Intune Suite: is it worth the price premium?
Microsoft announced Intune Suite as a premium add-on to Intune Plan 1. At $10/user/month, it's not cheap. Here's my assessment of whether the value is there.
Microsoft launched the Intune Suite as a separately licensed add-on in March 2023 at $10/user/month (on top of your existing M365 licence). That's not trivial. For a 500-user organisation, you're looking at $60,000 per year.
So: is it worth it? Let me work through what you're actually getting and for whom it makes sense.
What's in Intune Suite
The Suite bundles several capabilities that were previously separate or unavailable:
Microsoft Tunnel for Mobile Application Management (MAM): VPN-like per-app access to corporate resources from unmanaged devices, specifically BYOD phones and tablets where you can't require device enrollment. This is useful for organisations with significant BYOD populations who need to securely access on-premises resources.
Endpoint Privilege Management (EPM): Allows standard users to request elevated privileges for specific tasks, with audit logging and approval workflows. Replaces the approach of giving users admin rights because they need to install one application; they can request elevation for that specific task without being local admins permanently.
Remote Help: A support tool built into Intune that allows IT teams to remotely assist users, including in scenarios without VPN (using Azure relay). Has compliance checking built in: you can see the device's compliance state before connecting.
Advanced Analytics: Enhanced reporting and predictive insights: battery health prediction, device anomaly detection, resource performance analysis.
Specialty device management: Management for specific device types including HoloLens and shared Android devices.
The value case, component by component
Endpoint Privilege Management is the strongest case for most organisations. The problem of users needing admin rights for legacy reasons is extremely common, and EPM provides a structured, auditable alternative. If you have even 20% of your user base with inappropriate local admin rights (which is not unusual), the security improvement from addressing this is substantial.
Remote Help is genuinely useful for organisations with significant work-from-home populations where TeamViewer or similar tools are the current solution. The Intune integration and compliance checking are the differentiators. If you're currently paying for a third-party remote support tool, this replaces it.
Microsoft Tunnel for MAM is most valuable for organisations with a significant BYOD population and on-premises resources that can't move to cloud. If you're a cloud-first organisation with no on-premises dependencies, this is low value.
Advanced Analytics provides nice-to-have insights but isn't mission-critical for most organisations.
Who should buy it
The Intune Suite makes sense for organisations that:
- Have a clear local admin rights problem they need to solve (EPM)
- Are paying for a separate remote support tool (Remote Help)
- Have a significant BYOD use case for on-premises resources (Tunnel for MAM)
It probably doesn't make sense for smaller organisations or those where the existing Intune Plan 1 capabilities meet their needs. At $10/user/month, the individual capabilities need to justify the cost against alternatives. EPM is unique, but the others have credible alternatives at lower per-user cost.
My recommendation: scope which capabilities you'd actually use before buying the Suite. If EPM and Remote Help together address real problems, the Suite is worth it. If you're buying it for Advanced Analytics alone, probably not.
