has developed new frameworks to monitor, manage, and govern AI use on their managed fleets.

Another critical component of Jamf's AI strategy involves pricing. As the cost of AI inferencing continues to rise, the company has introduced tools for IT to monitor and manage these costs. Granular model controls enable admins to assign different teams access to various models, preventing "overmodeling" and ensuring that lightweight models are used for simpler tasks. This approach not only optimizes costs but also enhances efficiency.

Jamf's AI-powered tech support is another significant development, aimed at reducing the time spent on routine problem solving and enabling proactive device health management. By leveraging telemetry, Jamf can anticipate and address potential issues before they become critical, all without requiring user intervention. This shift towards a more proactive IT approach aligns with the growing enterprise Apple ecosystem, where Macs are increasingly favored over Windows systems for business use.

To support this ecosystem, Jamf has created platform APIs that allow customers and partners to extend the platform's capabilities. This approach acknowledges that no single company can build the perfect set of solutions for every enterprise. Tschida emphasized that Jamf's role is to ensure that Apple runs better with Jamf, focusing on visibility, governance, and harnessing the power of AI for its customers.

As the company scales, it remains committed to addressing both the global and local aspects of AI deployment, balancing sovereignty, privacy, and the benefits of running AI workloads on-device.