News

Windows Intune Being Renamed 'Microsoft Intune'

• By Kurt Mackie
• October 08, 2014

Windows Intune will become "Microsoft Intune" after its next major update, Microsoft announced on Wednesday.

It is unclear when the new name will take effect, though Microsoft has previously suggested that it updates Intune "roughly every quarter." The last update appears to have been rolled out in August, so possibly the name change will take effect late this year or early next year.

Microsoft's announcement of the pending name change likely surprised no one. The company has been on a product-renaming binge of late, which is consistent with past practices. For instance, Microsoft changed its Windows Azure cloud computing name to Microsoft Azure back in March. Its collection of browser-based Office apps, called Office Web Apps, got renamed to Office Online in February. It renamed its SkyDrive cloud storage service in January, calling it OneDrive in a bid to avoid litigation with the Sky Broadcasting Group.

The Intune name change has some logic to it. Intune is Microsoft's cloud-enabled mobile device management solution, but it doesn't just manage Windows devices.

"The 'Microsoft Intune' name more accurately represents Intune's capabilities, supporting both iOS and Android platforms, in addition to Windows," Microsoft's announcement explained.

These days, Microsoft seems quicker to issue products that support Apple's iOS or the Android mobile operating system over its own Windows OS. For instance, CEO Satya Nadella announced a touch-enhanced Office for the iPad suite in March even though such a touch-optimized Office for Windows hasn't been released yet. It's thought that this touch-optimized Windows version of Office will be available in the spring of 2015, according to an Office roadmap article by veteran Microsoft reporter Mary Jo Foley.

As for Intune, it already supports the latest iOS 8 mobile OS that Apple released in September, according to a blog post by Brad Anderson, Microsoft's corporate vice president for enterprise client and mobility. Anderson claimed that Intune will "just work" in managing devices using iOS 8. New Intune capabilities associated with iOS 8 include S/MIME encryption of e-mails, protection against data leakage with the new Handoff feature and the ability to set device-wipe restrictions. Microsoft's more traditional management product, System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager, also now supports iOS 8 via an extension for Intune.

Microsoft typically adds improvements to Intune on a rolling basis. In August, the company added e-mail profile provisioning using Exchange ActiveSync for iOS and Windows Phone 8/8.1 devices. It also added policy support in Intune for using Internet Explorer's Enterprise Mode, which enables IE 11 to emulate IE 8.

Intune is one of the solutions featured in Microsoft's Enterprise Mobility Suite for volume licensing customers, which kicked off in May. The Enterprise Mobility Suite also includes the rights to use Azure Active Directory Premium and Azure Rights Management Services.