Erica Sadun at TUAW:
We don’t know what Apple’s event will cover, but this kind of large-scale deployment sets a bar that Apple needs to meet – soon if not next week. At TUAW, we believe that winning the classroom will win the tablet. If Apple cannot respond to Whispercast, they cannot win that classroom.
Apple’s enterprise tools for iOS and support for mobile device management have advantages for big organizations, but the textbook (and app) volume purchasing setup doesn’t have quite the fluidity of what Whispercast will deliver. MDM at a basic level is doable with Apple’s Mountain Lion Server, but larger deployments may require extensive IT support and investment, which most schools don’t have at their disposal. In contrast, Whispercast is cloud-based and free. (There are several cloud-based MDM options for iOS, to be sure, with Meraki, Zenprise and MaaS360 among them, but they aren’t free.)