More Great Updates to Intune – Right Now!

First published on CloudBlogs on Feb 06, 2015
We’ve just kicked off the latest update to the Intune service and the updates will be rolling around the world over the next couple of days! It is so great to see the team get onto a cadence where we are able to deliver value to all of you so rapidly and so often.  [you check out the prior wave of updates here .] I wrote a few months ago about how one of the biggest changes we drove in our architecture last year was moving Intune onto our Azure public cloud platform and writing it as a modern cloud SaaS service. What’s even more exciting are the changes we are continuing to make in our tools, processes, and culture. These latter changes will further accelerate our ability to deliver more value even faster. The Intune team has already posted about the new capabilities being deployed today, and I want to highlight a couple:

• Management of Office mobile apps (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) for Android devices This includes the ability to restrict actions such as copy/cut/paste outside of the managed app ecosystem. We are also getting amazingly positive feedback on the manageability that is enabled with the Office mobile apps on iOS. The Android mobile apps that were released last week are all now deeply manageable with Intune. It’s also really important to point out that Intune is unique in the ability to manage the Office mobile apps on iOS and Android.
• Management of the OneNote app for iOS devices is now available Management of Office mobile apps (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) on iOS devices has been available since December 2014.
• Ability to browse and install apps on Windows Phone 8.1 devices using the Intune Company Portal website
• Deployment of WiFi profiles for Windows devices This can now be done using XML import and Windows Phone devices using OMA-URI (deployment of WiFi profiles currently supported for iOS and Android devices).
• Support for Cisco AnyConnect per-app VPN configurations for iOS devices
• Ability to require encryption on Windows 8.1 (x86) devices
• Ability to set minimum classification of platform updates to be installed automatically on Windows 8.1 (x86) devices

Additionally, you can expect conditional access capabilities for SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business to be made available over the next few weeks. I think the conditional access capabilities we have built across Azure Active Directory, Intune, and the Office apps will be among the most intriguing and valuable capabilities we are delivering. The concept here is to allow access to apps, e-mail, data – but only when the device meets a specific set of criteria. When you combine these awesome features with the multi-factor authentication capabilities of EMS, you have a significantly stronger defense against the cyber-attacks we’re reading about so often. This has been another fantastic month of delivering value to our customers! Thank you enabling us to partner with you in your businesses!