First published on CloudBlogs on Mar 09, 2017
I recently met with Nick McQuire from CCS Insights to see some of his new research on Enterprise Mobility.  I really encourage you to read the blog post . In the post, Nick describes the trends and changes he discovered in the data gathered from a survey of more than 400 mobile technology decision makers in the United Stated and Europe.  Two of the points in his report below stood out to me:

Acceleration of Windows 10 Deployment & the Convergence of PC and Mobile Device Management

The CCS research identifies the same trends we have been seeing in both the acceleration of Windows 10 adoption, as well as the convergence of the PC Management and Enterprise Mobility Management teams and strategies.  According to the survey:

• 86% of firms stated they would upgrade their Windows PCs to Windows 10 within 3-4 years.
• 47% of those orgs say they will upgrade in the next 12 months.
• 83% of the firms said they planned to converge their PC management and Enterprise Mobility management strategy and teams.
• 44% of firms say they planned to do this convergence within the next 12 months.

These figures match the same feedback we’re getting in just about every one of our customer conversations.  To give you a sense of what we see internally, here are some data points we’ve found in the telemetry that comes back to Microsoft from millions of devices around the world:

• We see a significant acceleration in the rate of Windows 10 deployments worldwide.
• I am tracking dramatic growth on a weekly and monthly basis that shows almost all of these new Windows 10 devices are deployed and managed through ConfigMgr and Intune.
• It’s not surprising to see that 99%+ of the Windows 10 devices reporting telemetry to Microsoft are being managed by ConfigMgr or Intune – with the majority of the Windows 10 devices being managed by ConfigMgr.
• Of the 85M monthly active users of Office 365, over 95% of the cloud identities are being managed by Azure Active Directory (Premium). If you are using something else as your IDP, you are built on a configuration that is not widely used.  You can massively simplify if you move to just use what comes from Microsoft.
• Our most recent quarterly earnings revealed that EMS grew more than 135% over the previous quarter- a staggering 400% faster than the nearest EMM provider .
• We now have the largest EMM customer base with more than 41k unique customers – which is 200% - 300% larger than other EMM providers.
• The Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS) suite from Microsoft is the largest Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) and Identity as a Service (IDaaS) solution in the market.

Leading enterprise organizations are successfully converging their PC management and EMM strategies with ConfigMgr and EMS, and we have built an integrated solution that enables your Active Directory and ConfigMgr investments, as well as your organization’s expertise, to be easily extended to managing mobile devices, cloud identities, and the SaaS apps your employees are using. If you're defining and implementing your go-forward strategy for bringing together your PC management, Enterprise Mobility management, and Identity protection/management strategies, I am convinced the solution will most likely be based on AD/ConfigMgr + EMS.

SaaS apps are the most used apps on mobile devices

Another part of the CCS research that I found really interesting was this data about the most commonly used apps on employees' mobile devices: See any patterns? Here is another view of this same list categorized by regular, occasional, and rare usage.

As I was looking over these two tables, two big things jumped out to me:

• The most commonly used apps are predominately SaaS apps. It really is a mobile-first, cloud-first world!!
• EMS has the most comprehensive solution for managing the most-used apps.

EMS has integrated with all of the SaaS apps noted above to provide a great single-sign-on experience for users, as well as give IT the ability to bring these SaaS apps under management ( here’s how to get it up and running).  With each of these SaaS apps, EMS offers the ability to provide real-time conditional access (block/allow) based on risks associated with the user identity , the device being used, the app being used, and the physical location of the user/device.  One of the most important things that we provide for each of these SaaS apps is the ability to identify user accounts exhibiting suspicious behaviors (indicating a compromised user account) while attempting to access corporate content.  The conditional access capabilities within EMS protects this access to company data in the SaaS services. You also need the ability to protect the data when it is accessed and stored on mobile devices.  The concept here is pretty well understood, e.g. you need to separate company data from personal data and apply data loss prevention policies to the company data (while staying away from that personal data).  This is usually referred to as Mobile Application Management, containers, application configuration, etc.  Looking at the lists above, EMS has the broadest support and depth of management for the apps associated with these services. EMS provides the broadest and most comprehensive solution for managing, protecting, and securing company data in these SaaS apps while at the same time providing a wonderful and empowering experience for your users. Perhaps my favorite statement from the CCS research is the following:

“A hot question I hear often from IT leaders is "Who's winning in this market?" Over the past 12 months, judging by our survey, the answer is Microsoft. Propelled by a big year in security, cloud, productivity apps and the positivity surrounding Windows 10, Microsoft has grown its brand credibility significantly, especially against Apple.”

We are humbled by the incredible excitement and interest we're seeing in the work we’ve done with Windows 10, ConfigMgr, and EMS.  As we continue building and delivering these services, one of the things that I'm most pleased about is the feedback from those who are benefitting from how different Microsoft is today compared to just a couple years ago.  It is very rewarding to hear that our efforts to listen to customers – and to adjust what we’re delivering based on those needs – is making a difference.  This emphasis on agility and customer-centricity is really exciting to see in action.