There’s been a lot of buzz in the Modern Workspace community around Microsoft’s announcement that Enterprise Application Management (EAM), previously only available as part of the Intune Suite, is now coming to Microsoft 365 E5 customers.
There’s also been some confusion around what EAM actually is and what it does. I wanted to write a quick post to clear up a few misconceptions and help people understand where it fits.
What problem does EAM solve?
If you’ve worked with Intune, applications, or the Digital Workspace in any serious way over the last few years, you’ll know that application management can still be painful. Intune is a very good tool, and it absolutely can reduce the time spent managing endpoints. However, application delivery is still one of the areas where things can get messy very quickly.
That becomes even more obvious once you have a reasonably complex application estate. Even something as simple and widely used as Google Chrome still takes a number of manual steps to deliver through Intune.
For example, a basic Chrome deployment might look something like this:
• Navigate to Chrome’s public download site
• Download Chrome
• Unzip the archive
• Select the correct installer file
• Create a new app in Intune
• Select line-of-business app
• Upload the Chrome MSI
• Configure install commands
• Configure detection rules
• Configure supersedence and any other required rules
• Set entitlements and deployment waves
If you know what you’re doing, that may only take half an hour or so.
That doesn’t sound too bad until you start multiplying it across hundreds or thousands of applications. Then you also need to factor in updates, which usually means going back through same process again with a new version of the file.
That is why EAM has generated so much interest. It solves a real problem.
What is EAM actually doing?
At its core, EAM is a catalog of applications where Microsoft has already taken care of a large part of the packaging work for you.
So, using the Chrome example above, you’re no longer starting from scratch by sourcing the installer, extracting files, choosing the right package, and uploading everything manually. For applications that exist in the Enterprise App Catalog, Microsoft has already done much of that work in advance. You select the app from the store, apply your entitlements and a few configuration choices, and move on.
That is a genuinely useful improvement and, for the right customer, a significant time saver.
What doesn’t EAM do?
This is where some of the confusion seems to be creeping in.
A few people appear to be talking about EAM as though it solves application management more broadly. It doesn’t. What it really solves is a big part of the initial packaging and onboarding effort for supported applications.
The obvious follow-up question is: What happens after deployment when the application needs updating?
Microsoft is quite clear about this on their EAM page by answering this question: Will Enterprise catalog apps automatically update to a new version when a new version is available in the Enterprise app catalog?
Updates are shown in Intune by selecting Apps > Enterprise App Catalog apps with updates. The updates aren’t applied automatically. You still need to go in and create a new app with a supersedence relationship.
That is the key point.
EAM helps you get the application into Intune more easily. It does not automatically keep that application updated for you. When a new version is released, you still need to go into Intune, create the updated application, and configure the supersedence relationship yourself.
So yes, EAM removes a lot of effort at the front end. It does not remove the ongoing operational overhead of keeping applications current.
Why that matters
For some organizations, this will be absolutely fine. If your application estate is relatively small, if the apps you care about are in the catalog, and if you are comfortable handling updates manually, then EAM will be a very welcome addition.
For others, it will only solve part of the problem.
If the goal is not just easier application onboarding, but also simpler ongoing patching and broader application lifecycle management, then you need to be having a different conversation.
That is where tools like Recast Right Click Tools Patching and Recast Application Workspace come into the picture. EAM makes Intune application setup easier. Recast goes further by addressing the ongoing update and management challenge as well.
Summary: How EAM relates to application lifecycle management
It is a very useful addition to Intune for organizations that want to reduce the manual effort involved in packaging and publishing common applications.
What it is not, at least today, is a complete answer to application lifecycle management.
That distinction matters, because a lot of the excitement around EAM is justified. You just need to be clear on what problem it is actually solving.
