Microsoft Windows Intune review

Don't let the name fool you, Windows Intune isn't an online music store. It's a far less glamorous hosted management service, designed to enable small to medium-sized businesses to gain control of Windows desktops remotely via the cloud.

More specifically, Windows Intune provides tools to approve, distribute and install Microsoft software updates, and ensure that desktop PCs are adequately protected against viruses and other malware.

It can also be used to keep track of hardware and software assets and proactively monitor PC status, and does all this far more simply and cheaply than using conventional on-premise management solutions.

To check out Intune we signed up for a free 30-day trial, giving us immediate access to the browser-based console used to administer and manage the service.

Resellers can manage multiple customer sites from this console, but we had just the one and, having logged on, our first task was to download the Windows agent required for Intune to work and install it on the desktops we wanted to manage.

This we did on an individual basis directly from the Intune web site, but the agent can be rolled out on a larger network by copying to CD or USB stick or using group policy or other software distribution tool.

Initial installation took just a few minutes and it was good to find that the managed PCs could be part of a peer-to-peer workgroup - common in small businesses - rather than having to be members of an Active Directory domain.

Behind the scenes, however, Intune actually installs quite a few bits of client software, plus it needs to check-in with the Intune servers in the cloud and collect inventory information. All this takes time - around half an hour in some cases - although the PCs on our network were all usable while this was happening.

We tested using Windows 7, but there's support for 32-bit and 64-bit implementations of Windows XP (SP2 or SP3 is required) and Windows Vista. Unfortunately servers can't be managed but virtual desktops can, including Windows 7 PCs running XP Mode VMs.

It's also worth noting that, as part of the Intune subscription, every managed PC is eligible to be upgraded to Windows 7 Enterprise (or any future release of Windows that comes along) at no extra cost.

OK, you can't perform the upgrade to Windows 7 using Intune - it lacks the necessary software distribution tools - but it's a valuable option nonetheless.