Intune, do you like it? Is it worth it?
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I should also mention I haven't actually used InTune yet. I believe I can use it for one of my office PCs under IUR.
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@technobabble said:
@Carnival-Boy said:
I've run InTune for our some of our remote workers for a few years now. We got it more or less when it was released. It has improved a lot since then, but I've generally hated it. We got it because we needed Windows Enterprise licences for DirectAccess; remote assistance; antivirus; patch management; and MDM.
I abandoned DirectAccess and use Hamachi instead. The remote assistance part of InTune is dire, and I quickly replaced it with LogMeIn. The antivirus didn't stop some of our Sales Reps getting infected, and I had to use a third-party antivirus program to clean up the mess. The patch management is ok, but LogMeIn does that very well too. The MDM is mediocre and I replaced it with Meraki.
To conclude, InTune does everything poorly compared with its competitors. I now do everything I need much quicker, easier and cheaper with LogMeIn and Merkai, apart from security. For security, I like the look of GFI Cloud, but haven't rolled it out yet. The concept of one portal handling everything (InTune) is very attractive and should be cheaper (in theory), but I now prefer a best of breed approach. So to answer the thread's question: No and No.
Yikes, with a review like that, it would make most people run! I have looked/setup GFI cloud briefly and also Continuum. The part about InTune I liked was the option to get the upgraded OS.
Interesting. That's two people interested in InTune because of the upgraded OS. I would not have expected that.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
I abandoned DirectAccess and use Hamachi instead. The remote assistance part of InTune is dire, and I quickly replaced it with LogMeIn.
Like you we use Pertino for access even though we own Hamachi as well. And we use LMI for remote access. I didn't even know our InTune had remote access. How did I miss that?
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It's funny...I originally looked at Office 365 as a way to get my clients on the new Office and at the same time benefit from the web apps and exchange. In my mind, I saw InTune as an extension of the same logic, get users off old OSes and add some management and tada! very small businesses are now updated and maintained. At least that was the idea.
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@technobabble said:
It's funny...I originally looked at Office 365 as a way to get my clients on the new Office and at the same time benefit from the web apps and exchange. In my mind, I saw InTune as an extension of the same logic, get users off old OSes and add some management and tada! very small businesses are now updated and maintained. At least that was the idea.
Makes sense. It's that you are paying for the OS twice and in this case paying for the Enterprise upgrade that make it expensive. It would be cheaper to buy a volume license of Pro rather than the InTune of enterprise.
Also, consider the total cost. Getting a new PC with a Windows 8.1 OEM would probably make more financial sense in most cases.
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@alexntg said:
A bit on the reimaging rights. Intune with SA is a volume license. You could use the volume license media and key to reimage other computers that run the same exact product version. You could use the Win8.1 Pro media and key for other Win8.1 Pro computers. Upgrade rights are only available with SA, one device per user. Do understand that if you cancel Intune, you'd be revoking your volume license rights.
This is exactly how I understood it to work.
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@technobabble said:
@Carnival-Boy said:
I've run InTune for our some of our remote workers for a few years now. We got it more or less when it was released. It has improved a lot since then, but I've generally hated it. We got it because we needed Windows Enterprise licences for DirectAccess; remote assistance; antivirus; patch management; and MDM.
I abandoned DirectAccess and use Hamachi instead. The remote assistance part of InTune is dire, and I quickly replaced it with LogMeIn. The antivirus didn't stop some of our Sales Reps getting infected, and I had to use a third-party antivirus program to clean up the mess. The patch management is ok, but LogMeIn does that very well too. The MDM is mediocre and I replaced it with Meraki.
To conclude, InTune does everything poorly compared with its competitors. I now do everything I need much quicker, easier and cheaper with LogMeIn and Merkai, apart from security. For security, I like the look of GFI Cloud, but haven't rolled it out yet. The concept of one portal handling everything (InTune) is very attractive and should be cheaper (in theory), but I now prefer a best of breed approach. So to answer the thread's question: No and No.
Yikes, with a review like that, it would make most people run! I have looked/setup GFI cloud briefly and also Continuum. The part about InTune I liked was the option to get the upgraded OS.
But that's a pretty expensive part, the price goes from $6/month to $11/month. It might be worth it since MS is trying to move to a new version every three years, but I think that if they pull that off they'll have to lower the prices for upgrades like Apple did for their frequent upgrades.
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Microsoft already lowered the price. Windows 8 was cheap and 8.1 was free.
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The cost of InTune + SA which is $60 / year for the OS only makes sense if you are both moving up from an old version and need the upgrade from Pro to Enterprise which basically no one does in the SMB.
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@alexntg said:
A bit on the reimaging rights. Intune with SA is a volume license. You could use the volume license media and key to reimage other computers that run the same exact product version. You could use the Win8.1 Pro media and key for other Win8.1 Pro computers. Upgrade rights are only available with SA, one device per user. Do understand that if you cancel Intune, you'd be revoking your volume license rights.
Alex,
Under the old SA in a VL setup, let's say you bought Office Pro plus with SA, when you purchased it Office 2010 was out, but during your subscription, Office 2013 comes out.
Now say you discontinue your subscription. It is my understanding that you can use 2013 in perpetuity.Is the same true for machines that you purchase Intune with SA? So you have a Windows XP machine today, you buy Intune with SA which allows you to upgrade to Windows 8.1 Pro (or Enterprise if you wish). If you dump the SA portion of the subscription are you required to go back to XP on that computer? If that's the case, calling it SA was a bad decision as the rules would be different for two things with the same name.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Carnival-Boy said:
I abandoned DirectAccess and use Hamachi instead. The remote assistance part of InTune is dire, and I quickly replaced it with LogMeIn.
Like you we use Pertino for access even though we own Hamachi as well. And we use LMI for remote access. I didn't even know our InTune had remote access. How did I miss that?
Remote assistance, not remote access. However, if everyone's running Windows Enterprise, DirectAccess would be a good fit.
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@Dashrender said:
@technobabble said:
@Carnival-Boy said:
I've run InTune for our some of our remote workers for a few years now. We got it more or less when it was released. It has improved a lot since then, but I've generally hated it. We got it because we needed Windows Enterprise licences for DirectAccess; remote assistance; antivirus; patch management; and MDM.
I abandoned DirectAccess and use Hamachi instead. The remote assistance part of InTune is dire, and I quickly replaced it with LogMeIn. The antivirus didn't stop some of our Sales Reps getting infected, and I had to use a third-party antivirus program to clean up the mess. The patch management is ok, but LogMeIn does that very well too. The MDM is mediocre and I replaced it with Meraki.
To conclude, InTune does everything poorly compared with its competitors. I now do everything I need much quicker, easier and cheaper with LogMeIn and Merkai, apart from security. For security, I like the look of GFI Cloud, but haven't rolled it out yet. The concept of one portal handling everything (InTune) is very attractive and should be cheaper (in theory), but I now prefer a best of breed approach. So to answer the thread's question: No and No.
Yikes, with a review like that, it would make most people run! I have looked/setup GFI cloud briefly and also Continuum. The part about InTune I liked was the option to get the upgraded OS.
But that's a pretty expensive part, the price goes from $6/month to $11/month. It might be worth it since MS is trying to move to a new version every three years, but I think that if they pull that off they'll have to lower the prices for upgrades like Apple did for their frequent upgrades.
It's not just a version upgrade. It's a tier upgrade. You can go from Pro to Enterprise. It also includes SA rights, which allows you to run up to 4 virtual OSEs per device covered under SA. You also get Windows To Go and BitLocker.
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@Dashrender said:
Is the same true for machines that you purchase Intune with SA? So you have a Windows XP machine today, you buy Intune with SA which allows you to upgrade to Windows 8.1 Pro (or Enterprise if you wish). If you dump the SA portion of the subscription are you required to go back to XP on that computer? If that's the case, calling it SA was a bad decision as the rules would be different for two things with the same name.
As far as I know, you don't purchase Intune? There are no upfront costs. Just the monthly subscription. So you wouldn't be able to continue using the new Windows licence if you cancelled the subscription. If you could, you could just subscribe for one month, do the upgrade, then cancel.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@Dashrender said:
Is the same true for machines that you purchase Intune with SA? So you have a Windows XP machine today, you buy Intune with SA which allows you to upgrade to Windows 8.1 Pro (or Enterprise if you wish). If you dump the SA portion of the subscription are you required to go back to XP on that computer? If that's the case, calling it SA was a bad decision as the rules would be different for two things with the same name.
As far as I know, you don't purchase Intune? There are no upfront costs. Just the monthly subscription. So you wouldn't be able to continue using the new Windows licence if you cancelled the subscription. If you could, you could just subscribe for one month, do the upgrade, then cancel.
That's correct.
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@alexntg said:
@Dashrender said:
@technobabble said:
@Carnival-Boy said:
I've run InTune for our some of our remote workers for a few years now. We got it more or less when it was released. It has improved a lot since then, but I've generally hated it. We got it because we needed Windows Enterprise licences for DirectAccess; remote assistance; antivirus; patch management; and MDM.
I abandoned DirectAccess and use Hamachi instead. The remote assistance part of InTune is dire, and I quickly replaced it with LogMeIn. The antivirus didn't stop some of our Sales Reps getting infected, and I had to use a third-party antivirus program to clean up the mess. The patch management is ok, but LogMeIn does that very well too. The MDM is mediocre and I replaced it with Meraki.
To conclude, InTune does everything poorly compared with its competitors. I now do everything I need much quicker, easier and cheaper with LogMeIn and Merkai, apart from security. For security, I like the look of GFI Cloud, but haven't rolled it out yet. The concept of one portal handling everything (InTune) is very attractive and should be cheaper (in theory), but I now prefer a best of breed approach. So to answer the thread's question: No and No.
Yikes, with a review like that, it would make most people run! I have looked/setup GFI cloud briefly and also Continuum. The part about InTune I liked was the option to get the upgraded OS.
But that's a pretty expensive part, the price goes from $6/month to $11/month. It might be worth it since MS is trying to move to a new version every three years, but I think that if they pull that off they'll have to lower the prices for upgrades like Apple did for their frequent upgrades.
It's not just a version upgrade. It's a tier upgrade. You can go from Pro to Enterprise. It also includes SA rights, which allows you to run up to 4 virtual OSEs per device covered under SA. You also get Windows To Go and BitLocker.
Yes. It's a bit of stuff. Might be useful in pinpoint deployments for a few users out of a large pool.
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@Dashrender said:
@alexntg said:
A bit on the reimaging rights. Intune with SA is a volume license. You could use the volume license media and key to reimage other computers that run the same exact product version. You could use the Win8.1 Pro media and key for other Win8.1 Pro computers. Upgrade rights are only available with SA, one device per user. Do understand that if you cancel Intune, you'd be revoking your volume license rights.
Alex,
Under the old SA in a VL setup, let's say you bought Office Pro plus with SA, when you purchased it Office 2010 was out, but during your subscription, Office 2013 comes out.
Now say you discontinue your subscription. It is my understanding that you can use 2013 in perpetuity.Is the same true for machines that you purchase Intune with SA? So you have a Windows XP machine today, you buy Intune with SA which allows you to upgrade to Windows 8.1 Pro (or Enterprise if you wish). If you dump the SA portion of the subscription are you required to go back to XP on that computer? If that's the case, calling it SA was a bad decision as the rules would be different for two things with the same name.
The software, including the OS license, is provided on a subscription basis only. There is, however, a buyout option that's available for cancellations after the initial 12-month term. I'm not sure what the pricing on it is offhand, as that requires contacting MS directly.
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@alexntg said:
@Dashrender said:
@alexntg said:
A bit on the reimaging rights. Intune with SA is a volume license. You could use the volume license media and key to reimage other computers that run the same exact product version. You could use the Win8.1 Pro media and key for other Win8.1 Pro computers. Upgrade rights are only available with SA, one device per user. Do understand that if you cancel Intune, you'd be revoking your volume license rights.
Alex,
Under the old SA in a VL setup, let's say you bought Office Pro plus with SA, when you purchased it Office 2010 was out, but during your subscription, Office 2013 comes out.
Now say you discontinue your subscription. It is my understanding that you can use 2013 in perpetuity.Is the same true for machines that you purchase Intune with SA? So you have a Windows XP machine today, you buy Intune with SA which allows you to upgrade to Windows 8.1 Pro (or Enterprise if you wish). If you dump the SA portion of the subscription are you required to go back to XP on that computer? If that's the case, calling it SA was a bad decision as the rules would be different for two things with the same name.
The software, including the OS license, is provided on a subscription basis only. There is, however, a buyout option that's available for cancellations after the initial 12-month term. I'm not sure what the pricing on it is offhand, as that requires contacting MS directly.
Thanks - I do recall seeing something about a buyout.
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Also the VL with SA was only yours forever after the initial 3 year payment plan was completed.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@technobabble said:
It's funny...I originally looked at Office 365 as a way to get my clients on the new Office and at the same time benefit from the web apps and exchange. In my mind, I saw InTune as an extension of the same logic, get users off old OSes and add some management and tada! very small businesses are now updated and maintained. At least that was the idea.
Makes sense. It's that you are paying for the OS twice and in this case paying for the Enterprise upgrade that make it expensive. It would be cheaper to buy a volume license of Pro rather than the InTune of enterprise.
Also, consider the total cost. Getting a new PC with a Windows 8.1 OEM would probably make more financial sense in most cases.
True on the cost. However it is extremely hard to get businesses with 2-12 PCs and no server to upgrade hardware or software until something breaks. Biggest issue is that they have NO budget for IT at all.
