Microsoft introduces its new Intune Suite to help businesses improve their security and employee experiences

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Summary

Microsoft has unveiled enhancements and a new licensing structure for its popular Intune digital workspace management (DWM)/unified endpoint management (UEM) solution. The new suite builds on the foundational capabilities that have helped make Intune a market leader. The revamped proposition will help businesses strengthen device management and security, improve employee experiences, and potentially help enterprises to reduce infrastructure costs related to enabling a more mobile-first workforce. Omdia also believes that Microsoft’s introduction of a revamped Intune licensing model and product development strategy will give rise to some new competitive dynamics in the UEM/DWM space.

Digital workspace management capabilities have become an important hybrid work infrastructure component

Work is now more mobile than ever, causing organizations to rethink how they develop their technology infrastructure to support the modern working environment. Employees are increasingly working from a diverse range of locations and across a wide range of different devices and applications (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Employees are embracing a diverse mix of work styles Source: Omdia, IT Enterprise Insights

Recent changes to how we work have heightened businesses’ interest in and prioritization of a more unified endpoint management approach supported by tools such as Microsoft Intune. Businesses are now looking to these tools to help strengthen device management and security across diverse endpoint estates and to better ensure that employees are supported to work productively from wherever they are located. “UEM” is the traditional and widely recognized term associated with the DWM product category. However, the reality is that these solutions now offer so much more than just endpoint management capabilities. UEM solutions have undergone an interesting evolution, especially since 2020. Vendors in this category continue to expand their solutions to deliver capabilities that move well beyond the endpoint management foundation. The growing interest in and importance of DWM and UEM platforms, such as Intune, inevitably leads to greater vendor investment to bring new features that help improve employee experiences and support businesses in better securing and enabling a more diverse set of work styles.

Microsoft continues to experience great success with its DWM/UEM solution

In recent years, Microsoft has experienced significant success with its endpoint management and security solution, Intune. Omdia recently recognized the solution as a leader in the UEM/DWM product category. Microsoft also reports more than 60% growth of users and devices within the Intune service over the last twelve months, with the platform now boasting over 150 million protected users and devices. The Intune platform helps businesses better manage and secure a more mobile-centric and flexible workforce, which has become increasingly important for organizations in recent years. Better converging mobile and traditional desktop management and security via the cloud is at the core of the Intune value proposition. Simplifying and unifying how devices, applications, networks, and digital identities are managed and secured is vital in helping businesses reduce costs, strengthen security, and improve employee experiences.

Introducing the new Microsoft Intune Suite

Microsoft recently announced its new Intune Suite which includes a range of new capabilities to enhance the solution’s overall value proposition. These enhancements include:

• Endpoint privilege management: Helps businesses mitigate endpoint risks and strengthen overall security by making sure only approved, secure software can be installed on any endpoint. EPM helps assess the risk of the apps or changes being made by users and requiring admin approval when necessary. Key insights, such as documenting all policy changes, are also available, benefiting auditing activities.
• Remote help: Supports employees with remote, cloud-based support capabilities and remote assistance that easily integrate with the Intune Suite. In addition to device-specific issue reporting, this capability can also integrate with ServiceNow to further contextualize incidents.
• Microsoft Tunnel for mobile app management: Permits organizations to securely enable devices that employees use but are not managed by the business (for organizations with bring your own device policies, for example) by providing access to important work data and resources.
• Advanced app management: Provides businesses with a catalog of “off-the-shelf” apps and eliminates the need for IT administrators to package these apps. These packaged apps can then easily be updated from the catalog.
• Advanced endpoint analytics: Using different device signals, this helps IT teams proactively detect device anomalies and issues (such as application crashes and blue screens) that negatively impact employee experiences. The custom device scope feature also enables IT teams to segment endpoint data and insights. For example, IT support can view issues with devices only adopted by an HR team or deployed in a particular country or region.

It is not surprising that Microsoft has decided to offer these new enhancements now, particularly as businesses are increasingly looking toward UEM/DWM solutions not only to help manage and secure their more flexible workforces but to also play an important role in improving digital employee experiences. Business interest and traction around DWM/UEM solutions are high, with Omdia forecasting the market to be worth $8.5bn by 2026 (Omdia Unified Endpoint Management Market Size and Forecast – Update 2022). This justifies the additional development resources and investment that Microsoft has committed to enhancing its overall offering in this space.

Intune’s revised licensing structure

By offering all these solutions via a single suite, Microsoft wants to deliver a proposition that meets evolving customer needs by consolidating all the capabilities that are often found across multiple product categories into one platform, beyond UEM. More specifically, enhancements such as remote help and advanced endpoint analytics will move Microsoft more directly into the digital employee experience (DEX) management space. When complemented with its Viva capabilities, Microsoft will offer an attractive set of employee experience (EX) features combined with UEM that can help businesses manage the important technical and more sentiment-based EX elements.

The new Intune Suite is now one of the three licensing tiers that Microsoft offers. Intune Plan 1 is the foundation for this broader proposition and offers the basic Intune capabilities that have traditionally been available (see Table 1).

Table 1: Microsoft Intune license tiers

Much of Intune’s appeal over recent years has undoubtedly been how the solution has been bundled as part of Microsoft Enterprise, Education, and Government licensing. Effectively, these organizations can adopt Intune at no additional cost, and this has significantly contributed to Microsoft’s success in this space over the past few years. This appeal remains by way of the Intune Plan 1, with the Intune Suite and Intune Plan 2 tiers being made available for businesses that wish to extend their adoption with additional solutions. The argument from some existing customers here will be that Microsoft is charging more on top of the “all-in” enterprise licenses in which many organizations have already invested. These existing E3 and E5 customers may respond to this new release with a view that these additional features should be included at no additional cost to what they already pay. This licensing and feature set variance—coupled with the premium Intune Suite cost being quite close to other well-established DWM/UEM solutions—will potentially open up a new competitive dynamic in this category. Competing UEM/DWM vendors will look to highlight and compare the total cost of ownership (TCO) of their solutions, offering comparable features to Microsoft’s new premium offering, especially considering that the premium Intune Suite will be the company’s primary focus for major product updates and enhancements going forward. It will be important for Microsoft to educate the market about any licensing complexities and communicate the added value being delivered by these new solutions, both in monetary and operational efficiency terms. It will need to move UEM/DWM conversations away from overly technical discussions, instead closely tying Intune to the future of work and businesses’ workplace transformation needs.

For businesses that have already invested in a Microsoft license (inclusive of Intune Plan 1), Omdia believes the Microsoft Intune suite represents compelling value. The additional features offered via the Intune Suite would traditionally have required businesses to invest in additional third-party solutions and a dual vendor approach with different licensing models (per-user, per-device, per-agent, for example). The integration and administration challenges associated with adopting and using a more diverse set of end-user computing solutions are also key factors for businesses to consider. Moreover, it is important to note that Microsoft will make the advanced solutions introduced as part of the new Intune Suite available separately. The cost of each advanced feature adopted separately equates to $17 per user, per month.

Appendix

Further reading

Asia & Oceania Future of Work Survey: 2023 Insights and Recommendations (January 2023)

Omdia Universe: Digital Workspace Management / Unified Endpoint Management Platforms, 2023 (December 2022)

Omdia’s 2022 Future of Work Survey (January 2023)

Unified Endpoint Management Market Size and Forecast – Update 2022 (September 2022)

Future of Work 2022: Hybrid Work Insights (July 2022)

Author

Adam Holtby, Principal Analyst, Workplace Transformation

askananalyst@omdia.com