Microsoft Intune Reviews

We are VMware and Microsoft partners, so we offer services around their products.  

We are using Intune internally but we are leveraging it for our customers as well. That is a different story. One part of Intune is within our company, but we are also providing services around Intune and Workspace One for our customers.  

For us, Intune is on the public cloud. For our clients, it depends on the requirements and it varies from customer to customer. Some clients' requirements are deployed in private cloud mode or the hybrid setup. It depends. Requirements differ from industry to industry. If a company is BFSI (Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance), then they will be looking for a private cloud solution. If it is something which is not BFSI or maybe some industrial interest, they might go with the public cloud.  

In the end, most of our instances are in the public cloud unless there is some compliance requirement. Otherwise, the accounts are mostly in the public cloud to conform to regulations.  

Intune is used essentially to facilitate the ability of enterprise organizations to manage their endpoints. It is for end-user computing or UEM (Unified Endpoint Management) solutions.  

One of the major advantages of using Intune is for our ISO (International Organization for Standardization) certification. We have to meet requirements for ISO 27001 and 27002 and part of that is that we need to have a proper control mechanism for endpoints and the users who are using those endpoints. The other requirement is that we need to manage the workforce. We have to manage their time to understand how long they have been working, how long their device was on, when they were working, et cetera. So we use some other products that compliment Intune to gather the data on that.  

For example, we have something called Time Doctor. We use it to monitor how long people have been working. We get reports that detail how long their devices have been on. Then there are different ways we can leverage these results and statistics. For example, we can compare the uptime of the device and uptime of Time Doctor. With that, we can understand how long an employee was working on something, but how much more time the machine was up in addition to the work period. That shows the period of time that he or she was not using Time Doctor.  

The other thing is we can remotely access a device. For example, say we have to do some troubleshooting because a user is having an issue. We can remotely log in via Intune to troubleshoot the issue, as long as the device is accessible. Obviously, that can only happen if there is no issue with the internet and connectivity and services. But we can remotely access the device and troubleshoot the issue securely.  

Those are some of the different use cases.  

I guess in our company we are using most of the features in Intune. What we use it for is to control the endpoints. We publish some selected applications and the end-users are only able to download and install those applications. They are not allowed to install or use any other applications other than what we provide. We do compliance checking. We run assessments periodically on the endpoints using Intune, and Intune generates reports. Sometimes we need those reports to qualify for our ISO certifications.  

It is a similar thing for customers as well. There is a different requirement but it is a similar idea. For example, if we are engaged with an oil and gas company, they have back-office stations and point-of-sale solutions. In this case, those are Windows systems. What they used to do is they had to manage those solutions manually. They had a contract with some third party. The third-party would go on the sites if there was an issue or something, and maintenance and delivery were all manual. They did not have any EMS (Endpoint Management Solution) at all. The only thing they had was something called a radiant configuration management server. That was only used for configuration purposes, not for maintenance or other troubleshooting.  

The concern and the requirement over delivery was raised because of COVID. No one was able to go to the sites to do the troubleshooting, maintenance, and delivery. The only solution that they had was to engage with us to deploy these solutions on their endpoints. They did not all go with Intune, some went with Workspace One, which is also a UEM solution. So they wanted us to deploy UEM on AWS public cloud, then connect it, wire their MPLS (Multi-Protocol Label Switching) network to the end-point spots and box devices in order to manage them.  

The generic answer to what can be improved is that I hope that the reporting needs to be a bit more interactive.  

In our company, we have been using Intune for the past three years.  

I think Intune has been in the market for a long time now. That maturity makes it pretty much stable because it has been through so many iterations.  

Until now, we did not have any concern with respect to scalability within whatever we have done either for our organization or for our clients. We have done installations for bigger companies, for smaller workforces within bigger companies, but not for the larger endpoints. We do not know how well it scales in every direction and if scaling will cause any problems. We have not come across those things.  

In our organization, we probably have 250 to 300 people who are using the product. We will probably increase that usage in the future, but it depends. We were planning to introduce Microsoft ATP with Intune for advanced threat protection, which compliments the security part. Because Intune does not have advanced threat protection capabilities on its own this resolves that issue. There may be other considerations in the future that influence the importance of Intune to what we need it for and how we proceed.  

We are Microsoft partners and we have a different support model with Microsoft than a typical client will. We have not had any issues with our support team and they have worked well with us up to this point. We have a different channel than the partners who need to communicate with Microsoft another way.  

It is a tricky thing to answer exactly what I have used that either was prior to or a substitution for Intune. That depends on different things and factors. First of all, Workspace One is definitely highly scalable, that I know. Workspace One also has a lot of integration options wherein we can have a lot of peripheral tools. Workspace One actually started with only UEM, but it is now not limited to UEM only.  

Intune, is only a UEM. So Workspace One has one integration as UEM, but it has many other things. Apart from that, it has Workspace One Intelligence, it has Workspace One Assist, et cetera. There are four different parts that can be integrated with Workspace One and they can work together for a highly scalable, highly secure, and highly analytical solution.  

Microsoft also has solutions. It is just that they are different solutions implemented in a different way. For example, ATP (Advanced Threat Protection) Microsoft is for advanced threat protection. WAD is for virtual desktops. They do not have the same type of tight integrations as Workspace One. All of these Microsoft products work separately. In Workspace One, all the products compliment each other and all the products can be combined more like modules under Workspace One. They can push their findings to Workspace One Intelligence where all data intelligence can be done. Auto remediation can be done. We can get findings from VMware because now Workspace One security is there to make sure that this is secure under the umbrella. VMware Carbon Black is also the same in that it can send its findings to Workspace One Intelligence. So the integration is the part that is handled differently. Workspace One has many features. Microsoft also has those features. It is just that it is a different way to orchestrate. In Microsoft, it is not under one umbrella. In VMware, that is under one umbrella, which is Workspace One.  

The pros and cons are different because both approaches have their own advantages and disadvantages. Both have solutions for each of the functions. For example, each has advanced threat protection and all those capabilities. If you stay working with that family of solutions, you do not have a problem.  

Now say, for example, a company went with Workspace One because they wanted to leverage UEM. They adopted some other modules as well with it to create solutions for problems or needs that they want to solve. They have to have Workspace One for this solution and they can not work with it separately. That might be a cost factor because they can not work with one tool only, they have to make the license for two products because they do not work separately.  

For Microsoft, since the products are completely separate, customers can choose which one to go with and only use that. They can go with only one product, or they can add any of the others. They do not need to have the central component to bring them together.  

So that might be an advantage or disadvantage in using one product or the other depending on the use case.  

We did not experience any complexity in the initial deployment and there was no problem with the installation, I do not think. The complexity definitely depends on what you are trying to accomplish. I do not remember exactly because I do not directly deal with deployment anymore. I am actually leading it. We have a team that deploys the product. I do not look over their shoulder to know how much time it takes exactly and what factors it requires for successful deployment.  

We did the deployment by ourselves without the help of consultants or vendors, that I know. We are system integrators. We have the capabilities to do things for customers. We did it ourselves. The only thing is, we have a separate team for the Microsoft product installations. Especially for something like Microsoft Intune, we need to have a special expertise. Something called Microsoft Windows, virtual desktops, all of that needs someone to install it who is intimate with the application. Microsoft Azure is something that can be used for different Microsoft technologies and solutions. We have a different team that we will put on the implementation of these products depending on the requirements.  

The pricing for Microsoft Intune is reasonable. Our clients are satisfied.  

If someone is looking to have a more integrated result, they are looking for many other things like EDR (Enhanced Data Detection and Response). It is probably better to go with Workspace One because they have that under one banner. Obviously, if there is something under one banner, the integrations are simple, they are seamless, and they complement each other.  

I do not think I will have a good answer for what advice to give because technically I have not used Intune myself for some time now. I have a team that works under me for this. I am at an architect-level position now. My perspective reflects that.   

On a scale from one to ten (where one is the worst and ten is the best), I would rate Intune as an eight at least if you are only talking about a UEM solution. Personally, I am not very concerned about the reporting part, so I will consider it at eight. But if someone is looking for extensive reporting detail that is easy to understand. Interactive reporting that will give them better-tuned results, then obviously the rating might go down.  

The only thing which I see that can be done to raise this product from an eight is to package Intune as a product under one umbrella. If that were to happen, it covers the whole of end-user computing and security solutions.  

At the moment, these are two separate things when using Intune. There may be another way to accomplish this under the one umbrella if you go with Intune. For example, if there is an add-on within Intune to leverage containerized security, auto containment, and all those things. This would be a more flexible solution if that were the case. At the moment, Intune is not required to be installed as a client. As a client in the system, it can communicate with servers and do some auto containments, endpoint detection, and response. If there was a separate solution that could be added as a paid solution to create the umbrella, you have created both solutions simultaneously.  

The main reason this problem came into the picture was because of this COVID pandemic. IT teams and security teams do not go well together normally. There has to be one solution which can offer both. It can be for both IT architects, IT technical support, and security support. That is the solution that can be leveraged for both security and end-user computing. It is simple.  

The solution is deployed on cloud. I'm part of the support team. There's another server team that works closely with Microsoft. They purchased an old 365 license, and Intune was one of the included features. We wanted to take advantage of the feature because it was part of the package. That's why our top management decided to save some costs by making use of Intune and not using AirWatch anymore.

We are enrolling through the Intune company portal, and then we are using the Outlook app to configure the email addresses of the company.

We are using the mobile feature, and we are also using MDM to lock the devices, to push restrictions, et cetera. Compared with AirWatch, I think it's easier to manage the devices and the profiles in AirWatch. Intune has a lot of options, but I've only been playing around with it for a few months.

In the past, I raised some tickets for the enhancement feature, which was missing in Intune. It can take a long time for these features to appear, or maybe they will just never happen.

There are certain things that I'm trying to replicate from AirWatch, and it's not possible.

In AirWatch, we have a launcher, which is like a container. You can choose single-app mode or multi-app mode. But in Intune, for example, you need to factory reset the device and then apply the MDM. If we choose multi-app mode, which is the kiosk multi-app mode in Intune, I cannot lock the application on the screen. For example, in the set mode, you have the option to set the leave Kiosk password. You can exit the kiosk. But if you choose Intune multi-app mode, you don't have this leave kiosk option. For us, it's very useful.

If you have this leave kiosk option in the multi-app, you should also have it in the single-app mode. We need this because we have an application that you run on a tablet in hotel rooms, and we want to lock the application in a single-app mode, but besides the application, we also need to have some background applications running, like we need to do some configurations in Knox from Samsung, and eFolder. 

We have three applications that we need to push, but the guests will only be able to see one. Because I don't have the option to leave the kiosk in the single-app mode, I cannot do any configuration in the background apps. We have one app we cannot migrate to Intune from AirWatch because of this issue. This applies to more than 2,000 devices.

I think we need the leave Kiosk option available for the Kiosk single-app mode, because we are stuck with at least 2,000 devices or more because we want to completely retire AirWatch, but we cannot until this feature is available. The applications that we are using in our hotel rooms are not compatible with Intune. My bosses are not really satisfied because we still have expenses with purchasing a license with AirWatch because Intune cannot really fulfill our requirements.

This option is already available in the multi-app mode. It should not be a new feature. This feature already exists. They just need to apply the single-app mode the same way they're applying the multi-app mode.

Compared with AirWatch, Intune is not very stable because I haven't had to deal with these issues. With AirWatch, I would try to fix something and I would need to fine tune the settings, et cetera. But once I fine-tune and push everything, it will run and be stable. With Intune, we are new with this product, but it took some time for me to create a profile and test the devices. It has been working for a few months, but then suddenly this weird issue happened. It affected all devices at once.

In the Outlook application, the scalability is good so far. But there are some differences between on-premises mailbox users and cloud users. For example, let's say I'm my boss's assistant and I'm able to view my boss's calendar on my Outlook desktop. Let's say I want to view a shared calendar on my Outlook app. For the cloud-use mailbox, I'm able to do this, but if I'm an on-premises mailbox user, this option is not available. Usually the cloud mailbox users have more options than on-premise users.

We have around 2,000 users enrolled in Intune so far, not counting the MDM device. That includes just email, the one that I have enrolled in the Outlook email app.

Our plan is to keep the solution because our primary solution for email mobile is now Intune because we are retiring AirWatch. We have already retired the email for AirWatch, and we are just using AirWatch for MDM devices. Of course, the plan is to keep increasing usage. If more users request email on their mobile, we are going to offer Intune.

Technical support is very responsive and helpful. There's another issue that I raised related to Adobe Acrobat. I'm not sure if it's a region issue, but I'm in Macau, and we also have some users in Manila, Hong Kong, and Cyprus. All of us are using the same profile. I make the Adobe Reader application available on the manage app store, but somehow the users in Macau, when they go to the manage play store, are not able to see Adobe Reader on the list. It's only happening in Macau.

I raised this issue. Support dragged the issue on for two months. Support said, "Because all the applications go through the Play store, maybe you need to reach out to Google." The issue was not really resolved because the issue might not be related to Microsoft but Google, et cetera. I just gave up.

Compared to AirWatch, I can upload APKs or I can just redirect the Play store link to push the apps. But in Intune for example, I'm forced to upload all the applications through the managed app store. To make it available is a different process, basically. There are some things that don't really stretch forward. 

If I upload a custom APK in the manage Play store and then I want to remove it, I cannot remove it myself. I need to send an email to Google and ask them to remove it. Then they will ask me to unpublish the app for 24 hours first. These are very simple things that I should be able to control myself, and it wastes a lot of time.

I think if you have the money and want something more stable, you should go for AirWatch. I don't think Microsoft is offering the same stability as VMware at this point. On other hand, I think the support from Microsoft is better, particularly the support in Asia. In VMware, all the support is from India, and sometimes I have a hard time with them.

Now that I'm starting to be familiar with the profiles, it's starting to get easier. A few weeks ago, there was a very odd issue that happened also related to MDM devices where we were using the manage home screen application to lock down the apps that we wanted to allow only the users to use, like the kiosk application.

We have configured the profile and have deployed to 200 or 300 devices. Some of our users called and said suddenly all the mobile devices were flashing. I don't know what happened, but it happened at the same time. The workaround that I had to do was to remove the manage home screen from the profile. Then all of the devices were kicked out and went back to the home screen of the devices. That was the only way they could resume the mobile devices. I don't know what happened, but something was wrong with the manage home screen app on that day because a few days after, I pushed back and everything resumed.

We have ROI because we are retiring AirWatch, so we're spending less and making the most of the free stuff.

The licensing is on a yearly basis.

I would rate this solution 7 out of 10.

This solution is on the cloud. What is required currently by our organization is an internet-facing device. The challenges with on-premise have a lot to do with this pandemic. This is why we've seen Intune with the MDM background grow so fast — because we don't have any on-prem limitations. On the cloud, you can manage everything. You can push policies, maintain patches, and maintain security because everything interacts on the cloud. A VPN is not required. In the legacy method, you need to use a VPN for anything and everything. This increases costs.

For Windows services, there are multiple options within Intune to modernize it to be more internet-facing and dynamic. Intune also provides us with a lot of flexibility to manage Windows-specific devices. 

Mobile-wise, I like the MAM feature. It provides us with more control over the application identity levels. When combined with Azure, it provides us with multiple opportunities to design and construct a solution that meets a BYOD or CYOD model.

Regarding mobile devices, Intune is good, but there are other services that I would say are ahead of Intune from an administration and reporting point of view. These are a few things that could be improved from a mobile infrastructure point of view.

From a reporting point of view, it could use some work. If I need to push a profile, it's a challenge with Intune because first I have to go ahead, remove a user, then add him back; only then does it allow me to push or sync. If it synchronizes, it exits on a cloud-based synchronization time. With AirWatch, there is a function where you can push a profile directly on a device. 

Overall, Intune has improved from MDM. They have become EMM and now they're moving towards Unified Endpoint Manager. They're just beginning to compete in the market from a mobile point of view, but regarding Windows, they're great. 

I have been using Microsoft Intune for more than five years. 

I'd say it's 99% stable. Azure being in the background has impacted it a bit, but overall, it's stable. 

Currently, Intune is on track to exceed SCCM. In the near future, most companies will be using Intune. Currently, roughly 25% to 30% of companies use Intune. The rest of them, 40% to 50%, are still using SCCM and trying to evolve old solutions — this will change. This whole management model will completely change into a hybrid Intune model or a complete Intune model.

The vendor ships the machine directly to you. All you need to do is connect it to the internet. It takes around 30 minutes or 40 minutes depending on the configuration. After that, you're ready to go. Post setup, if you need anything, you can simply go to the built-in Intune company portal and shop from there. This saved us a lot of time.

Still, the initial setup was not straightforward. When we initially started with Windows, there were a lot of open items. There were a lot of things which were not there. Obviously, we couldn't just move a company directly from on-prem to cloud. There is complexity, there are some legacy procedures that we had to follow. At that point in time, Intune was not ready, but currently, there are a lot of options that can fulfill your security requirements, your network requirements, your application requirements, user accessibility requirements, and the user experience. All of these things are pretty much in the place now. To start with, it was not this way. 

When I started using this solution, it took me roughly one year and three months to understand how to build it, to do due diligence, etc. Now, I can migrate an organization within 13 days.

Implementation is a complete team effort. You have to understand a company from a network point of view, a security point of view, a compliance point of view, and a GDPR and HR point of view. These things take time to analyze; it's still maturing but it's a little bit better than what we had before. Now, after I have interacted with an organization, I can get it up and running within 15 or 16 days.

I never got a complete picture regarding how much we've saved thanks to this solution. Still, I think it's very significant. We stopped using a lot of services because we didn't need them anymore. We don't need a lot of resources — we don't need to procure them. We don't need a VPN solution, plus, shipping is all taken care of. 

I started my journey with AirWatch. It was primarily an MDM solution. According to Gartner, AirWatch and Microsoft are currently neck-and-neck. From an organization requirement point of view, regarding MDM, I'd say AirWatch is a step ahead of Intune.

For the last four years, I've only used Intune. I don't know how AirWatch has improved over the last four years. Still, simple things, like pushing a profile are much easier with AirWatch compared to Intune. From a UI point of view, it's really easy for an admin to go ahead and work using AirWatch. From a deployment point of view, there are multiple options for retaining user data. 

As long as it will not primarily be used for banking or security purposes, I would recommend Intune. If you work in a banking environment and are looking for a high-security solution, then I would recommend VMware, AirWatch, or Jamf. As I said, Intune is still developing. Maybe this will change after another year, but currently, regarding banking and security, AirWatch is a step ahead when it comes to mobile infrastructure policy. 

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give Intune a rating of seven.

We use it to a small extent for approximately 1,100 devices. The biggest portion of it is used in the Aviation department, which is one of our departments. They have invested heavily in some customized software that they've developed in-house. It is put on the devices, and the devices are primarily used by field staff. It's basically a mixture of work order assignment and work order management, as well as record keeping. For example, I could have a technician who is assigned to go and do a preventive maintenance inspection on an HVAC component in one of the terminals. That request or work order is submitted to his device. When he gets there, he scans barcodes for the room he is in and for the piece of equipment that he is working on. So, they track their actual work order, work order status, workloads, and equipment life cycle, and that's all done through Intune.

It helps us in securing devices. It has eliminated a lot of paperwork. It has simplified record-keeping and maintenance of equipment, life cycle management, staff workload, work hours, et cetera. That's the biggest impact on us, and that's also where most of the devices are used.

Its security is most valuable. It gives us a way to secure devices, not only those that are steady. We do have a few tablets and other devices, and it is a way for us to secure these devices and manage them. We know they're out there and what's their status. We can manage their life cycle and verify that they're updated properly.

It doesn't economize when you scale up. We have over 14,000 employees, and we have between 7,500 and 8,000 city-owned or personal devices being used to conduct city business. Its price can be improved. It is not a cheap solution.

It has been years since it was implemented.

Its stability has been fine. We've had no issues at all.

I don't see any issues with it. We currently have only about 1,100 users and licenses for the Intune product. The largest portion or over 50% of usage is by our Aviation department for tracking and managing their work order, workload,  equipment life cycle, etc. Other users are scattered in small numbers throughout a number of departments. 

Our Parts department also uses it. One thing that's a little bit unique is that they also have these assigned to temporary workers. So, we provide the licenses for a number of temporary workers for the summer or for the winter, and then we take them back and reassign them to somebody else. 

The other departments mostly use it for educational or small use cases where they think this will be a good fit, and it is the product that is available to them. I've heard nothing bad about it, and I have no problem at all with Intune.

In terms of future growth, we're currently looking at another product, but that doesn't mean we're going to go with that other product. We're working with a vendor on another solution, and that vendor also has a mobile device management product, but we're not yet ready to go there.

I've no direct input on it. Right now, we're on unified support, but we've always had their premier support. If we ever have a problem with any of our Microsoft products, including Intune, we do have a way to reach out and get additional assistance.

I'm not aware of any other solution being used. I know there were one or possibly two failed mobile device management project implementations. I was not a member of the department then, so I don't know the details. I only know that both of the deployments failed. In other words, either the vendor promises were not met, or we found a function that was supposed to exist but did not exist. 

It was pretty straightforward. It was not a very long, complex, and involved process. It was fairly easy to set up.

It was done in-house. For its maintenance, we have no one dedicated to it. Our client computing side takes care of that.

I've never tried to quantify an ROI for the program. We have just a small number of devices. At some point, we will look at implementing large-scale mobile device management, and that'll be a different case where we may look at Intune, Workspace ONE, or another product.

It is not a cheap solution. The price for a device when you start using it at a large scale can be improved.

It is covered under our enterprise agreement. We pay once a year. I am not aware of any additional costs.

It meets the basic security needs and management needs for most organizations. It allows you to monitor the security of devices and manage those devices if they're organization-owned. It is fairly easy and straightforward to manage. It is not difficult. Some of the other solutions are a little bit more difficult.

I would rate it an eight out of 10. It meets all the basic needs that most organizations will have for device management and device security. I am not sure if it can provide the required level of security for different business scenarios that require additional security, which means you'd have to run two systems in tandem.

We use Microsoft Intune for application deployment and for some of their security policies and end-devices policies. We also use it for patching. Patches for Windows 10 devices and MacOs, we're still figuring out what to do because we don't have many options on Intune for Mac operating systems. Patching and looking for OS deployment as well. Operating system deployment.

Within our organization, there are roughly 150 users, using this solution.

We use Microsoft Intune on a daily basis. What Microsoft does, is it releases patches every month. The device hash reports to Microsoft Azure Intune. If you want it to receive patches or policies, which you have created on Intune and you have deployed, then the device will receive the policies and patches only if it's online and connected to the internet. Whenever the device is online and connected to the internet, it's connected to Intune. You don't have to worry about having an additional agent or anything on your devices.

Patching for Windows in operating systems is great. Most organizations are going remote now due to this pandemic, so patching is one of the most feasible solutions we can think of — patching end-user devices. Application deployment and keeping the devices secure no matter where they are, by having this cloud solution — that has been great. Deploying the security policies to the devices. 

There needs to be more support for Mac operating systems. Support for patching, because we have very few, or minimal options from Intune for patching Mac operating system.

In the next release, I would like to see better compatibility for Mac operating systems — that would be really helpful. Also, if the support for Mac was as flexible as it is for Windows, that would be really appreciated.

Personally, I have been using this solution for the past 13 months.

I haven't experienced any issues relating to stability.

We have spoken to the technical support on a few occasions. They have only ever provided us with minimal information. 

We used to use a SCCM or System Center Configuration Manager tool; it was also provided by Microsoft, but it's an off-prem tool. You need an on-prem setup and a server operating system and everything. On that server operating system, you can install this tool and start using it. We also used another tool called Automox, which was a patching tool. It's only meant for patching devices, different operating systems, Linux operating system, Windows, Mac operating system; however, it didn't have support for mobile devices.

The initial setup is a very simple process. You don't have to do anything on on-prem. Since it's a solution from Azure, it's a software service. You just have to buy the subscription. You just need to have the license in place and then you can just start using it. There is not much setup involved. If you want to integrate your Azure solution with your on-prem solutions, then you have to do a bit of integration.

If you're going with standalone Intune, you don't have to think of setting up anything. You can just use it, pay for whatever your problems are, find a solution for that, and start using it — that's all. You don't have to worry about the setup for standalone Intune.

All maintenance is handled by the vendor.

Licensing depends on how you are providing support to your enterprise, whether it's device-based or user-based. If you're providing device-based support, you need to buy a device pertaining license. If you're providing support for users, then you have to go with user licenses. If are integrating Intune with FSCM, which is an on-prem tool, then the same scenario comes in either devices or users.

If you are providing support only for devices, like device-based policies, with Intune, there's a type of policy that allows you to deploy to either the devices or users. If you're looking for a solution where only devices can receive it, rather than users, in that case, you need to purchase only one license for Intune — I'm talking about integrating Intune with FSCM. You only need to purchase one license. Since you have already purchased FSCM on-prem, Microsoft has that flexibility; you can extend those licenses with the devices as well when you're integrating the devices with Intune. I don't know about the pricing, but I know about the licenses.

I would absolutely recommend Microsoft Intune. Currently, I would definitely recommend any cloud solution. Most organizations were actually using on-prem solutions for managing their enterprise devices. Now, since everything is remote, people are confused. How can they manage their devices the same as they were before this pandemic? If they find Intune very pricey, they can go with another cloud solution. Intune it's very user-friendly. You just have a screen and console and you can just go in and start deploying anything. All you need are the user guides, which are fully-available with Intune.

Intune is a very good cloud solution for managing devices. They could actually make it better by putting everything together, in one place, like other MDM solutions are doing. If you compare Intune with VMware, VMware also has an MDM solution called AirWatch. Intune should compare itself with other MDM solutions and try to bring up those features as well. For right now, I would just say it's a very good solution for managing remote devices.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of six.

Typically, for customers that tend to come from a transportation logistics background, it's essentially free or the TCO is literally non-existent. It's a good fit for our resume offerings. Anywhere between 50 to 200 users is a typical use case that we see, where they're leveraging the product for low subscription costs.

Its overall integration into Microsoft 365 is great. 

I would say the biggest benefit is the single-pane view. There's no jumping around multiple UI's to do your overall management. Linkage to a single pane is probably the best benefit.

I'm looking at it in comparison to other EMMs and there are better EMMs out there. It's still for me at an MBM stage, as it's addressing other areas that make up EMM, however, if you put it in comparison to others, for instance, the overall experience is better. We get OL and DM and we get in the mobile threat detection. We get in a lot of other things into that EMM. 

Intune, in their port description, for me is still pretty infantile. I will say in the next 18 months to two years, they'll start becoming a bit more major, I hope.

It's pretty straightforward to implement as long as you've got a Microsoft subscription. However, it's kind-of convoluted how they explain it and what you are paying for. Obviously, we know that the more money you pay, the more features you get. I think that they can lay it out a little bit better, sometimes it's pretty hard to follow what their offering actually is.

There's quite a lot of development that they can do within their Intune dashboard. I think there are too many lines hyperlinked to move you around. Others, in contrast, give you a simple dashboard and an intuitive administrative walkthrough.

The solution looks too technical. Even though it is a technical feature, it comes across as too technical to navigate through. They can certainly work on the overall dashboad and the layout, to simplify everything.

They can do a lot more with Enterprise Firmware over here to give it full support.

Coming from a Samsung perspective, they need to comprehensively support the Android provisioning methods.

I’ve been using the solution for three years now.

From a stability perspective yes, it's very stable. The SLA that Microsoft gives around their network, the cloud service offering, makes it very stable.

It's highly scalable. Anything that's in the cloud should come with scale, and in this case definitely a highly scalable option.

I'm not sure, in total, how many people are actually on the solution. With Samsung, there's no preferred EMM solution in place. Most of it tends to come down to local/regional preference. Each region's location has its own mobile provider or EMM provider. We don't manage Intune for ourselves or for customers. Therefore, within the business, I would say it's less than 5%. As I say, we have our own solution. Nobody's going to use Intune within Samsung and we have our own EMM. Therefore, I don't forsee us increasing usage.

As we're consultants, we never rely upon a specific Microsoft consultancy to resolve anything and we clear our own testbed issues. We've very rarely been in contact with Microsoft's technical support. We're more engaged with Microsoft from a strategic partner level or in partnership as regards to our EMM offering. We have all the expertise we need in-house.

The solution is cloud-oriented. As long as you have a valid Microsoft Enterprise Subscription, it's all subscription-driven. From an installation or deployment perspective, it's pretty quick and pretty straightforward. It's not complex. As long as you paid for at least a standard enterprise subscription.

Where I am with Samsung, we're pre-sales. This is the customer's OMS. We're engaging with customers that have these environments in place, to then obviously bolt in our Samsung cloud solutions port. Obviously, we become consultancy on our cloud solutions. However, more so you have the engineering aspects of that.

For my area of business, we have a yearly subscription, which provides us with Intune capabilities within our test labs. It is negligible. It's pennies compared to our growth target. It's very affordable.

I'm typically an Azure consultant. Therefore, anything on the Azure platform now obviously includes Intune from an EMM perspective.

We use a multitude of versions. I can't tell the specific numbers. We use many as we have to constantly compare against different customer environments. We have test labs that have multi-versions as well.

Predominantly, our deployment models are on the cloud. There's literally no call for on-premise at all, apart from network connectors.

I would advise users to consider the solution on a use case by use case. I personally work in a Samsung Android environment and there's a lot more feature support in other EMMs. Therefore, I wouldn't necessarily recommend it. In the next 18 to 24 months, I hope that severe changes are made as Microsoft establishes itself more.

Overall, I would rate it at a seven out of ten. There's still a lot of room for improvement in how they deliver. Their products and features are pretty good, and they serve the need. They probably just need to work on their explanation and probably the layout and UI quite a bit more. 

We primarily use the solution for device management. 

There are a lot of use cases, however, the base is the mobile security for our corporate devices and deployment of applications. We are a worldwide organization and in many countries. There are also country-based use cases, or areas that incorporate these use cases for some specific business units such as healthcare and similar SAP solutions. We have a lot of small areas where we use this, however, the main driver is improving the security of the devices and providing some automation configuration for the users including VPN solutions and corporate WiFi connections, applications, et cetera.

If I compared this product to XenMobile, except the conditional access, which was also partially possible to integrate with Citrix XenMobile, then there is not much difference between the two. The functionality s very good. However, the main way this has improved our organization is that there is support for conditional access and native integration with Office 365 services which we migrated to. 

The integration with conditional access is great. That's maybe the most important aspect of the solution.

The pricing is very good.

We already use a lot of Microsoft products in our company, and therefore, it made sense to also use this product.

For the most part, the solution is stable.

As a cloud solution, the scalability on offer is great.

There are a lot of small use cases where we realized that some technical solution was missing in Microsoft in comparison to other products. For example, it lacks something similar to sensing or location-based rules and configurations.

We would like, for example, integrated remote control or a remote session tool or something like this. You must have TeamViewer and the integration with this is limited and it's extra money. Nothing is built-in. Some functionalities are really limited to fully managed devices and so on. It took a long time for them to integrate the big ECS infrastructure into the corporate devices. This is now done, however, it took a longer time than expected.

Technical support could be h=better.

We've used the solution for the last three years, starting with the integration. 

The solution is pretty stable. As it is in the cloud, there are not many issues in terms of a service outage or things like this. Maybe when there are new patches integrated every month, which sometimes happens, some functionality may be influenced or affected. It's more or less a small issue, however, issues are possible. I don't recall a situation where downtime happened or users were really affected, however. It's just an occasional issue we may have with a patch that we would need to address.

The solution is quite scalable. As a cloud product, there are no issues surrounding expanding if you need to. 

We have maybe 27,000 people using the solution at this time. There is a plan to have all mobile users in this solution, so we are talking about 70,000 users at some point. However, it's a question also of the licenses, as you have to have a license for that product.

Technical support is hit and miss. Sometimes it's really good and other times it's not so great.

We used Citrix Endpoint Management in the past. We used it about two years ago. It was a good product. They are comparable, really, Citrix and Microsoft. 

I was not involved from the beginning of the project. However, from what I remember, we did the implementation directly with the help of a support engineer from Microsoft. Their involvement ensured the setup was not such a big deal.

Deployment took maybe one year in our environment, however, this was because we had a lot of time to tune it up and to test it, to have a pilot for a few months and then add more people to the pilot before we started migrations for mobile, for example. We took our time to really prepare the product as best as possible and then deployed it to the users and migrated them over.

We have two levels of people at a global level that handle deployment and maintenance. They mostly focus on improving the environment, not troubleshooting WiFi issues. 

We had direct assistance from Microsoft. Their assistance made the process seamless and it was a positive experience.

The solution offers reasonable pricing.

It's my understanding that we have the licensing set up for monthly payments, however, it's not an aspect of the solution I'm directly involved with. I don't know enough about it.

That said, I am aware that, in order to have mobile involved, you need the EMS solution or EMS license, and that's an extra cost to the standard Office license.

We're just a customer and an end-user.

As we are on the cloud version of the solution, we are more or less on the latest version of the solution.

The product was chosen for political reasons, as the company is mostly using Microsoft products and also the prices were maybe better than other options. 

I'd recommend the solution to others. If they are already using Microsoft or 365, it's a good product for companies sot have. 

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

The solution is primarily used to manage iOS, Android, and also Windows 10 or Windows 11. It's to manage end-user devices.

The best thing about Intune for the customers is simply that it's included in the different plans of Microsoft 365. If a customer needs Office or collaboration tools, Intune is included. It's for free. If the company has another MDM, normally they are paying for it. This product is included in the license of Microsoft 365. We find that the customers, in general, want to change the solution, to move from another classical MDM to Intune due to the fact that they save money.

If you need only to load a specific profile and you don't have deep security functionalities, etc, Intune is very nice and good.

The initial setup is very simple.

If you need some restrictions or some integrations or you need integrations with security options, or if your mobile terminals are industry-special or ruggerized, bar code readers, printers attached, this might not be the best option. If your MDM has to be really specific, perhaps Intune is not the better option. You have to consider MobileIron or Workspace ONE or MaaS360 or similar.

They need to integrate more with security options. When the customers want some specific security functionality they begin to think about other platforms. 

The stability is very good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's pretty reliable. 

Scaling is simple. It depends on the licensing. If you have licenses for that, the only thing you have to do is to continue with the enrollment of the terminals. It's very easy. You have to assign the terminals to a group of users with different restrictions or policies and that's it.

With the CSP licenses, we as a cloud service provider, are obliged to provide services. With our service, we provide support to the licenses. When we sell licenses differently, in the LSP scheme, then we have to sell the premium service for the customers.

I don't use it directly. That said, I know the ratings of the services that we provide for our services. The only thing that I should say is that normally when we have an SLA with a customer for Microsoft, there is a specific response time that we can provide as a service provider. They do not consider that. They say, "Our service is this. This is our SLA." Then, our service level agreement is eight hours. 

Sometimes, when you offer a service level agreement with a customer, the support of the manufacturer or of the vendor is included. It's the only thing that, if you are providing services on an end-to-end basis, you have to consider. Sometimes, when you call Premier Support and you say, "Please, I need a solution before six hours," it doesn't matter for them. They say, "I have not six. I have eight, so don't call me if I'm in the eight hours."

It's very simple to set up. To set up the terminals, it's very easy. You have a manual, and it's very easy to follow. You can configure functionalities for specific users or a specific group of users or things like that. It's great.

The time it takes to deploy depends on the number of terminals and it also depends on the number of different groups. Perhaps you have to configure the different policies for different groups. That might take longer than a straightforward setup. In an installation with, for example, 1,000 terminals, it typically takes less than a month -three weeks or so.

I don't personally handle the deployment myself, however. I offer it to clients. I'm not the one to actually do the manual work of implementing it. 

The amount of people we need to deploy a solution depends on the number of terminals that we have to manage.

Some customers configure everything at the beginning and nothing changes over time. That said, we have other customers that they are continuously asking for changes. This group of customers will likely need three people more to handle maintenance. For every 1,000 devices, you typically need one and a half full-time employees.

In terms of ROI, it depends. If you have licenses included in your plan for M365, Microsoft 365, from the very beginning, if you have to sell that, it depends on the business case that you can do. It's different if you buy a CSP or LSP license.

One kind is considered as a cost and another is considered as an investment. The LSP is an investment. 

In the products and services space, from a pay-per-use perspective, I don't see a relationship between this product and ROI. 

There are different kinds of licenses. We sell two licenses from Microsoft, the LSP or the CSP. The service that we have with Microsoft is based on the CSP kind, so the payment is monthly, considered as an expense, not an investment o asset. It depends on if you buy a set of licenses only for Intune - which can be sold separately, or can be included in M365.

We are gold partners with Microsoft.

I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten.

For simple installations, for simple management, perhaps Intune is fine. However, for more complex installations, it might not be enough.