Migrating Applications from SCCM to Intune
APPtechnology was approached by a maritime firm to assist with migration of 200 applications from Microsoft System Centre Configuration Manager (SCCM) to Intune to support a cloud first policy and move to Autopilot remote builds.
Business Drivers
Removal of legacy infrastructure
The current SCCM infrastructure was built on a traditional on-premises hardware, migrating to Intune allowed for a reduction in operational costs as they moved from physical to virtual infrastructure managed service costs.
Flexibility and Mobility
The migration to Intune supported the needs where many employees were working remotely or on mobile devices, across 180 offices Globally, requiring a more flexible application deployment strategy.
User Experience
The key to this migration was a non-destructive, seamless transition from SCCM management to Intune application management, with zero user impact. Taking existing SCCM packages, amending for the differences in technology deployment methods, and ensuring that detection methods allowed seamless adoption of previously deployed applications was critical. The migration supported the needs for an enhanced the end-user experience by also enabling self-service application installation and updates.
Cloud-First Strategy
This migration supported the ongoing cloud-first strategy, aiming to leverage cloud technologies to improve scalability and efficiency.
Objectives
The goal was to successfully migrate all 200 applications from SCCM to Intune while ensuring compatibility and functionality and ensuring that once added into Intune there would be no adverse impact on pre-existing deployments in the estate.
Approach
1. Assessment and Inventory
The IT team conducted a thorough assessment of 600 applications, rationalising to identify dependencies, compatibility issues, and priority for migration.
2. Application Retrieval
APPtechnology remotely retrieved each approved SCCM application and checked SCCM for any technical configurations outside of the application package content and intelligence.
3. Application Packaging
Applications were repackaged for Intune, taking into consideration the specific requirements and limitations of the new platform.
4. Intune Import
Having agreed the process for the customer to pre-create Azure AD groups for Pilot testing based on package naming, APPtechnology imported packaged applications into Intune, configuring install, uninstall, dependencies and detection methods, and added each application to its nominated pilot user group to allow Pilot and user acceptance testing as appropriate.
5. Testing
Each application underwent rigorous testing to ensure proper functionality on both SCCM and Intune-managed devices.
Conclusion
Migrating 200 applications from SCCM to Intune was a complex and strategic undertaking. The successful migration not only improved operational efficiency and reduced costs but also aligned with the company's cloud-first strategy and improved the overall user experience. The project highlighted the importance of meticulous planning, testing, and user communication in achieving a seamless transition. The project was delivered for a fixed price, on time and on budget with a 100% success rate.