News

Microsoft Moving Intune Subscription Portal to Office 365

• By Kurt Mackie
• September 02, 2015

Microsoft will soon scrap its Intune management portal and replace it with the Office 365 management portal, the company announced on Tuesday.

In response to customers indicating that they want fewer subscription management portals, Microsoft said it will do away with its Intune management portal used for Intune subscriptions "on or after September 28, 2015."

With this changeover, Intune users will get "more options and greater control when setting passwords," Microsoft promised. Only the management portal will change. Microsoft isn't adding its Intune mobile device management service to its Office 365 services.

In other licensing news, Microsoft announced Tuesday that it is now offering its Enterprise Cloud Suite through its Microsoft Products and Services Agreement (MPSA) program. The MPSA is a supposedly more streamlined contractual way of licensing Microsoft's software. Microsoft's announcement claims it's now possible to "choose between one, two, or three-year subscriptions with price protection for all incremental orders."

Microsoft's Enterprise Cloud Suite consists of access to Office 365 Enterprise E3 services, per-user Windows Software Assurance licensing and use of the Enterprise Mobility Suite. Microsoft's Enterprise Mobility Suite is a licensing bundle in itself, consisting of the rights to use three products: Windows Azure Active Directory Premium, Windows Intune and Windows Azure Rights Management Services.

Last month, Microsoft reminded its software licensees that it will be phasing out its Select Plus licensing in July 2016. Instead, new Select Plus licensing purchases will have to come through an MPSA. Microsoft claims that the MPSA adds greater licensing flexibility for organizations compared with Select Plus.