Dennis, what have been the most important changes in the UEM environment in the last few months?
From my point of view, and with the benefit of my experience, this is clearly the integration of desktop operating systems – meaning Windows 10 and 11, as well as macOS. These are being integrated ever more closely into the UEM solutions.
A few years ago, desktop support would only have been possible in the form of an inventory. This means that you were able to see the devices but there was no real way of managing them. In recent years and months, we are increasingly seeing how a connection is made to established solutions – established management solutions in the Windows environment such as group guidelines or SCCM.
So, now I think that we have reached the point that has been a topic of conversation for some time: the transition from Mobile Device Management to Unified Endpoint Management is taking place. It is not just mobile operating systems that are fully integrated, but also the desktop systems. Unified Endpoint Management has truly become reality.
And, in some respects, we have already moved on. With regard to certain functions, the UEM solutions have overtaken the existing solutions and now provide a level of convenience that admins have not previously enjoyed.
This will go even further in the future: we can already see that it will not just include the integration of desktop devices. It will be just as easy to manage IoT devices such as printers or scanners with UEM systems as it is for other operating systems, like Chrome OS and Linux.