How a Remote Security Team Closed its MDM Testing Gap with AstroFarm
A cybersecurity and mobility technology company gave a globally distributed team a single, shared pool of real, MDM-enrolled Android and iOS devices with live visibility into every device in use — powered by AstroFarm.
Business Overview
This case study focuses on a cybersecurity and mobility technology company whose products secure and manage mobile devices inside enterprise MDM environments. Validating those products means testing on devices that are already enrolled and actively managed — the exact hardware and policy state a real customer runs in production.
At a Glance
A private device farm gave the company something no public device farm could: real MDM-enrolled devices, shared across a fully remote team, with live visibility into every device in use.
The Challenge
The company builds mobile security software. That software has to work on devices already enrolled and managed by enterprise MDM platforms. Clean, unmanaged test units aren't good enough. Two things stood in the way:
- Public device farms don't support MDM-managed devices. Most public and cloud-based device farms only offer unenrolled, factory-state hardware. That's the one test condition they can't reproduce — and it's the whole point of this company's product.
- The team is globally distributed. There is no single place where a device sits for the next person. Devices were scattered wherever individual engineers happened to be, with no shared visibility into who had what.
The Solution
The company deployed AstroFarm, 42Gears' private device farm. It turned a scattered set of MDM-enrolled devices into one shared, remotely accessible pool for the whole global team.
Deployment: Devices stay physically distributed among engineers. AstroFarm connects them into a single virtual pool — so device ownership and device access are no longer the same thing.
What changed operationally:
- MDM-enrolled devices became shareable. Any engineer can reach any device enrolled under a specific MDM platform, no matter who physically holds it.
- Release testing runs on real integrations. Engineers validate MDM behavior on genuinely managed devices — not simulated ones.
- Live device monitoring replaced guesswork. With Fleet Monitor, engineers see real-time device status, active sessions, and screen previews before reserving a device — no more messaging around to ask "is anyone using this one?"
- Remote-first by design. With distributed teams, remote access isn't a workaround. It's how the whole setup works.
Results
- Closed a testing gap public farms couldn't fill. MDM-managed device testing became possible at all.
- Faster device pickup. Live monitoring shows device availability instantly, cutting the back-and-forth of finding a free device.
- Device access decoupled from location. Any engineer, anywhere, reaches any device in the pool.
- Consistent release validation. Testing no longer depends on who happens to be holding which device.
- No new infrastructure. Engineers keep their existing devices; AstroFarm makes them collectively accessible.
Why It Matters
For mobile security and enterprise mobility vendors, MDM-managed devices are the real test environment — not an edge case. A private device farm that shares real, enrolled devices across a distributed team — with live visibility into every device — closes a gap public farms structurally can't.
Try AstroFarm
Building software that has to work on managed devices? Test against real MDM-enrolled devices, shared securely across your whole team — wherever they're working from.
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