Migration Done Right: How Two IT Teams Moved 1,800+ Devices to Kandji Without Breaking a Sweat

Picture this: You're staring at a spreadsheet with 1,100 devices that need to migrate to a new MDM platform. Your boss wants a timeline. Your users hate change. Your team is already stretched thin.

But what if migration didn't have to be that painful?

We recently sat down with two IT leaders who've been there, done that, and lived to tell the tale: Deepak Raikar, Senior Systems Engineer at 6sense, and Ali Oriqat, Senior Manager of IT Operations at Sumo Logic. Between them, they've migrated nearly 2,000 Apple devices to Kandji and neither took too long to do it.

Here's what they learned, what surprised them, and why they both said the same thing when asked what they'd do differently: "Start sooner."

Not because they needed more time, but because they wish they hadn't delayed out of fear of a process that turned out to be surprisingly simple.

The Problem: Everything Takes Forever (Or Does It?)

Ask any IT professional about MDM migrations, and you'll hear the same story: six-month timelines, all-hands-on-deck resource allocation, and user revolt. It's become accepted wisdom that platform migrations are inherently painful, slow affairs.

But what if that's just because we've been approaching them wrong?

Deepak's migration timeline shattered these assumptions:

"We were pretty aggressive with our migration timeline. We started in April of last year and had 99% of users migrated by the end of July."

Ali's experience was remarkably similar: "We began onboarding Kandji in July, and we were able to complete the migration by around late September, early October."

Around four months each. Not six. Not twelve. And both admitted they could have moved even faster.

The Resource Myth: You Don't Need an Army

The second assumption that fell apart? The idea that major migrations require massive team involvement.

Deepak handled all the Kandji configuration himself: "For the configuration of Kandji, it was just me. I created all the blueprints. I set us up for success, I would like to think." His end-user support team only stepped in for the final migration steps.

Ali's global operation ran with just four people total.

The key insight? Most migration complexity comes from the platform, not the process. When the MDM is intuitive to configure and the user experience is seamless, you don't need armies of people managing exceptions, troubleshooting deployments, or hand-holding users through complicated workflows.

Ali highlighted how Kandji's interface enabled this efficiency:

"Because of how easy and intuitive the interface was, we were able to maximize the output of the deployment across all our users in the minimum amount of time."

This wasn't about cutting corners or accepting lower quality - it was about the platform doing the heavy lifting. As Deepak noted, he didn't have to "worry about agents disconnecting at some random moment" or constantly troubleshoot deployment issues that would typically require additional team members to manage.

Communication is the Not-So -Secret Ingredient

Of course, having fewer moving parts means the parts you do have need to work perfectly. For both teams, that critical piece was communication.

Ali's team faced the classic problem: users who didn't want to restart their computers during work hours. The solution wasn't technical, it was tactical: "We were able to implement a more phased approach based on the region as well as determine what times were most convenient for most of our users."

Ali also had to tackle an even more fundamental challenge: explaining why they needed an MDM at all. "I think the biggest thing was just communicating with our users about the why... and gaining the users' trust that we're trying to emphasize security while also maintaining privacy."

The solution was easier than finding the perfect deployment tool or configuration - it's about meeting users where they are and addressing their actual concerns.

When Things Don't Go According to Plan

Even the best-planned migrations hit snags. Deepak encountered an authentication issue that could have derailed everything: "When our users were migrating, they had to authenticate with Okta and they couldn't authenticate because we removed our old MDM, which removed our antivirus temporarily."

At 6sense, device trust requires antivirus to be installed. The migration process temporarily removed the old antivirus before installing the new one, breaking the authentication chain. Users couldn't log in. The migration stalled.

This is exactly the kind of environment-specific issue that's impossible to predict but critical to solve quickly. Working directly with Kandji's solutions engineering team, Deepak developed a workaround that maintained security requirements while allowing the migration to proceed.

"The general Kandji support is one of the best supports I've ever interacted with, with any company," Deepak said. Ali echoed saying: "Kandji was with us every step of the way."

This isn't just about vendor selection - it's about recognizing that migrations succeed or fail based on how quickly you can solve unexpected problems, not on avoiding them entirely.

The Real Success Metric is Invisibility 

Ask Deepak and Ali about their post-migration experience, and you get an interesting answer: the best part is not thinking about it.

"I always say this is not always a true indicator of how good a product is, but for me, it's the less time I spend in a portal, the better," Deepak explained. "I don't have to worry about being in Kandji or troubleshoot any issues."

This reveals something important about how we should measure migration success. It's not about feature adoption or configuration complexity. It's about whether the solution disappears into the background and lets your team focus on other priorities.

The End-User Perspective: From Resistance to Routine

Both teams dealt with initial user pushback, especially around managed updates and new security policies. At 6sense, users weren't accustomed to any management at all: "Previously we weren't deploying OS updates or app updates. We weren't really deploying anything at all."

But the intuitive user experience quickly won people over: "Once they realize how easy it is - you see this timer, you could delay it however much you want until a certain amount of time - that experience being easy makes it better for them."

Ali's team focused on minimizing disruptions while still maintaining security: "The biggest thing was just trying to minimize disruptions in terms of notifications... and not having to enforce updates in the middle of a workday."

The result? As Deepak put it, stakeholders "are more impressed with how much they don't think about it... It's working, it just does what it does."

What They'd Do Differently: "Start Sooner"

When asked what they'd do differently, both IT leaders had the same answer: nothing, except starting sooner.

Their advice to others considering migration?

Deepak: "Be confident with your migration. It's very easy to think, 'I have to migrate a thousand devices, I'm going to do a slow rollout.' But specifically for Kandji, I would say be aggressive with it. Don't drag it out."

Ali: "Trust the platform and trust the team at Kandji to empower you with the tools and support that you need to fulfill your mission and vision."

The Bottom Line

These aren't stories about perfect migrations - they're stories about what happens when you question the conventional wisdom around how migrations have to work.

Small teams can move fast. Users adapt quickly when the experience is intuitive. Problems are solvable when you have the right support. And three months is plenty of time when you're not fighting the platform every step of the way.

The next time someone tells you that MDM migrations are inherently painful, six-month affairs, remember these stories. Sometimes the biggest barrier to success is simply believing it's possible.

Want to hear the full conversation with Deepak, Ali, and Kandji's Solutions Engineering Team? Watch the complete customer panel recording - available on Kandji's YouTube channel.