Every organization that deploys a managed device fleet faces the same operational reality: keeping that fleet running well requires ongoing, continuous work. Devices need to be monitored. Alerts need to be reviewed and acted on. App updates need to be tested and deployed. Configuration changes need to be applied and verified. And all of this needs to happen consistently, including during evenings, weekends, and the moments when your internal team is focused on something else.
Moki’s Managed Services is the operational layer for organizations that want Moki’s platform capabilities without building an internal team to operate them. The Managed Services team takes on the day-to-day device management workload, operates the platform on the customer’s behalf, and provides the monitoring coverage and response capability that a lean internal IT team often cannot sustain on its own.
Understanding what the Managed Services team actually does, how they operate, and how the experience differs from self-service MDM helps organizations decide which model fits their situation and what they can expect from each.
What the Managed Services Team Does Every Day
The Managed Services team’s daily work covers the full operational scope of running a device fleet, with the specific activities calibrated to each customer’s deployment type, fleet size, and operational hours.
Fleet monitoring is the constant baseline. The Managed Services team monitors the Moki dashboard for every customer fleet under management throughout the operational day, including extended hours and weekend coverage based on the customer’s device operating schedule. When a device goes offline, an application crashes, or a compliance condition triggers an alert, the team sees it and begins the response process without waiting for the customer to notice and report it.
Alert response and remote troubleshooting follow from monitoring. When an alert fires, the Managed Services team’s first response is remote troubleshooting through Moki’s platform. For the majority of common device issues, a remote reboot or configuration correction through the dashboard resolves the problem within minutes. The customer is notified of what happened and what was done, but in many cases the resolution happens before the customer is even aware a problem existed.
App update management is a scheduled operational function. The team reviews available updates for managed applications, tests them against staging device groups to confirm stability, and deploys approved updates to production devices during the scheduled maintenance windows defined with the customer. This keeps every device in the fleet running current software without requiring the customer’s team to manage the update cycle.
Configuration management covers the ongoing application and maintenance of device configuration profiles. When the customer needs to add a new device type, update a kiosk lockdown configuration, or change a hardware restriction policy, the Managed Services team makes the change in the platform, verifies it applies correctly to the affected devices, and confirms the update with the customer.
Content delivery management applies to customers whose kiosk or signage deployments require regular content updates. The team manages the upload and scheduled delivery of content packages, confirms delivery completion across the device group, and flags any devices that did not receive an update for follow-up.
New device enrollment is handled by the Managed Services team as fleet growth or hardware refresh deployments occur. Pre-registration, configuration profile assignment, group placement, and enrollment verification are all managed operations. Devices arrive at deployment locations pre-configured, and the team confirms enrollment completion in the dashboard.
How Managed Services Differs from Self-Service MDM
The fundamental difference between Managed Services and self-service MDM is who operates the platform day to day. In self-service, the customer’s internal team uses Moki’s platform to manage their own fleet. In Managed Services, Moki’s team operates the platform on the customer’s behalf, with the customer maintaining visibility and control through reporting and regular communication rather than direct daily platform operation.
This difference has several practical implications:
Monitoring coverage is the most operationally significant difference. A self-service customer’s monitoring coverage is limited to the hours when their internal team is actively checking the dashboard or awake to receive alert notifications. For a device fleet that operates 18 hours a day, seven days a week, self-service monitoring creates windows of uncovered time where device issues can go undetected. Managed Services provides continuous monitoring coverage aligned to the fleet’s operational schedule, ensuring that a device that goes offline at 7 PM on a Saturday is identified and addressed rather than discovered when staff arrive on Monday.
Response time and expertise are the second significant difference. A self-service customer responds to alerts with whatever internal staff capacity and platform expertise is available at the moment. A Managed Services customer responds to alerts through a team that is specifically trained on Moki’s platform, experienced in the device types and scenarios common to dedicated device deployments, and equipped with the remote access tools to act immediately.
Operational bandwidth is the third difference. Self-service MDM requires the customer’s team to allocate ongoing time to monitoring, update management, enrollment, and configuration maintenance. For organizations where device management is a secondary function competing for attention with other IT priorities, this time allocation is inconsistently available and device management work gets deferred when other priorities arise. Managed Services provides a dedicated operational resource for device management that does not compete with other demands on the customer’s team.
What Self-Service MDM Is Right For
Managed Services is not the right model for every customer, and Moki’s platform is fully capable as a self-service tool for organizations with the internal capacity to operate it.
Self-service MDM works well when the internal IT team has dedicated capacity for device management as a defined function, when the fleet operates during hours that the internal team can cover, when the deployment is small enough that the ongoing management workload is manageable alongside other IT responsibilities, and when the organization has or is building specific platform expertise.
Organizations that are scaling their fleet rapidly, that operate fleets with extended hours beyond normal business coverage, that have lean IT teams managing large device counts, or that are deploying for the first time without existing platform expertise are the strongest candidates for Managed Services.
The Transition Between Models
One of the practical advantages of Moki’s Managed Services model is that it is not a permanent commitment. Organizations that start with Managed Services during an initial deployment while building internal capability can transition to self-service when the team is ready. Organizations that start with self-service and find that their fleet has grown beyond their internal management capacity can add Managed Services without changing platforms.
The Moki platform is the same in both models. The difference is who operates it, and that can change as the organization’s needs evolve.
Explore Moki’s Managed Services to understand the full scope of what the team provides, or schedule a demo to discuss which model fits your fleet size, internal capacity, and operational requirements. Contact Moki’s team to discuss a specific Managed Services engagement.