Clear & Simple Guidance: When ConfigMgr and Intune should be used with Windows 10

First published on CloudBlogs on Mar 23, 2016
Earlier this morning, the engineering teams from Windows and my Enterprise Client Management org co-authored a blog post titled “ The Path to Modernizing Windows Management ” about how to deploy and manage Windows.  I really recommend you go check it out . One of the questions I get asked a lot is, “Now that I’m deploying Windows 10, when should I use ConfigMgr and the traditional management processes, and when should you use Intune and the lighter-touch management model?” This is a really important question , and the reality is that most enterprise organizations will be using both – and this fact is yet another reason why the integrated scenario we’ve delivered with ConfigMgr and Intune is so important. Previously, we haven’t really been as clear as we needed to be about when each approach should be used, as well as the reality that most organizations will want to run both.  Our long-term vision, as articulated in this post , is to continually make the light-touch MDM approach increasingly rich.  Our goal has been to give really clear and simple guidance that empowers your efforts to design your Windows 10 deployment. As an engineer, one of the things I love about today’s post are the flow charts that quickly give you simple and clear guidance. The big takeaway from this post is the incredibly deep integration between Windows, ConfigMgr, and EMS.  The biggest benefit this integrated solution offers to IT is interoperability .  Of all the solutions built by the different management vendors, only ConfigMgr and EMS have been built right alongside Windows.  They work together seamlessly, your infrastructure avoids fragmentation, and you have the ability to scale your control from the lightest scenario-based management to deeply granular control. To put the depth of this integration in perspective:  As the core scenarios were being defined for Windows 10 a couple of years ago the scenarios were captured and designed by a combination of the Windows engineers and my engineering teams – and then we engineered them together . This level of built-in compatibility required and unbelievable amount of work, and the result is unmatched anywhere else.  This hard work has a huge payoff for our customers – and that is really exciting for our engineers. Today’s post digs in on these topics:

• Deployment & Provisioning
• Identity & Authentication
• Settings & Configuration
• Updating Windows devices

Another important point made in the post is that the work we’ve done to make our management tools comprehensive allows you to choose how to address the various needs of your organization – there’s no one-size-fits-all method you have to use.  Instead, with the way we’ve built Windows/ConfigMgr/EMS, you can account for different use cases in your environment.

Are there groups of devices that could benefit from lighter, simplified management? BYOD devices, for example, are natural candidates for cloud management. Users or devices handling more highly regulated data might require on-premises AD Domain Join for authentication. Configuration Manager and EMS provide you the flexibility to stage implementation of modern management scenarios while targeting different devices the way that best suits your business needs. The choice is yours .

That’s what makes it such an exciting time to be building and using these tools:  You are put in a position to choose what’s best for your organization, for your team, and for your career. Check out the full post here . And one final note: Today’s post is a perfect example of the huge changes that have happened here in Redmond over the last couple years.  The level of integrated scenarios and “interconnectedness” across our products and services is one of the things I love most about the “new” Microsoft.  You can (and should!) expect the depth and richness of “interconnectedness” across Microsoft to only increase and get even better.  This will enable you to get deployed and use the end-to-end scenarios you want and need faster than ever before – and with more complete scenarios than ever before. I absolutely love what we are doing – and I can tell you that we’re more focused than even before on how we improve the lives of our customers and enable you to achieve more!