When it comes to endpoint management, there are two options available in the Microsoft stable of products – SCCM and Intune. SCCM is the older, trailblazing, and incredibly sticky version of the two. Intune is the younger, more agile, and impatient heir.
While a widespread move away from SCCM has long been predicted but has yet to materialise, we are now increasingly moving into the era of Intune.
How did we get here, what is Microsoft’s strategy, and where do we expect to end up?
Dethroning a Titan
We can lean into Greek mythology to summarise the rise of Intune as the de facto endpoint management solution for enterprise organisations.
In Greek mythology, Titan god Cronus learned of a prophecy that his children would dethrone him, much in the same way that it has been prophesied that Intune will dethrone SCCM. In the Greek tales, Cronus started to consume his children to prevent the prophecy from coming true. A bit weird, but in our tale, SCCM has been doing something similar, consuming some Intune capabilities and turning them into its own to fend off the inevitable.
In Greek mythology, Zeus escaped his father’s dinner plate, growing in strength and eventually overthrowing him. Intune is also growing in strength, and while we have not yet reached the dethroning stage, many observers believe it is coming.
Where We Are and How We Got Here
Intune started life as a cloud-based solution for managing Windows PCs, but Microsoft quickly pivoted to also include iOS and Android endpoints.
Integration with Azure Active Directory followed, enhancing its suitability in an enterprise environment due to additional security and identity management features. Microsoft also focused on minimising barriers to adoption, such as bundling Intune with Microsoft 365.
Changing working practices accelerated both the adoption of and Microsoft’s development of the solution. And the company continues to develop Intune. Our analysis at Access IT Automation is that Intune has achieved approximately 80 percent parity with SCCM at the time of writing in Q2 2025. We believe it will surpass SCCM by early 2026.
A Question of Wires
Microsoft’s strategy is to modernise endpoint management by moving customers to the cloud. It all comes down to wires:
- SCCM can manage any device that has a wire connecting it to the network.
- Intune can manage any endpoint.
It’s a straightforward sell that focuses on the fact that Intune simplifies management, reduces costs, and enhances security. Intune’s continuous evolution, cloud-first architecture, and integration with Microsoft’s broader security and productivity stack position it as an enterprise endpoint management solution that the company wants its customers to transition to.
Key Features of Microsoft’s Endpoint Management Solution Strategy
Cloud-Native Flexibility
Intune offers a level of flexibility that is difficult to achieve with on-premises, hard-wired infrastructure.
Putting the Unified into Endpoint Management
Intune enables unified endpoint management as opposed to endpoint management, with the “unified” element encompassing all types of endpoints.
Rapid Feature Development
Microsoft is heavily invested in the Intune product and, as a result, the feature list is constantly expanding and improving. Intune Autopilot is a great example as it isn’t just about the modernisation of endpoint management. Instead, Intune Autopilot delivers tangible, quantifiable benefits that address real and present pain points in enterprise organisations.
In brief, Intune Autopilot facilitates zero-touch deployment of endpoints, tailored endpoint setup procedures, automatic enrolment in Active Directory, profile-based configuration, and easy endpoint reset and redeployment. This reduces endpoint deployment time from days to hours, as well as freeing up technical resources from highly repetitive and non-value-adding tasks, delivering cost and resource savings.
The integration of Windows Autopatch with Intune is another example. Windows Autopatch also frees up technical resources from repetitive tasks through automated patch management, where updates to Windows, Teams, and Microsoft 365 are automatically scheduled and deployed.
Deep Integration
There is deep integration between Intune and Microsoft’s extensive ecosystem of platforms, applications, and solutions.
Security and Compliance
Intune features modern security and compliance features, both of which are essential concerns of enterprise organisations.
Co-Management Capabilities
Microsoft has enabled hybrid and co-management functionality where Intune can be deployed alongside SCCM, making the transition less daunting in complex enterprise environments.
The Right Path with a Final Big Push
It is increasingly clear that the more Microsoft gets right with Intune, the more enterprise Ops teams will use it. And the more that Ops teams use Intune, the greater the chance they will consider decommissioning SCCM.
App Attach is one evolving example. It is a technology that facilitates the fast and dynamic delivery of apps in Azure Virtual Desktops. It does this by delivering apps to user sessions without installing the apps directly on the session host or base image. Instead, the apps are “attached” to user sessions as needed, running in a containerized environment.
Previously, App Attach only supported Microsoft’s MSIX packaging format. Today, however, other formats are also supported, including AppVolumes, Cloudpaging, and FlexApp. This has made App Attach even more attractive than before.
Integrating App Attach with Intune could fill in a final piece of the puzzle for many enterprise organisations.
It is still a watch-this-space type of scenario, but more and more organisations are moving to a point where Intune is the de facto endpoint management solution. While Microsoft certainly can’t put SCCM into an end-of-life (EOL) phase yet, that day is coming.
The future is Intune.
Learn more in our whitepaper, An IT Professional’s Handbook to Endpoint Management. As well as looking at the history of endpoint management, the whitepaper explores why it’s important to migrate to Intune, the benefits of doing so, and the steps involved. We also present a case study that showcases a successful SCCM to Intune migration.
