Our company was recently acquired by another organization, and both companies use Apple Business Manager with device management. Apple Support indicated there is no straightforward merger process for transferring devices between the two accounts. Their suggested approach is to deregister and manually add each device to the acquiring organization's account, which would be a major effort with employees spread across Canada and the United States. Is there a more practical way to handle this transition, and what approaches have other companies used?
3 Answers
You generally don’t need to move every device into the other Apple Business Manager account. Keep the original account active, stop assigning new purchases to it, and configure the new organization’s MDM server in the existing account. Then migrate or repoint the devices to the new MDM system. As older devices are retired and replaced, purchase and enroll replacements through the new account. The original account can eventually be closed once it has no remaining devices.
Another practical option is to maintain both accounts for a while and let the device fleets age out naturally. Stop adding equipment to the old account, use the new account for future purchases, and replace or retire the remaining old-account devices over time. This avoids a large, disruptive migration, although you’ll need a clear inventory and lifecycle plan.
Some organizations handle an acquisition by buying new equipment through the acquiring company and allowing employees to retain their previous devices, where appropriate. That makes the transition simpler, but it can be expensive and may not work for every business. If you do move devices to a different MDM, test enrollment and automation scripts carefully—especially device assignment, provisioning, and user-data migration—before rolling it out broadly.
That’s helpful—I hadn’t considered keeping the original account and simply repointing devices to the new MDM as they transition. It sounds much more manageable than manually transferring everything.