Intune Journey to Market Leader.jpg

 



“Intune has dominated the UEM category this year, to the point that we expect Gartner may need to change the criteria in 2021”

Intune has recently been named as a category leader for Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) by Gartner. In fact, Intune has dominated the UEM category in 2020, to the point that we expect Gartner will likely need to change the criteria in 2021 or they won’t have anything to talk about.

We thought it would be interesting to look back at the development of Microsoft Intune and its rise to market leader.

Figure 1 - Google Trends results for "Microsoft Intune"

Milestones

Here are a few key highlights as a timeline.

2011 – Debuted as Windows Intune – a service portal on top of the Microsoft Malware protection engine, releases were called ‘Intune waves.’ Windows Intune, when it debuted in 2011, was a PC-management and security service as opposed to a PC and device management service.

2013 – Introduced Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) across PCs and smartphones as a ‘single place to manage PCs and devices.’ Intune also started using Azure Active Directory.

2014 – Name change from Windows Intune to Microsoft Intune. Added managed Office applications, referred to as Mobile Application Management (MAM) and the ability to configure email profiles.

2015 – Support for Mac OS X management added to Intune.

2017 – Intune management via Azure Portal becomes available

2019Microsoft Endpoint Manager (ConfigMgr + Intune) is introduced and creates co-management of Windows 10 devices. Devices can be enrolled to Intune via System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM).

2020Tenant Attach – manage Windows 10 via SCCM with benefits of cloud.

 

Picking up the Pace

We thought it might be fun to show the frequency of development Microsoft is pouring into Intune as well. In the video below we are showing the release notes for Microsoft Intune for 2020. All the updates below are from this year only.

26 releases between 10-Feb-2020 and 31-Aug-2020. Each release has multiple updates.

That’s more than two releases per month.

Crazy, Right?

https://player.vimeo.com/video/454545750

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“There were 65 new features in the last Intune bi-weekly update. I don’t know how I am going to keep up.”

— Scott Schwarze: IT Security Engineer, UT Medical Center

 

What’s Next?

Intune is a core part of Microsoft’s modern workplace platform and its ability to enable remote device management brings a necessary and valuable capability to businesses of all types.

We expect widespread adoption of Microsoft Intune over the next year or two. For most businesses this is really now a question of ‘When’ not ‘If.’ Given the dominance of Microsoft 365 as a productivity platform, Microsoft’s focus on zero-trust security, the move to cloud, and Intune’s maturity across all operating systems, we expect to see a wave of adoption in the coming months.

By far the most common category will be SCCM to Intune migrations. There is already moving in this space and Microsoft is releasing new features in Intune to allow for analysis of on-premise GPOs (currently in preview).

We’re looking forward to the continued brisk pace of development and we hope you are too.

 


 

Want to talk about Intune?

If you’re interested in exploring Intune, we have many services available.  From how to get started, to implementing, and supporting you if you choose to do it yourself. We’re a Microsoft Gold Partner and our engineers are certified by Microsoft, Apple, and Google. We are MDM experts.

Microsoft Intune is a part of Microsoft Endpoint Manager and provides the cloud infrastructure, the cloud-based mobile device management (MDM), cloud-based mobile application management (MAM), and cloud-based PC management for your company.

If you’d like a free consultation to speak with one of our engineers, contact us.