With the latest release of Intune D, you now have the option to use Direct Management, or Active Sync for connecting mobile devices they both have benefits.
Direct Management takes it a step further, and give you control over MDM and application management. Direct Managing takes you beyond policies and connecting your devices to exchange environments be it on Prem or in the Cloud.
Below is just a few features that both Direct Management and ActiveSync share, and a few that are what make Direct Management a great new feature.
Windows Intune direct management and Exchange ActiveSync management features
Unified management experience across computers and mobile devices with the following features:
- A single console to manage computers and mobile devices
- User-centric views for device inventory
- Deploy policies to user groups to help secure corporate data that is stored on mobile devices such as password, encryption, and attachments.
- Define mobile device access rules by device family and device model to set which mobile devices can access Exchange ActiveSync.
- Enroll, rename, and un-enroll devices.
- Retire mobile devices with the option to wipe the mobile device, such as for lost or stolen devices.
- Exchange ActiveSync provides you with the ability to manage mobile devices directly or through Exchange ActiveSync. Exchange devices can be managed in both on premises servers and for hosted Exchange on Microsoft Office 365 in the cloud.
Windows Intune direct management gives you with the following additional features
- External Link: You can provide a link address to an application on the Windows Store, Windows Phone Store, or iTunes App Store. In addition, this can be a link to a web-based application that runs on the device through the device’s web browser.
- Software installer: You can provide a signed application package that is uploaded to the Windows Intune service directly and then side loaded onto managed devices.
- Users can contact IT from their mobile devices.
- Users can discover and download internally developed line-of-business applications.
- You can provide richer management through additional policy settings.
- You can manage Windows RT, Windows Phone 8, and iOS devices without any on-premise infrastructure setup requirements.
As you can see both are great ways to go, Direct Management just gives you that needed edge of controlling mobile devices in your environment. If you team this with SCCM 2012 SP1 and the Windows Intune Connector you now have a very powerful singe pane of glass reality.
