App deployment services?

[peanutismint]

My brother-in-law is a teacher and his school have just bought 30 iPads for their students. The iPads are all on the same iCloud account and they use this to share documents between the students (i.e. to make sure every device has the same/latest version of a document etc.)

He's wondering if there's an easy way to 'deploy' app updates to each device, so for instance when an app is purchased/installed on one device it will sync across all devices (without him having to navigate to the app store on each device and click 'install' or what have you.)

Does anybody know if any such developer software deployment tools exist??

 

[Tyler23]

My brother-in-law is a teacher and his school have just bought 30 iPads for their students. The iPads are all on the same iCloud account and they use this to share documents between the students (i.e. to make sure every device has the same/latest version of a document etc.)

He's wondering if there's an easy way to 'deploy' app updates to each device, so for instance when an app is purchased/installed on one device it will sync across all devices (without him having to navigate to the app store on each device and click 'install' or what have you.)

Does anybody know if any such developer software deployment tools exist??

Nope, the updates must be individually applied on each device.

 

[peanutismint]

Okay, that's unfortunate. Surely he's not the only person trying to achieve this? I'm surprised there isn't a way to 'administrate' several devices in this way....

 

[madsci954]

Nope, the updates must be individually applied on each device.

You should be able to manage all the iPads with the iPhone Configuration Utility.

 

[peanutismint]

Hmm interesting.... this sounds like more what I was hoping for. It might be a little above a primary school teacher's level of IT skills but it's worth a shot! Thanks

 

[SanjeevRana]

Here is the material required for Enterprise Deployment : http://www.apple.com/support/ipad/enterprise/

 

[macingman]

Okay, that's unfortunate. Surely he's not the only person trying to achieve this? I'm surprised there isn't a way to 'administrate' several devices in this way....

There are many iPads at my school, probably in the hundreds when they are added up in total accross all the buildings. It's not an easy task to administer them. I'm pretty sure my school's IT team hired more staff to deal with the increase in hardware when they were introduced. Even on a smaller scale I doubt it could be done efficiently by one person in an education setting, especially someone who probably has bigger concerns than keeping the iPads up to date (watching the kids and whatnot).

 

[peanutismint]

Thanks for the links guys, just to say that the 'Apple Configurator' linked to on that 'iPhone Configuration Utility' site seems like exactly the tool for the job, and Apple helpfully provide lots of documentation to help laymen (and teachers!) to get to grips with it.

Just the ticket!