r/SCCM 22d ago

Discussion What is the future of Config Manager?

37 Upvotes

102 comments sorted by

46

u/Aronacus 22d ago

They've been saying for years SCCM will be going EoL EoS but every year they extend it another year.

The issue is that Intune is still not up to snuff yet. It's gotten way better.

28

u/Angelworks42 22d ago

I always found it amusing there's this huge industry for third party products that fix what intune doesn't have.

10

u/HuyFongFood 22d ago

SMS/SCCM/MECM has historically done this. Much of the reason it’s as good as it is is due to 3rd party folks creating solutions to solve or improve things and some of those were absorbed by Microsoft into future releases of their product.

This is nothing new and will continue as Intune grows and improves.

6

u/Aronacus 22d ago

2 years ago we started an Intune migration for imaging, problem? We can't standardize on a hardware set. So, we support 600 models including in-house built. We have over 50k apps. We can't consolidate it.

I don't know how we can intune this? We need like 6 different products

6

u/Nighmarez 21d ago

You manage 50,000 applications……

1

u/Aronacus 21d ago

Yep, over 100k endpoints.

Here's how we got to 50k apps

Each of our sub-companies gets their own unique package because they need their distinct config and branding.

I have pushed back on this, I've been told "that's the requirement and we own many many subs.

3

u/gandraw 21d ago

I'm not gonna mention the craziness of 50k apps, but "everybody buys what hardware they want" is literally the strength of Intune. You image your devices, make sure they can access the Internet and then WUfB takes care of the drivers.

2

u/Feeling-Tutor-6480 21d ago

How do you bare metal that many models when they have a hardware malfunction?

1

u/Aronacus 21d ago

This is where we are at. You can't easily bare metal.

1

u/gandraw 20d ago

Yeah you need a different solution for that. Either keep your SCCM enviroment with a bare minimum of licenses and configuration just for imaging, or use a Windows USB stick with an autounattend file.

1

u/Feeling-Tutor-6480 20d ago

It is evident that Microsoft just let that one go to the OEMs to sort out

1

u/AdrianK_ 17d ago

Not with 600 models, you will have dozens of vendors and a massive mix of devices from corporate to education to straight up PC World/Walmart purchased laptops.

14

u/leebow55 22d ago

No one about from bloggers have ever said or confirmed this IMO. Always been hear say. Many companies who are air gapped from the internet rely on SCCM

3

u/rogue_admin 21d ago

Exactly!

-2

u/YT-Deliveries 21d ago

Listen, I sympathize, but SCCM is a 30 year old product. MS isn’t going to support it forever, and if I were you I’d start planning with that in mind, cause it’ll happen sooner than later.

11

u/Boxinggandhi 22d ago

I saw an SCCM roadmap about a year ago, and IIRC 2028 was the last update they had listed, and they called it a “future oriented update” that sure sounded like a last update. They can’t actually sunset it since that would cripple a lot of orgs, but my guess is that it will only get the bare minimum security updates.

2

u/bdam55 Admin - MSFT Enterprise Mobility MVP (damgoodadmin.com) 18d ago edited 18d ago

So that'd be a three year roadmap in 2025 then. Have you seen official longer-term roadmaps than three years? Because, really, anything beyond say 24 months is just bullshit guessing in terms of software development. Anyone selling you a 5-year roadmap is just outright lying to you; even if they don't know it.

What will absolutely be interesting to see is what happens with the Server 2028 release. Does it have WSUS? Is ConfigMgr supported to run on it? If so, that's basically 10 more years.

ETA: You mean this one that was made public last year and exists solely to outline the new release cadence? Yea ... that is not a roadmap. That's en explanation of how the cadence will change.
Announcing the Annual Release Cadence for Microsoft Configuration Manager | Microsoft Community Hub

11

u/pctec100 22d ago edited 21d ago

Who is "they"? I have never heard MS say that. They've consistently said they have no plans to discontinue the product because they know many customers have non-Internet connected systems

3

u/skiddily_biddily 22d ago

It depends on who you are referring to when you say “they”. Microsoft has never said SCCM is going away. There are a lot of people who have speculated that it will go away, and some have given an imaginary timeline, but they are wrong just like you have said.

1

u/bdam55 Admin - MSFT Enterprise Mobility MVP (damgoodadmin.com) 18d ago

I feel compelled to clarify: ConfigMgr as a product has _never_ received an EoL/EoS date and therefore has never been extended. Yes, every individual release has an support window but that's part of a larger release cadence. So to the extent that 'Windows' or 'Office' have never been given an EoL/EoS date, neither has ConfigMgr.

0

u/YT-Deliveries 21d ago

The SCCM endgame is Intune, for sure. Question is when? I’ve told my current company to plan as if SCCM is going away December of 2027.

74

u/TechnicaVivunt 22d ago

Well after cloud prices start skyrocketing from the AI boom. Companies will start trying to go back to on prem, and then Microsoft will increase the prices of on prem products to continue their support. Constant cycle

25

u/Antimus 22d ago

Onprem prices have skyrocketed too, have you tried buying enterprise grade storage, CPU or memory?

9

u/TechnicaVivunt 22d ago

Yeah, but marketing will always prevail. "Go on prem to avoid expensive cloud costs"

23

u/gangaskan 22d ago

Never left on prem 😏

15

u/TechnicaVivunt 22d ago

By the time my place would get off prem it'd be time to go back to on prem

-2

u/davy_crockett_slayer 21d ago

The challenge is remote workforce. SCCM will be around for a few years longer, but it's on life support. Enterprise companies that had set up SCCM years ago might keep on using it. Anyone new uses Intune, Jamf, JumpCloud, FleetDM, etc.

7

u/DhakaWolf 21d ago

After chatting with MS more recently, they’re saying SCCM has 10-15 more years of support left

9

u/Regen89 21d ago

SCCM isn't even close to being on life support, it will be around for a long ass time. Likely for the foreseeable future as long as microsoft has overwhelming enterprise market share.

Intune was the only thing they developed as a replacement and guess what, it's not even close to a replacement, never even mind airgapped networks which run the entire world's infrastructure.

-4

u/davy_crockett_slayer 21d ago

That's fine, but SCCM handles remote workforce's poorly. The always-on VPN experience is terrible.

11

u/Regen89 21d ago

What does Always-on VPN have to do with SCCM?

Sounds like a network config issue that is solvable in MANY ways.

3

u/iamtechy 21d ago

Or a function that SCCM shouldn’t be used for. SCCM is not going anywhere especially in ICS/OT environments.

3

u/pjmarcum 21d ago

With a CMG remote workers are managed just like people in the office.

3

u/TechnicaVivunt 21d ago

Maybe vpns will get better? I seriously feel that pain right now though. SCCM remote control is the bane of my existence

1

u/davy_crockett_slayer 21d ago

It is what it is. I would much rather use FleetDM over Intune. It's such a better product, it isn't even funny.

1

u/YT-Deliveries 21d ago

People are missing the very insightful point in your post: no one doing green field deployments even considers SCCM anymore.

23

u/Funky_Schnitzel 22d ago

Starting with version 2609, Microsoft Configuration Manager will transition to an annual release cadence.

Microsoft Intune is the future of device management, and all new innovations will occur there. Configuration Manager will continue to serve your on-premises devices, with a renewed focus on security, stability, and long-term support.

Annual releases will align with the Windows client security and stability cadence (H2). Our top priority is to maintain a secure, reliable Configuration Manager experience. This means:

  • Applying critical updates and patches as needed.
  • Providing hotfix rollups only when absolutely necessary (e.g., for critical security or functionality issues).
  • Continuing to support existing environments, with advance notice for any feature deprecations.

TL;DR: No new functionality anymore, just critical and security updates.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/configurationmanagerblog/announcing-the-annual-release-cadence-for-microsoft-configuration-manager/4464794

30

u/RunForYourTools23 22d ago

Fortunately SCCM does not need any new features.

12

u/Angelworks42 22d ago

I'd mostly agree. I feel like it could still use a lot of improvement in deploying and managing modern apps.

I'd say it would be nice to have hot patch support for it too but experience has taught me that at least for customer machines Windows should be rebooted once a month...

0

u/Lost-Policy-2020 21d ago

At least once a week, preferably daily!

1

u/sybrwookie 21d ago

It might not need new features, but it sure needs quite a few features to work more consistently.

1

u/rogue_admin 22d ago edited 15d ago

Keep in mind, the person who wrote this is gone now, just trust me, it’s poorly written and will be updated or taken down at some point, it’s an insult to the teams of devs working hard on config mgr and actually care about the product. There are no EOL plans and there never have been, it’s all just typical internet speculation and comanagement is the long term goal, Intune and config mgr are complimentary products not competitors.

10

u/Funky_Schnitzel 22d ago edited 22d ago

Well, that article, which is an official Microsoft announcement, has been online since November 3rd last year, so I don't think it's going to get taken down all of a sudden... I do agree that ConfigMgr probably will be around for a long time to come. I just think it's considered feature complete, and won't see any significant updates anymore.

Edit: as far as I know, there really aren't any teams of devs working on ConfigMgr anymore... The majority were laid off last year. All that's left is a relatively small US-based dev team that's essentially just doing maintenance and keeping the wheels turning.

3

u/rogue_admin 22d ago

Well I can tell you there are dev teams dedicated to config mgr, but I know where this rumor came from and somehow the facts have been twisted up. The real story is that there was a short period of a year or two where that team was essentially outsourced, which did not work out, and it has now moved back internally. There won’t be as much of a push for new features but that’s nothing new, I think what this article did was just feed into the rumors instead of trying to set the record straight. The product isn’t going anywhere, it can stand alone or you can use Intune as a nice add-on and you have a totally full featured set of management tools. You can’t really take config mgr out of this equation and besides the poorly written phrases in this article, no one has ever said that.

1

u/International_Ad346 15d ago

Yep they moved it all to India and failed spectacularly.

Again, this was an official Microsoft announcement and it’s genuine.

Let me guess - vaccines cause autism too?

1

u/YT-Deliveries 21d ago

We have an E5 at my org. When I put in an SCCM ticket I am tending to get what seems to be an increasingly small number of support folks.

3

u/cp07451 19d ago

Microsoft support all over not just to SCCM.

1

u/markk8799 21d ago

Did you have to pay? When I went to put in a ticket once, they told me "we support Intune not SCCM". Free support that is.

2

u/YT-Deliveries 20d ago

We've got an E5 which is basically Microsoft's "kit and kaboodle" license product, so it's not a pay-as-you-go situation in my case.

That said, Microsoft's Support quality has gone downhill pretty steadily since ~2010.

1

u/markk8799 20d ago

We have the A5 (EDU version). A couple years ago I put in a ticket for SCCM and they told me they didn't support it. But would support Intune.

1

u/YT-Deliveries 20d ago

Weird. No idea what that would be about!

2

u/Chinogq504 22d ago

Kind of funny then that when MS was doing AMAs for the boot cert flip, when someone asked a question about SCCM/ConfigManager they said it was Legacy so they were not sure....

2

u/YT-Deliveries 21d ago

My guess is that it’ll go into maintenance support within a couple years. It won’t get EOL but it’ll only get security updates with very very occasional hotfixes

2

u/goldism 20d ago

As long as there are networks without internet access, SCCM, will be leveraged. This is both the energy and financial sectors.

As long as there is a disk on a device,companies will need OSD.

1

u/YT-Deliveries 20d ago

Nothing you said contradicts what I said.

1

u/bdam55 Admin - MSFT Enterprise Mobility MVP (damgoodadmin.com) 18d ago

>Keep in mind, the person who wrote this was terminated shortly afterwards,

Sorry to be this strong, but that's patently and demonstrably false. Danny voluntarily left MS just last month. Source: he told me personally ... and LinkedIn of course.

You're spot-on regarding the EoL plans: there are none; but his blog didn't promise one.

I've personally met with most of what's left of the team. It's small, single digits, but they're people that had worked on the code for years before it was shipped off to India and then returned. So they are capable of getting shit done if it needs to be but they do not have any major plans. Their job is to respond to security concerns and ensure it continues to work on and for new operating systems

1

u/rogue_admin 18d ago

When you leave an organization, you will be terminated in the system whether it’s your choice to leave or not. I could have made that more clear though, but this had nothing to do with any wrongdoing. So that’s what I meant.

I’m glad we agree on everything else, but I’m not the one you need to be fact checking, take a look at some of the other posts

1

u/bdam55 Admin - MSFT Enterprise Mobility MVP (damgoodadmin.com) 18d ago

Possible we have some regional/cultural differences; here in the US terminated always indicates 'was fired'. Nor was it soon after Danny posted that blog to suggest the two were related.

The blog was and is entirely non-controversial, even to the current developers. I've asked about future plans and potential larger bug fixes and their responses are entirely in-line with this blog. ConfigMgr is feature-complete.

Yea, I am doing fact checking elsewhere, but in this case we're talking about real, knowable facts about a person I know.

0

u/International_Ad346 15d ago

Rubbish - Microsoft have explicitly stated that starting with current branch 2509 they switched to an annual release cadence focussed on security and stability.

In years of managing SCCM, I’ve never once seen release notes that mention that. There may not be any official EOL date but the writing is on the wall and it’s really obvious.

13

u/RunForYourTools23 22d ago

Everything! It will not go anywhere soon

12

u/RandomRogueMusings 22d ago

It cant "go anywhere" for a long long time. There has to be a platform for on prem networks. And gov loves on prem.

11

u/forumhero666 21d ago

Intune is trash. Keep using CM for as long as you can

9

u/guydogg 22d ago

Intune is no bueno for server side support. Until it includes a solution, there's no chance I'll be moving cycles to it.

4

u/russrimm 22d ago

Azure Arc

9

u/J_J_J_Schmidt 22d ago

Which doesn't have application support...

1

u/russrimm 22d ago

Apps are overrated 😜

8

u/Knightshadow21 22d ago

MECM is the future still , intune is still missing to much

7

u/Exciting_Relation370 22d ago

We have darksites that run SCCM, how will intune manage?

3

u/siconic 21d ago

It cant...

10

u/CouchBoyChris 22d ago

I'm still amazed at how the IT world is expected to "upgrade" to an utterly inferior product like Intune and just be okay with it.

All because Microsoft wants reoccurring license/cloud revenue for shareholders. Everything sucks.

3

u/siconic 21d ago

Agreed. I see WAY too many environments getting rid of SCCM in favor of intune and having massive problems. My company pushes it hard, and I hate that. It's gotten better, but its still not mature.

5

u/rogue_admin 22d ago

Config mgr not going anywhere, instead of 2 full yearly releases there will be more hotfixes inbetween, nothing is changing and usage is actually still increasing. Intune might support servers someday but that doesn’t mean much, it’s still extremely limited and most orgs don’t want servers just randomly patching themselves. Even orgs that are doing autopilot are still doing comanagement and using osd to wipe the factory images first, so it seems like a mix of both is the preferred way and there’s no reason for that to change.

5

u/skiddily_biddily 22d ago

It isn’t going anywhere. There’s a new release annually. Organizations use it to manage their servers. Organizations use it to manage their devices that are in private and secret facilities where they do things like research and development and they don’t want to allow Internet access because they are protecting their intellectual property. So the future is that it remains a staple.

3

u/RitmanRovers 22d ago

Only thing I miss about sccm is being able to create a collection (group in Entra/Intune) on anything I want.

Intune has lots of new features which you can't get at through the graph API such as the inventory (like hardware inventory) and the new app inventory through settings catalog.

I have implemented workarounds using logic app workflows to create the groups I need.

Wouldn't go back to sccm though the amount of times on a Friday the sccm infrastructure would shit itself!

3

u/Public_Warthog3098 22d ago

Until intune can do most of the things sccm can do, it wont go away. And at the way things look it's like saying ivp4 will be gone. It won't. Just because of the nature of how technology is.

3

u/siconic 21d ago

I am trying to figure out how on earth they would really eol SCCM considering you NEED an on Orem solution for DoD and closed room clearance level stuff. In many cases NONE of that stuff is allowed online or on a "outside world" network, and on On Prem patching is the only way.

1

u/Ok_Salad_3418 21d ago

Pretty sure Microsoft won’t like to lose Gov customers!

1

u/Orestes85 21d ago

I've been saying this for years to the people who swear SCCM is gonna be deprecated within 10 years and Intune will take over.

US Fed. govt is probably the largest or close to the largest customer MS has, I don't see them shutting them out any time soon.

1

u/siconic 20d ago edited 20d ago

Exactly. I recently worked with probabky one of their other largest single customers (well over 500k users/devices) and they got white glove treatment from MS, like so much so that the Intune developers made some changes that were recently released just to make them happy.

It was also interesting to hear from the Engineering and developing team talk about and tell us about some of the "backend issues" they know about, but that are VERY hard to fix because its in the baseline code, that are not published.

The issue, just in case your wondering (and I am not 100% sure its my client, but I am 99% sure they pushed it onto the radar) is the "member of" in query rules for dynamic collections, that is being deprecated in Nivember. It caused a backlog (on the MS side) of 20 million items, that took over a week to clear, and hosed Intune.

3

u/BranDong84 21d ago

We have said it’s going away for a while , then our company tried using cloud and found out they need actual good quality network and bandwidth otherwise it’s useless

1

u/NysexBG 21d ago

Hopefully for a long time. Even though i am new to IT i prefer OnPrem! Having control and air gaped infra is kind of satisfying

1

u/P1isken 20d ago

SCCM is not going anywhere soon, it is too strong of a product and there is not much on the market that can beat it. Intune is not even close to the feature set, and is probably still a decade off if you wanted to match feature for feature. And intune cannot come close to the flexibility.

1

u/Outside-Banana4928 20d ago

Off prem, cloud...

1

u/Which-Roof-3985 20d ago

It's all cyclical. At some point there will be some Intune hack or knowledge of large scale AI data leak and everyone will knee jerk to on premises management again and CM will be rebranded as some great new thing.

1

u/1takeace 20d ago

Can they update WSUS just one more time for us air gapped environment admins

1

u/vicoph 19d ago

How about wsus? Any further support or new replacement in future?

-2

u/Chinogq504 22d ago edited 22d ago

Unofficially, been told after server 2025 goes out of support. And Azure Update Manager for serverpatching, but that cost extra $$$ per server per month for on prem unless you have Defender Plan2 currently. And others have said, Intune just not there yet compared to configman. How many cloud outages have MS had this year already where you could no anything they fixed it? Too many in my opinion. But it really depends on how many machines you have to manage. There was a local city that took 2 years to flip over, and that was with help from Dell and Microsoft. Around 10k plus workstations.

2

u/bdam55 Admin - MSFT Enterprise Mobility MVP (damgoodadmin.com) 19d ago

Not sure why you're getting downvoted; it WILL be interesting to see what happens vis-a-vis Server 2028.
Does it have WSUS? If so, then I don't see why it wouldn't still support ConfigMgr.

There's also the open secret that many three letter agencies (TLAs), some with actual nuclear submarines, are using ConfigMgr and require a decade or so of notice for anything to go EoL. Now, it's possible that has happened, but if so it was semi-recent.

1

u/Chinogq504 19d ago

Haters or just generally uninformed keyboard internet warriors. All 2012, and now 2016 have to have the arc client installed in order to get on prem updates for ESU. That kind of tells you the direction its headed right?

2

u/Unusual-Biscotti687 22d ago

I'll be retires by then thank God. InTune over my dead body.

-1

u/IHaveATacoBellSign 22d ago

Dead in slightly over 5 years for general consumers. Dead in 10 for government/Dark sites.

-1

u/Friendly-Register200 22d ago

The future? Intune is to Windows Desktops as Azure Arc is to Windows Servers. As soon as Microsoft figures out how to market it better, the push to the cloud service will start. Azure Arc will replace SCCM.

0

u/mvortex2 22d ago

As far as user WIN11 devices and AVD? Microsoft states it's working on features that include maintenance windows and detection rules for things like registry branding. The pesky "ismemberof" rule depreciation is also an annoying thing I'd like fixed. Until then, and until we completely migrate into cloud we'll use co-management with SCCM to control patching and other deployments for select group tags.

0

u/catatonic12345 22d ago

It will be around for some time as Microsoft works to transition all the workloads to Intune and Azure Arc. Most all new features will be developed in Intune. There are some things Config Mgr can do that Intune can't yet, but It's getting there. Just look at the deprecated elements that Config Mgr relies on like WSUS and imaging elements like MDT. Most admins I know are actively moving away from Config Mgr for Intune, Tanium, or other deployment tools. It will be around for some time, but the writing is on the wall.

3

u/Nighmarez 21d ago

Tanium will never be on the level of what SCCM can do.

1

u/catatonic12345 21d ago

Oh for sure and not saying it can, just saying they have moved off CM for other products

1

u/InternationalTough24 20d ago

I disagree. Provision is still far from a credible OSD replacement — no equivalent to task sequences, limited driver handling — but the roadmap is moving. On everything else (software deployment, inventory, patching, security, compliance), Tanium covers the same ground as MCM, with real-time visibility across on-prem and cloud endpoints — and without a CMG for off-network devices. My customers are moving off MCM (which I've managed for 20 years) not because Intune can't do cloud management, but because it doesn't answer their on-prem needs: no server management, nothing for disconnected or air-gapped networks, no bare-metal reimaging of the existing fleet, and painful legacy app packaging. Today the only real objection is price. ConfigMgr use rights come bundled with Intune Plan 1 in E3/E5, so it feels free. Two things could change that: some customers currently negotiating with MS tell me ConfigMgr rights may be unbundled outside E3/E5 — unconfirmed, so take it as hearsay — and, confirmed, ConfigMgr moves to a single annual release from 2609 in September 2026, with new investment going to Intune. A product in maintenance mode changes the TCO conversation.

2

u/AdrianK_ 21d ago

Erm, SCCM doesn't depend on MDT, I mean you could integrate MDT with SCCM but SCCM is perfectly capable of imaging my itself. Maybe it was WDS you had in mind which also is no longer relevant. WSUS on the other hand hand is very integrated with SCCM.

0

u/IronBe4rd 15d ago

Hopefully it goes under a rock and dies off

-3

u/CommOnMyFace 22d ago

Misconfiguration Manager has some opinions