Evolving business needs

According to Forrester Research, mobility is the new normal. Information workers will erase the boundary between enterprise and consumer technologies and therefore mobility is certainly a defining vector in the evolution of the new business world. 56% of information workers send their first email before getting to the office, and 73% send their last email after leaving the office. 52% of information workers are using three or more devices for work.

Business needs are evolving with the new Industry 4.0 from employees working Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 toward a 24/7 blur of work and personal activity; from computers on a LAN corporate network toward multiple devices, any time, anywhere; and from on-premises applications and file hosting towards Software as a Service (SaaS) applications and cloud based file hosting.

So also, old-school methods of managing computers need to evolve without increasing complexity over value. Windows 10 has enabled MDM:

In Windows 10, the MDM agent is already built-in and usable with first-party (Intune/SCCM) and third-party solutions. MDM policies can also be created/applied by the Windows Configuration Designer (see Chapter 2, Configuration and Customization) or with a script and the integrated Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) bridge. MDM policies can be used in domain joined, Azure AD joined, AD/Azure AD hybrid joined, and Azure AD account added scenarios. MDM can be used as a lightweight GPO replacement for computers joined only to Azure AD and mobile solutions such as Intune, AirWatch, or MobileIron.

As all available configurations in Windows 10 can no longer be covered by GPOs alone (for example, Windows Information Protection (WIP) or Provable PC Health), even without using Azure, you will be forced to use MDM management or suitable scripts in conjunction with the WMI bridge or a Windows 10 compatible configuration solution such as Microsoft SCCM, LANDESK, and HEAT.

As there are new MDM configuration settings with each new version of Windows 10, the configuration solution you use also needs to be upgraded to keep pace.