Open Source Device Management for the Modern Era with Fleet ‘s Mike McNeil

Hey everyone. Welcome back here to techron tv. I'm really happy to introduce you to another first time guest here with us today.

He is the CEO of Fleet device management, or fleet as they call it. His name is Mike McNeil. He's the CEO.

Hey Mike, welcome to Textron tv. How are you, Ben? Hey, Alan.

I'm good. Glad to be here. Good.

So Mike, I guess we should start off with, with you, that's a good place to start. How, how did you get to be CEO at, at, uh, fleet and give us a little bit of your journey. Yeah, so I came from, in 2013, I built this open source framework, um, and it was got real popular, kind of rose with no js.

Um, got me into Y Combinator and into the world of, of startups. And, uh, along that journey I met this guy, Sid. Uh, and turns out, you know, this was in 2015 is when I met him.

He, uh, I sold him my office furniture and, uh, a few years later, it turns out he's the CEO of GitLab, right? Um, which is now a, you know, multi-billion dollar company. The dude was about to go IPO, um, and he came to me and was like, Hey, uh, I wanna start a company.

Have you ever heard of OAS query? Um, and I, no, the answer was no. I started looking into it and it looked a lot, kinda like what I had built, uh, when I was working on this open source framework because it was sql, right?

It would spit SQL statements at computers and then the computers would tell you like, here's the processes that are running and here's the apps I have installed. And you could join those all together and, um, really solve a lot of problems. 'cause you're not doing something specific for Mac and Windows and Linux anymore.

You have kind of a unified language. Um, and I got excited about it. I was like, man, this has a lot of potential.

Um, so in 2020 we started Fleet device management with the, the aim of taking that tech, which my co-founder Zach built, um, back at Facebook, back when it was called Facebook. And, uh, and we really said to work it, okay, what do we need to do to build the best MDM um, out there that's gonna kind of be open source, top to bottom and take care of all the stuff you expect from an MDM, like remote lock and remote wipe and installing apps and controlling profiles on computers and all that stuff. Got it.

Um, so it turns out Sid's actually a friend of mine too, that, and of course you're talking about Sid, Sid ndi, who is the founder. I think he's now chairman of GitLab, not day-to-day, CEO, right? Um, and then of, of course GitLab has iPod and it is, you know, a multi-billion dollar one that pillars in the DevOps space.

But, um, you know, Mike, the, the, the, the device management space, it's something I was sort of tangentially involved with back, you know, before I was doing media stuff. I was a co-founder of startups too, and we, we did a, uh, one of the companies I did was a security company called Still Secure, and we did something called nac, network Access Control. And, and part of that was the device management coming, but out for us, the choke point was when devices came on the network, right?

Then we could make sure that your device sorta had the, you know, the golden config, if you will, where, and you know, obviously different ones. And then we would then assign devices to specific network access based upon who the user was, what kind of device it was. And, you know, other policies.

So I'm, I'm little bit, a little bit familiar and, you know, we would also check the device to see what did it have forbidden applications was what ports were open and all kinds of security settings. But that's been kind of the state of the art. So that, I'll tell you the truth, Mike, that was in 2005, Right?

We, we came up with, with what we called safe access, uh, that was the state of the art 2005 to let's say 2007, 2008. Here we are in 2025, what is, what is mobile, or not just mobile device, but what is device management about today? That wasn't the case back then.

I mean the, it's funny 'cause a lot of the same use cases are pretty much exactly the same, right? It is just that the, the infrastructure has kind of changed out from under us. Like the network is still important.

Um, mostly for us nowadays, it comes up for VPN access and wifi access, right? Getting the right certificates on the computers, um, to, to enable that and really making an, an employee's first day as perfect as you can, right? If you get it perfect, maybe it'll be 80% of the way there, right?

In, in practice. Um, but I think that, you know, you can't really rely on an employee being in the network at your office. And even if you think about modern offices with open floor plans, like you've got people connecting to wifi all over the place.

You've got people that go out to lunch and bring their laptop with them. You've got people that work from home, um, and, you know, people throw around the, the zero trust idea, right? And no matter where you are in that, on that journey, um, at the end of the day, you've gotta support computers that are not necessarily on your network these days.

But meanwhile, you've gotta do all the same things that you did before with your identity provider, right? Like, you still need to have, you know, Val's joining. Um, he doesn't need to get a bunch of apps that are irrelevant for his job.

Um, right? Like, so we either need to install a lightweight set of apps, or we need to go connect with the IDP and install the right apps on the right people's computers, um, out of the box and obviously need to make sure they're patched, make sure that they're, the computer has a local HTDP server turned off. Um, if you have compliance standards, you gotta meet.

Um, really the, the simplest way to think about it is you've got a bunch of different use cases that people take these devices and, and run with, right? You've got corporate laptops, you've got, uh, kiosks inside of office buildings, you've got VDIs that some people are using to connect and, and, uh, over the browser and the list kind of goes on and on, you know, bring BYOD, like employee smartphones, you bring to work, you still wanna get to your email on it, um, all the way to production lines and, and all these different devices. At the end of the day, you need to be able to provision them like set up, uh, you need to be able to control them, like harden them, do governance, implement controls.

You need to run audits, you gotta do support as well, right? That's always been a thing. But these days, with the amount of patching that's going on, it is just a massive amount of, uh, patching you need to do.

And there's a bunch of edge cases that pop up. Um, you gotta perform maintenance when the, when the battery life goes bad on a laptop and, and really most of the time you just refresh it and just send 'em a new one. Um, and then you gotta recycle it, right?

And manage the assets. Um, some companies care more than others about the CapEx, but being able to track, you know, and at least whether it's in ServiceNow or in a spreadsheet, um, where all the computers are, so that finance has an idea of that. That's, that's all part of the picture too.

So the bigger you are, the more complicated it gets. No, no doubt about that. No doubt about that.

You know what, I think also one of the bigger changes, Mike, from back then and now is the acceptance of open source, of open standards open. You know, and this is something you've been involved in, it's something quite frankly, Sid built GitLab, right? You know, I, you know, when we did the NAC thing back in the, in the early two thousands, there were a lot of enterprises who had a no open source policy, right?

Because they, they, there was no throat to choke, there was no, uh, you know, you, you can, maybe you could get like, uh, support or training, but you know, they, it was, it was too squishy for them. Where, where now we live in a world where open source is, is dominant, right? How, how has the dominance of open source sort of played into the whole device management game?

There's, there's actually probably gonna be a few answers there. 'cause it touches almost everything in our worlds now, right? Like you, uh, especially if you have engineers on your team, like they're installing open source stuff on their computer, it is its own sort of, uh, I don't wanna call it shadow it.

'cause a lot of times it's, it's just expected. It's a part of the job of being a developer, right? Um, the shadows, right?

It's definitely in the shadow. So, yeah. Right.

And then you've got people running, you know, AI tools at this point as well. And, um, you've got, uh, just, I just spoke with someone from, uh, rippling actually, and they have, uh, something like three or four different AI agents they provide every, every, uh, every employee with, and some of those are open source, some of them aren't. It kind of is starting to matter less, right?

Which is the beauty. Um, I think SUD and I both share a vision of a world where a lot of the software we run is open source, um, which doesn't mean it can't be commercial, right? Um, as much as I like Richard Stallman and, and the Canoe Project, I think it's, you know, it's more nuanced than that.

And there's a lot of use cases, namely all commercial software that have, has the potential to be open source and kind of isn't. So when we, when we run Fleet, we really just run it like any other business, but we take everything we do and we put it on the open. Um, so whether that's our handbook, whether that's the actual source code for the agent running on your employee computers and on your own personal phone, right?

So is it, you know, is it capturing my text messages? Like, well now you can go look if you want, um, and you can actually see all of the code, um, you can see the server code, you can even see the code for paid features. Um, just like, just like GitLab.

Mm-hmm. Um, and I think a lot of it with the, you know, when you have traditional software that's closed, there's a temptation to do things right as you need to squeeze profits as you get a little bit bigger, um, to lock, lock things down, make it a little harder to integrate, maybe try to force people onto a higher tier to buy another plugin or skew. Um, and one thing about open source is it's all there.

Like you can kind of see all of that in the code. Um, you can see all of that in the issues. And so, uh, it kind of has a cleansing effect.

Um, it keeps everybody more well behaved. Um, and, you know, this is, this space. A lot of these solutions are getting pretty long in the tooth.

Um, they don't move terribly fast. A lot of them are owned by private equity, which, you know, has its own goals to extract as much profit as it can, right? Um, but that makes features slow to add.

Uh, and meanwhile you have some kind of competing incentives, right? You've got Microsoft Intune that obviously wants to prioritize Windows devices, right? You've got Jamf, which has this long lasting relationship with Apple, um, and, and other, and other tools out there as well.

Uh, and I think that just the, the thing that presents itself as an opportunity with open source is if you're an IT engineer in one of these places, you can kinda look yourself now and you can get a much clearer idea of exactly what an open source tool does, um, right outta the gate, right? Without having to even talk to sales. And that's new for this world.

No doubt. No doubt about it. No doubt about it.

Um, yeah, you mentioned Jamf, they looked, they did a heck of a job in the Mac market, right? They did. And build a great community, right?

Like, yeah, I always joke that I wanna buy Jamf in 2031. Well, who knows? Who knows?

You know, it's a great company though. It, it really is. They did it, they did a nice job in that.

But I mean, one of the one, I think one of the things about Open too is you, you'll never have to worry about being locked into a single platform, right? If it's open, you can take what you've done in Mac and maybe port it to Windows. It may not be easy, right?

No one, no one said it's easy, but it, it does help you kind of break those silos down. We, we, and when you're talking about device management, especially in today's world where device could mean laptop, desktop, iPad, phone, watch, glasses, I mean, you know, e everything today is connected, including the refrigerator. So, um, we, we, I think you need that sort of openness, if you will.

And I'm not just talking about open source even, but openness, open standards to kind of cover all those things. Totally. I mean, I imagine a world where, you know, if we have children, we have grandchildren, they're gonna be using new kinds of devices, they're gonna be interacting with robots, whether they're humanoid or not.

Like it's becoming inevitable, right? Physical ai, physical ai, Mike, that's the new name. That's the new name for the robots.

They're physical ai. Uh, but yeah, no, and sooner than you think, forget your children and grandchildren, you might have one by 2031. It's looking that way.

Yeah. And, and you gotta wonder like what is running on that thing, right? And in that world, how important is it to be able to remote lock one of these things?

Um, and more importantly, to see the code that's supposed to remote lock it and make sure it actually works. It's crazy. It's crazy.

Hey man, we're running low on time, but, um, fleet de Fleet device management, how do people get to the website? How do they reach out? How do they interact?

Yeah, so we're on GitHub if you're interested in contributing. And then, um, we recently raised a series B, uh, and we have a, you know, we have all the things you'd expect. com.

Um, you can read our handbook. We have our open positions listed there too. Um, and we're hiring.

Very cool. Hey Mike, thanks for coming on Textron tv. Say hello to Sid for me.

I haven't spoken to Sid in a couple years now. I bet. But tell him I said hi.

And best of luck with Fleet Device Management. Thanks, Alan. Thanks for having me on.

All right. Mike McNeil, fleet Fleet, fleet Device Management here on text tv. We're gonna take a break.

We'll be back.