Lessons from the field: Six trends in End User Computing for 2025

As we wrap up 2024, we are busy at Nerdio helping customers and partners complete migration projects before the holidays, planning many Windows in the cloud transformations for next year and releasing lots more new features & capabilities in our latest releases. With 2025 rapidly approaching it is a good time to look forward at what the future holds for End User Computing with some big changes on the horizon. At Nerdio, we are exclusively and solely focused on Microsoft’s technology stack. This list is very much reflective of this focus however our End User Computing ecosystem has been focused on Microsoft since its inception, so I believe the topics speak to wider trends.

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1.??????? Goodbye Windows 10, hello Windows 11

October 14th 2025. Most admins will have this date circled with a big red pen in their 2025 calendars. This is the date which Microsoft has chosen for the end of life of Windows 10. Many customers I have spoken to in the latter half of this year already have their migration planning under way, but many have yet to start.

Organisations must be ready for this change and understand the operational impact it will have on the organisation. Device compatibility, application readiness and end user enablement will all be crucial to a successful transition.

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2.??????? The growth of Entra ID

Focusing on virtualisation environments, I have noticed more and more customers utilising Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory Services) when moving to Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365. I believe this trend will accelerate in 2025.

While some organisations will have more nuanced and complex identity requirements – for most, moving to Entra ID will bring some fantastic capabilities that can help simplify and secure their organisation’s architecture. Unlocking the ability to utilize conditional access, multi factor authentication as well as integrate with other Microsoft Services will be a big win. For customers that want to future proof their environment and leverage Microsoft’s cloud native identity but still need connectivity back to their traditional active directory domain, the option of Hybrid Join for virtualised cloud endpoints is a good middle ground.

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3.??????? Intune everywhere

Intune has rapidly grown since its launch in 2013 to become one of Microsoft’s most successful offerings. The ability to manage and enrol physical endpoints, manage policies ranging from configuration policies to compliance policies has made Intune a leading solution in the space. This has been bolstered by services like Autopilot, Intune Company Portal and integrations with Microsoft Defender for Endpoints.

Over the past 6 months I have seen more and more organisations utilize this technology. This is especially true for Virtual Endpoints with Windows 365 natively managed by Intune. While there are still some nuances and challenges around AVD multisession and Intune management, this is also something we will see more of in 2025.

Another interesting trend that I am seeing is organisations moving from Active Directory Group Policy management to Intune Policy management in large numbers. This is driving consolidation and simplification for organisations and is often tied into Windows 11 migrations and modernisations.

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4.??????? Apps, apps & more apps

Applications continue to be the most import part of digital workspace transformation, modernisation as well as virtualisation migrations. This is a fast-moving aspect of EUC and organisations are seeking efficient ways to future proof their application management and delivery mechanisms. The change announced by Microsoft around App-V end of life was a welcome one and allows for more flexibility for organisations to modernise at a pace that works for them. Application modernisation will still be top of mind in 2025 Similar to Active Directory Policies modernising to Intune policies, a similar motion is happening with applications. Many organisations are in the process of migrating away from SCCM as the primary application delivery mechanism to other solutions, most notably Microsoft Intune. This is also the case for Virtualisation environments – again with some nuances to consider for multisession endpoints.

5.??????? Hybrid is here to stay

Organisations will continue to leverage a blend of cloud and on-prem workloads.?This will be especially true for organisations delivering critical infrastructure such as the healthcare and energy sector. It is positive to see vendors across the virtualisation market offer more solutions and capabilities for these use cases. In the world of Microsoft, this trend is illuminated by the focus on Azure Local. At Microsoft Ignite 2024 the organisation announced the rebrand and consolidation of its on-prem offerings which included Azure Stack HCI to Azure Local. For organisations not ready to go fully cloud with their workloads, this is also a good option as it allows for a blended mix of delivery platforms all managed from the Azure control plane.

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6.??????? The continued rise of the AI

If 2024 thought us anything, it is that AI is here for the long haul. In my opinion this technology is still in its infancy. We will continue to see the normalisation of knowledge worker assistants. These systems will start to infiltrate more into the work we do as EUC specialists. That may take the form of AI assistance in helping orchestrate and automate the platforms we manage, or it may be delivering out AI infused tools and agents from the virtualisation workload itself. ?Thankfully, I don’t think we need to worry about the T-1000 just yet.

It has been an incredible year for the broad segment of our industry that we call End User Computing. We have arguably seen more change and disruption in the last 2 years than we have in the last 20. 2025 will be just as interesting and transformative continuing that trend. I want to wish you a happy holiday season and an even happier new year.

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Thank you for reading

Best Regards,

Gavin Connolly – Field CTO, Nerdio