Devices tied to an office-based domain
The manufacturing organisation’s Windows devices were joined to an on-premises Active Directory domain. Staff needed to work across sites and away from the office, while IT needed a way to manage their devices wherever they were being used.
The existing arrangement brought domain-related support problems, including trust-relationship issues. It also made managing devices away from the office network more difficult.
Deliver the change with the internal IT team
Arviteni worked on a consultancy basis, collaborating closely with the organisation’s own IT staff. Together, we moved device identity and management towards Microsoft 365 across the organisation’s locations.
The work took place across 2024 and early 2025. Arviteni recalls more than 1,000 devices being enrolled into Intune over approximately three to six months, spanning UK and international sites.
Join devices to the cloud and manage them through Intune
The Windows migration moved devices out of the on-premises domain and joined them directly to Azure AD, now called Microsoft Entra ID. The intended arrangement was cloud joining, rather than retaining hybrid domain membership.
Intune provided the management layer for those devices. The team could manage devices through the cloud and retain visibility when staff were working away from the company’s sites.
Device joining and device management were related parts of the work: Microsoft Entra ID handled the device identity, while Intune provided the tools to manage it.
Make everyday access less dependent on the office
For staff using the migrated Windows devices, the experience became more straightforward: sign in with their work account and access the Microsoft 365 services and applications configured for that identity.
They no longer needed an office VPN connection solely to support the old domain-dependent workflow for those cloud services. Access to any remaining on-premises resources was a separate requirement.
Moving away from on-premises device domain membership also removed that device trust relationship from the migrated setup, addressing a source of support problems the team had encountered.
A more consistent way to manage a distributed workforce
The internal IT team gained a common management platform for devices spread across sites and used away from the office. Staff had a simpler route into their cloud-based work, with less dependence on returning to the company network for the previous domain-based arrangements.
The project combined consultancy with hands-on collaboration. Its value came from making the organisation’s device setup fit the way its people worked across locations.
An anonymised account based on Arviteni’s recollection of work across 2024 and early 2025. The device count and three-to-six-month rollout duration are approximate. The account describes the device-management work, not the retirement of every on-premises service or VPN requirement.