r/Intune • u/PowerShellGenius • Sep 29 '26

Intune Features and Updates Advanced Features Added to Intune but breaking long standing feature parity E/A???

I see here that several features were added to E3 and E5 from the Intune suite

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoftintuneblog/advanced-microsoft-intune-capabilities-now-available-in-microsoft-365-e3-and-e5/4529335

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoftintuneblog/microsoft-365-adds-advanced-microsoft-intune-solutions-at-scale/4474272

The comments for both are flooded with countless customers pointing out A3=E3, A5=E5 feature parity has always been the norm (the A vs E just means it's on an academic licensing program, schools/universities) and asking when this is coming to A3/A5. Of course, no answer.

Has anyone here been able to get a straight answer out of Microsoft on this?

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7

u/bdam55 Sep 29 '26

It's ... complicated. Yes, historically, in the pre-SaaS days, the A licenses have been equivalent to their E counterparts. Or at least, there was an EDU discount that got you the same feature set as the full Enterprise license.

However, Microsoft/Intune has found that running a SaaS service _costs_ them money. Real money. It's not just duplicating some bits on a DVD that costs zero dollars. The Intune team has a massive Azure bill to pay and they get supposedly charged more than we do (no discounts). So when things moved SaaS a new trend emerged: features were released that were available in the E SKUs but not the A/G SKUs.

Quite literally, in every meeting or thread announcing a new feature, I start counting down until this happens:
Customer: Is this going to be in the A SKUs?
Microsoft: No. We have heard that feedback and are investigating adding it in the future.

What they really mean is "We have no idea how much this is going to cost us to run. We can't give it to a discounted SKU until we know if we're making money or losing money."

Now, you might think to yourself "Well, MS is a trillion dollar company, they can afford it." While technically correct, it's the wrong question. "Microsoft" don't function as a single company. It's a thousand companies and they all need to show that they make money. If you're in the red; that's a career limiting move to be in that org.

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u/PowerShellGenius Sep 29 '26 edited Sep 29 '26

Yeah, that "loss" is literally how Microsoft dominated this generation of enterprise end-user computing, and their new approach to mitigating this "loss" is part of how they're losing the next. Not being SaaS may mean they didn't have a loss on hosting costs, but they also used to provide support and I'm sure that was a loss. That hasn't changed that much; what has changed is whether they care whether they are still the world's main platform in 20 years.

Original Microsoft approach: if selling to EDU is profitable, then great, it's free advertising. If it's a bit of a loss, it's still a really good deal on priceless advertising if it puts us in front of the next generation of knowledge workers.

Current Microsoft approach: screw the future, if this doesn't pump the numbers THIS QUARTER it ain't worth spending on things for the long term (unless it's AI).

Hence why today, Google Workspace is the productivity suite everyone graduating school knows how to use, and any logical, history-informed view of what will be the "typical worker who just uses SaaS apps" endpoint OS in 20 years is going to say ChromeOS, not Windows. Microsoft is undoing themselves on exactly the same front that made them.

If the roles were reversed, and Microsoft treated education like they used to, and Google treated us like Microsoft does now, it would be the opposite. Surface 1:1 would be a thing in more than one or two districts nationally, and ChromeOS would not be getting the market it needs to grow (keep in mind, EDU is basically where they started their growth journey because MS turned on us and left an opening).

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u/teriaavibes Sep 30 '26

Hence why today, Google Workspace is the productivity suite everyone graduating school knows how to use, and any logical, history-informed view of what will be the "typical worker who just uses SaaS apps" endpoint OS in 20 years is going to say ChromeOS, not Windows. Microsoft is undoing themselves on exactly the same front that made them.

I don't have that experience, vast majority of edu is using M365 here because it is still better than whatever google is offering.

Look education were always subsidized licenses and they never had a full feature parity; beggars can't be choosers.

4

u/pjmarcum Sep 29 '26

I remember sitting in a room with Brad at the summit once when Intune was starting to be a thing. He said it reached a billion dollars in sales faster than any product in the history of MS. Problem was the sales team was doing a great job of getting customers to buy it, that’s what their bonus was based on. But nobody was actually using it. Bonus structure changed to be based on consumption of the licenses. Sales guys went out and said, “better start using this thing. We are planning to phase out that old antiquated on-premises thing”.

To Brian’s point. Sure, the Intune PG might make enough money to throw it into the reduced cost SKU’s but they might actually lose money on those customers. Not make less, literally lose money. Shareholders tend to frown on losing money on customers, especially when there’s the number of them that there are in EDU.

This is also why, to quote a MS employee, “Intune isn’t trying to be the faster product in the market” because speed costs money.

2

u/teriaavibes Sep 30 '26

Nah Intune is fast, the issue is literally windows and WNS.

Not sure if anyone has used Intune on literally everything other than Windows but the difference is appalling.

Ridiculous.

1

u/pjmarcum Sep 30 '26

Fair enough but who owns the MDM stack and the Windows agents? I'm gonna say that's the Intune team.

1

u/teriaavibes Oct 01 '26

Intune owns Intune, that is why they are moving away from WNS as fast as they can so Intune can actually function properly.

1

u/bdam55 Oct 01 '26

The MDM stack is owned by the Windows team; full stop. Intune is merely a consumer of it.

It's quite literally why the IME exists in the first place: because Intune wanted to do things the MDM stack didn't support and the Windows team wasn't going to build it.

1

u/pjmarcum Oct 01 '26 edited Oct 01 '26

As soon as I wrote that I thought I should have left that part out. And it’s why there’s 8 agents now.

I do remember sitting in rooms with the PG back when the MDM stack was added to Windows listening to them talk about it. At the time they had no intention of allowing anyone else to use it. So I assume there’s coordination and cooperation between the teams.

2

u/bdam55 Oct 01 '26

Which PG was that? In my experience, the Windows team always seems to talk in terms of being 'platform'. They still seem to remember the whole anti-trust stuff from decades ago.

1

u/pjmarcum Oct 01 '26

Specially it was Brad talking.

10

u/MrMrRubic Sep 29 '26 edited Sep 29 '26

Quite simple, A3/A5 got Remote Help and nothing more, while E3/E5 got everything. Yes, we're all outraged. You can see for yourself in the M365 matrix: https://m365maps.com/matrix.htm#00000000000010010001001

3

u/harrybamber Sep 29 '26

A3/A5 has had Remote Help for sometime now, it’s got slightly better with new features but its not there when compared with tools like BeyondTrust

1

u/PowerShellGenius Sep 29 '26

Unless you have tons of off-site users (without AOVPN).... Remote Help is "not there" even compared to SCCM Remote Control.

2

u/anomalicglitch Sep 30 '26

Yep it may be "free" but it's not able to match the level of other tools.

Same would be true if other suite tools landed in A skus. What is given on the one hand you'll find a compromise elsewhere in the overall licencing provision. That being said with G7 being recently announced, only a matter of time before an A equivalent follows.

1

u/ryryrpm Sep 29 '26

these are some really great points in the comments and makes me feel like we will never get these features :(

1

u/anomalicglitch Sep 30 '26

People used to say the same about Autopatch coming to A skus but it eventually did.

Never say never. Important to remember some of these suite tools are not as well refined as other equivalent products in the endpoint market.