The Challenge

To maintain its market leading position, SEEK has evolved into an innovative technology company. It invests in artificial intelligence and uses technology creatively to deliver products that more effectively connect hirers and candidates. The success of this clear purpose is in the numbers. SEEK has exposure to 900 million people, 50 million candidate relationships and 300,000 hirer partnerships.

SEEK’s technology environment extends to a number of additional operations including SEEK Learning, which helps connect people with quality education opportunities, SEEK Business where businesses and franchises can be sold, SEEK Volunteer, and early stage business investments via its SEEK Growth Fund.

This diverse, HR focused enterprise is also very alert to accommodating the workplace and digital preferences of its own people – with 3,000 employed worldwide. Always at the forefront, SEEK implemented an early, on-premise version of Jamf’s Apple device management tool.

Simon Gowland, Head of Workspace Enablement at SEEK, says: “In consultation with CompNow’s Professional Services, we introduced Jamf to make sure our handful of Mac users were well looked after. Since then, our Apple fleet grew quickly to 1,500 strong across SEEK’s AsiaPac operations.

“We were managing the Macs and Jamf ourselves. We needed to reduce the increasing support overheads on our team, with our ultimate goal to achieve a shift to zero touch Apple deployment.”

The Solution

CompNow helped negotiate the competitive pricing of SEEK’s three year Jamf Cloud contract. It then designed a three phase deployment project.

The discovery & pilot work identified and documented all services that needed to be modified and tested prior to the migration from the Jamf on-premise version to cloud.

CompNow worked closely with the SEEK team to identify resource owners for each service and to direct timely, informative communications to them. With the pilot having validated the functionality migration, SEEK and CompNow determined the implementation schedule – to be performed during APAC business hours – for an on-time cutover.

The second phase introduced the Jamf migration team to the solution mix. As SEEK’s production database and servers were backed up & shut down, SEEK’s DNS record was moved and SSL certificate approved. All elements being tracked, tested & validated throughout the process.

In the last piece, the connecting infrastructure was configured and SEEK migrated from its AWS primary distribution server into the Jamf Cloud distribution server. With the old Jamf, backup servers and distribution points decommissioned, the implementation was complete.

Simon says: “CompNow’s project management skills are finely tuned. The migration was super seamless. There was no identifiable impact on users.”

The Benefits

The advanced features of the new Jamf have transformed the management of SEEK’s Apple fleet. Jamf Connect coordinates the complete sign in structure: “It’s improved the staff log in experience and increased SEEK’s security posture. Signing in with the second layer of authentication is easy. Passwords used to get out of sync, but Connect takes that problem away. It also enables our Macs to talk directly to our cloud identity provider, Okta” he says.

With working from home now an operational standard, new devices can be sent directly to wherever a staff member is working, with no set up required by internal IT staff. “With hybrid workplaces, staff are enabled no matter where they are,” Simon says.

“We’re working with CompNow to streamline the on boarding of staff. CompNow undertakes the provisioning and ships direct to the new employee. It doesn’t matter whether the new person is in Kuala Lumpur or Perth, it’s the same. They take their new device out of the box and log in. It’s a white glove service. And we have an equivalent at the other end, with hardware returned for secure clean, rebuild and fast redeployment.”

SEEK no longer hosts its own infrastructure or manages security patches. As a cloud service, new Jamf features are automatically accessible to SEEK rather than via a manual upgrade. “These advances reduce management overheads and we don’t need deep technical knowledge to host the product. With the time saved, we can be designing and configuring better experiences for our SEEK businesses,” he says.

“We’ve been working with CompNow since 2015 when our Apple fleet was in its infancy. They have a genuine desire to understand our ever changing operations. It helps that we have close cultures in terms of values.

“They’re great to deal with as they bring us their expertise – from reseller to management and support services. We’ve had their people on site as additional resources when we’ve needed specific help – they just slot in, do a great job, share information. And we trust CompNow’s licensing and procurement negotiations – they are very competitive.

“CompNow and our up to the minute Jamf Cloud are definitely helping us scale as we better integrate SEEK’s businesses across the region. They are also supporting a key business priority – supporting staff, to give them technology choice and ease of use.

“SEEK and Jamf have evolved over a similar timeframe. We’re both at a great level of maturity, and with great plans for the future. So it was absolutely the right time to migrate to Jamf Cloud,” Simon says.