When I demoed some of the first releases of Windows Intune way back when, I laughed. In the early days, Windows Intune was limited in scope and very basic. At the time, I'm not even sure Microsoft really understood what it wanted to do with the service. After a few personnel adjustments, putting the right people on the Windows Intune team, and renewing focus on development, Windows Intune has become a formidable competitor in the endpoint management market – and, I'm not laughing anymore.
Windows Intune has become so good and so feature rich, in fact, that many long-time System Center Configuration Manager admins have become a bit confused about Microsoft's true focus. Configuration Manager continues to deliver a lot of revenue for Microsoft, but is still an on-premises solution which is contrary to Microsoft's current Cloud-based direction. We'll see a new version of Configuration Manager show up in a Technical Preview in early 2015, but that doesn't soften the fact that while Windows Intune capabilities have grown, Configuration Manager's new feature development has become stagnate. From what I've heard from sources, the Technical Preview is intended to show Configuration Manager customers that the focus is, indeed, still there and they will be pleased with the future of the product.
Windows 10 is, of course, the big news of the week. During Microsoft's presentation in San Francisco on Tuesday, it was stated that management for Windows 10 (when released publicly, possibly in late summer) will utilize MDM (or EMM) as the primary management system for all devices (PCs, laptops, and IoT). Microsoft's MDM solution is Windows Intune. Currently, Microsoft provides a small conduit between Configuration Manager and Windows Intune (on-premises to the Cloud) that allows customers to utilize device management (Windows RT, iOS, Android, and Windows Phone) in their Configuration Manager implementations. But, with Windows 10 being developed to be a MDM managed platform, it seems Windows Intune may continue to be the showcase – and even more so in the future.
So, if you intend on rolling out Windows 10 throughout your company, you'll definitely want to educate yourself on the virtues of Windows Intune. Of course, we'll offer a big focus on Windows Intune here on Windows IT Pro, but you'll also want to link to and grab the RSS feed for the new Windows Intune blog that Microsoft just christened.
The new blog is here: Windows Intune Blog
Here's the RSS feed: Windows Intune Blog RSS
