Rejoice! Gone are the days of having to wait hours, or even days, for your shiny new business laptop to be ready for use after it is delivered. With Windows Autopilot, part of the Microsoft Intune suite, there’s no need to schedule in a visit from your IT provider to configure a laptop or desktop for use by your staff – once Autopilot has been correctly set up, the entire process from the moment the machine has arrived in your office and connected to the Internet can be automated. No more worrying about whether all required applications are installed, or whether Bitlocker disk encryption is enabled to protect your corporate asset – this is all part of the out-of-the-box experience. Ensuring that corporate devices are consistently configured every time they are deployed is known as maintaining a Standard Operating Environment (or SOE), and has historically required significant investment in both infrastructure and effort. There are a number of reasons that having a SOE is important to a business, such as:
- Ensuring security policies are adhered to
- User experience – making sure that staff have all the right tools to perform their job from the moment the computer is placed on their desk
- Reducing the amount of time taken to resolve IT issues – the device is in a known and supported state from the moment it leaves the box, and resetting the device back to this state is quick and simple, with minimal impact to the staff member using it
If your organisation is currently using or planning to make use of Microsoft 365 services, Autopilot is absolutely something worth looking into, and in many cases may well be something to which you’re already entitled. If this sounds like something your organisation would like to explore, please feel free reach out to us.
If you’re looking for consultancy services to help design your own IT business processes, contact Starboard IT to find out what we can do for you.
