Windows Intune Manages Desktops

Windows Intune, available Mar. 23, 2011, is a Microsoft Online subscription service for Windows PCs that is hosted at Microsoft but operated by customer administrators or managed service providers. Intune allows small to midsize organizations to monitor, update, protect, and manage Windows PCs using online services hosted in Microsoft data centers rather than using an on-premises management and security infrastructure. The subscription service offers other benefits such as upgrade rights to Windows 7 Enterprise and access to other PC diagnostic and management tools.

Designed for Small and Midsize Businesses

Although Microsoft claims that Intune can manage up to 20,000 PCs, Intune is clearly designed to be attractive to small and midsize businesses without major on-premise system management tools such as Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), System Center products, or security products such as Forefront Endpoint Protection. With Intune, PCs are managed by an organization’s administrators, not by Microsoft, which does not have access to information about the customer’s PCs. Intune uses the Internet to communicate between the online service and a managed PC; therefore, the PCs do not have to connect to an organization’s internal network to use the service. This means that an organization can use Intune to manage laptops, PCs in branch offices, or even some contractors’ or home PCs (provided they are running a business edition of Windows).