IBM MaaS360 Reviews

We have provided IBM MaaS360 to all of our mobile users, approximately one year ago. I have also been working to reseller IBM services, such as this one, for almost the past two years.

This product is primarily used for data loss prevention (DLP).

Using this solution has made things more convenient. Earlier, we had to depend a lot more on IT to find and resolve our issues. There are fewer problems and once you raise a ticket, it's easier for them to identify whether it's something that they can fix remotely, or whether it would require a physical examination of the device.

The most valuable features are remote enablement and access to my intranet resources, without depending on the VPN.

Due to integration with Apple DEP and Android Enterprise we don't need to configure each device manually or even share a link, it is ready the moment the user has access to the device.

We also have some internal websites that would normally need VPN to access from the public network, but we have set up a gateway that lets us connect to these internal resources  using the secure browser that's part of the license which is a very significant cost saving in the current times.

The user interface could definitely use some improvement. It's good enough, albeit pretty basic. However, anybody that is not used to it might require some assistance early on because it is not very intuitive.

It is fairly simple to use, yet a little complex to manage. At least, the initial setup is complex to manage.

One of the things that I would like to see in the next release is improvements at the account level. it is a little bit difficult to identify the number of licenses that are visible in my account, and to which suite each belongs. If there are four suites, we sometimes have to have segregation. Some users require the full set of enterprise services, whereas some users who are our partners or just employees are just given basic inventory management tools.

Being able to identify and account for these licenses would definitely help. This is not related to the actual usage, but rather, it's more of an administrative task. It can be overcome with manual bookkeeping but still, a bit more effort would be needed. If this can be simplified then that would be great.

I have been working with IBM MaaS360 for close to two years.

This is a pretty stable product and I haven't seen it crash anytime recently.

My organization has 5,000 devices as of now, so I don't see a problem with scale. I have personally resold the same services to organizations that use as little as 10 devices to 100 devices, to more than 10,000 devices. Scalability is not a real challenge.

There are two aspects to technical support. Since I am a reseller,  I provide my own service along with the licenses, so I charge for the professional services. However, if it is purely through IBM, the service is definitely lacking.

With IBM, it is a significant turnout time and you do need to have someone with qualifications from your own team so that you understand what to do. So, unless you already have somebody who's tech-savvy and understands the language, you're better off hiring professional services for support.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. It's clicking a link and moving on.

Our deployment took roughly a month because it happened in phases. There was integration, phasing out of the old software, and integration with the new upcoming cloud services. Aside from knowing that there were phases, I don't have specifics on how long each one took.

My advice for anybody who is implementing this product is to start by completing the trial as soon as possible so that all of your core issues or core requirements can be identified easily. Next, have all of the integration options kept as secondary because you don't want to do everything together. It's always best to test a few cases; create a test group, and test it on them first. Make sure that everything is working instead of trying to make a turnkey solution. Doing it in phases is more effective than trying to do everything at once.

Overall, this is a good product and it covers most of the services that these solutions are supposed to follow, but it's not perfect. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use the solution for data protection, data leakage prevention, and email containerization.

The solution's most valuable features are site protection, pricing, and easy implementation.

The solution's integration with Microsoft Teams could be better.

We have been using the solution for seven years.

It is a stable solution. I rate its stability a nine out of ten.

It is a scalable solution. I rate its scalability an eight out of ten. It is suitable for enterprise businesses.

The solution's technical support team could respond faster. Also, there should be clarity regarding whom to escalate the call to within the team in case of queries.

Neutral

The solution's initial setup process is easy. The time taken for deployment depends on the number of mobile devices. If you have a few hundred machines, it will take an hour. It requires three to five engineers for deployment and two to three engineers for maintenance.

The solution generates a good return on investment.

The solution is cost-effective. I rate its pricing as a four out of ten. We purchase its yearly license. Also, there are no additional costs involved.

I advise others to stay updated with the latest version and use company-owned mobile devices for the solution. I rate it an eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for our organization's phones and iPads.

We use the solution for locking down the phone. If it gets lost or stolen, we deploy apps. We have an internal app that will be deployed. It's connected to Apple DEP VPP, and we do document deployments through it as well.

Maas360 uses distribution groups to deploy apps, which makes it a bit easier than, for example, Intune.

Overall, I haven't been happy with it.

Their licensing platform is absolutely awful. We've got locked out of our own account several times and that just has put a bad taste in my mouth. 

The initial setup is not exactly straightforward.

There have been some changes in its software. The portal, for example, has changed. One nuisance feature is that, when you login, you have to always press enter, which is annoying. With most sites, you just click on the login and you go. With this portal, you have to specifically hit enter.

The solution needs to offer live technical support. Right now, it's just a chat window and it's rather unhelpful.

I've been using this solution for about six years. It's been a while. We have some good experience with it.

The solution is scalable. A company shouldn't have any issues in that regard.

We use the solution on about 600 different devices across the organization. Everyone from sales and distribution to the president of the company uses it.

The only way you can get technical support is through a chat window. They weren't exactly friendly. I wouldn't say that we have been happy with technical support.

I wasn't aware of anything being used previously to this solution.

Anything you set up is going to be a bit challenging. However, this was not straightforward per se. It's not cut and dry. You have the rules and regulations on everything that you have to contend with.

I didn't handle the initial implementation. I took it over after the fact.

The initial setup was handled in-house. The company did not require the assistance of consultants or integrators.

We are charged on a monthly basis. It's my understanding that the pricing is the same as or similar to Intune. If we do switch over, the pricing will be pretty much the same.

With IBM, you had to have a certain type of license inside of Microsoft for it to work, however, I don't have too much detail on that.

We are also looking into Intune. The one thing I did notice with Maas360 versus Intune was that Maas360 uses distribution groups to deploy apps. Intune does not have that. With Intune, you have to use security groups. That's causing us a little headache that we've got to get around.

I'm getting my feet wet on it right now. I'm beginning to learn how to use it. We're in the POC stage.

We are a customer and end-user.

The solution is deployed onto the actual device itself.

I wouldn't recommend the solution. We're pretty much working to move off of it. We haven't been too happy with the solution in general. How it was described to us ultimately wasn't how it worked.

Overall, I would rate it at a six out of ten.

In this scenario, we only used MaaS for telephones, not computers. We used the MaaS360 IBM mobile management tool to protect email accounts on phones, ensuring they were compliant. 

MaaS can force people to lock their phones. Not everyone likes having a PIN and other security features on their phones, but this sets a requirement that you can't get your emails unless you have a PIN on your phone. That was a good feature, and we were able to easily increase the PIN from four digits to six digits. Overall, it was pretty user-friendly.

We had a problem with Microsoft computers. If you downloaded emails on a Microsoft Windows Surface PC, that would also require a license. The Outlook application didn't look great for us on a PC. 

My company deployed MaaS360 six years ago, and I last used it about nine months back. 

MaaS360 has gone down a few times over the years, and people couldn't get their emails on their phones, so it was problematic, but that didn't happen often. It was a lot less stable than Intune.

MaaS360 is scalable for a price. At that point, we had a subsidiary company that had many more employees abroad, and they weren't in Intune. We don't have that company now, so that's why we don't use it anymore. But we were able to run it out for all different countries, so it was scalable.

We had our agents who ran through the support by IBM, but I think they also had priority in the queue, so there was no lead time. They had no longer lead time between raising an issue and getting an answer.

IBM MaaS360 was deployed maybe six years ago, and an external IT consultant handled that. It was complex to set up, and they needed to connect their server. 

MaaS360 was nearly double the price of Intune. Except for the server costs, which were built into our IT budget, there were no additional costs.

I rate IBM MaaS360 eight out of 10. I prefer MaaS360 over Intune because I'm a much heavier IBM user. If someone is considering MaaS360, I recommend having an Apple account for business so that it integrates smoothly. You also need to have an overview of your devices, what the applications are, and what the impact will be. 

We are customers and resellers of this solution and I'm the company's deputy manager.

The solution has made everything more convenient for us and it's now easier to identify whether something can be fixed remotely or whether it requires a physical examination on the device.

The most useful features are remote enablement and access to internal resources on the VPN.

The user interface could definitely use some improvement. It's very basic, but anyone not used to it might require some assistance. It's not really intuitive. I'd like to see more access at the account level. It's difficult to identify the number of licenses available in our account and to which interface they belong. We sometimes have to segregate; some users require the full enterprise features while others, who are partners or employees, are just given basic access. Being able to identify and assign the licenses would be very helpful. It's more of an administrative thing in terms of bookkeeping, but it would be great if that issue could be addressed.

I've been using this solution for two years. 

The solution is quite stable. 

My organization has more than 5,000 users now so I don't see a problem with scale.

I'm a reseller and I provide my own technical services along with the licenses. We charge for professional services. However, if technical support was purely through IBM, the service is definitely lacking. There is a significant turnaround time, and you do need to have someone with qualifications from your own team who understands what to do. Unless you already have somebody who's tech savvy and understands the language, you're going to have to pay for professional services. It's a complex thing to manage.

It's a simple initial setup but complex to use. I believe overall deployment took about a month as it was rolled out in phases. There was integration phasing out of all the software as well as integration with new upcoming cloud services.

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

We use IBM MaaS360 for the iPads of our field sales reps. We use it to ensure that they are only using authorized apps, and these apps are maintained and have the latest version.

The ability to send an iPad out to someone and have them auto-provision it when they are out in the field is fantastic. We don't have to have it all configured before we ship it. This is probably the biggest value add.

We opted to go with Microsoft Intune because it just seemed to be a more mature and comprehensive enterprise solution, whereas IBM MaaS360 didn't seem to have the necessary breadth to manage all of our equipment. Along with laptops, I've had some BYODs. IBM MaaS360 just didn't seem as mature in our assessment.

Our company was founded in May of last year, and we launched our sales force in September of last year. We have been using IBM MaaS360 since then, that is, for more than a year. We are using the latest version.

It is stable.

It is scalable for the field sales reps. It didn't seem to be as scalable for the enterprise across multiple platforms. We have around 70 users.

We have IBM MaaS360 for our iPads, but we are using Microsoft Intune for our laptops and our BYODs. When our licensing expires, we will migrate our iPads from IBM MaaS360 to Microsoft Intune. 

Considering that we are moving to Microsoft Intune, I should ideally not recommend this solution, but there's no reason to not recommend it for the iPads of your sales force. It is a very standard solution. There is lots of knowledge out there and lots of resources who are experts in the solution. It is not a bad solution to use. If I had just the sales force, using IBM MaaS360 is a great way to manage their iPads.

I would rate IBM MaaS360 an eight out of ten.

We are using IBM MaaS360 to manage applications and to control some functions in mobile phones. We do mobile device tests and control the applications on mobile devices.

My customers value the ability to control all their devices from a central point in IBM MaaS360.

IBM MaaS360 can improve the information provided for DLP control. Some of our customers would benefit from this.

In a future release, they should add more compatibility with different types of devices, Zebra. Our clients needed to control different types of devices using the same license to control mobile phones.

I have been using IBM MaaS360 for approximately three years. 

IBM MaaS360 is a stable solution.

The technical support from IBM is good.

The initial setup of IBM MaaS360 is easy.

We have a SOC, a security patient center where we have two engineers that provide the support for our customers for IBM MaaS360.

I would recommend this solution to others. There is a possibility to improve, but in general, it's a very good solution.

I rate IBM MaaS360 a nine out of ten.

The most valuable features are mobile device management and security (which allows you to quarantine infected devices). 

An area for improvement would be handshaking with Microsoft in terms of trying to get a DLP on Microsoft OS. It would also be useful to be able to do containerization with Microsoft. There are also issues with email security when the functionality is defined from your AD or Exchange.

I've been working with this solution for around three years.

MaaS360 can be easily and effectively expanded.

IBM's technical support is fair to good. We had some challenges initially because we weren't well-connected to the support structure, but if you understand the IBM server structure, you can get a lot of help from IBM. They're also very responsive and will always provide solutions, shortcuts, and other alternatives when there are challenges.

The initial setup is straightforward - because it's cloud-based, it's just a matter of doing some settings here and there.

We have a yearly subscription. The licensing structure is broken down into levels, each with different functionalities available. Depending on your license, there may be additional fees for extra features.

My advice for anyone thinking of implementing MaaS360 is to work with a partner who understands the product and IBM's support structure. Some decisions need to be taken during setup that will be easier with the presence of somebody who understands the implications of the various options. I would give MaaS360 a rating of nine out of ten.