Path for Upgrading ConfigMgr 2007 to ConfigMgr 2016 (as a service)

Since the ConfigMgr 2012 release (April 2012), I'm doing both implementations and 2007 migrations a lot. ConfigMgr 2012 is still the best choice for on-premises and remote device management.

With Microsoft Intune integration (part of Enterprise Mobility Suite) for mobile device and application management, you have best of both worlds. Microsoft mentions that 'No one else offers this functionality!'. Therefore ConfigMgr and EMS is the best solution for deploying and managing Windows 10 on PC's, tablets and mobile devices.

Additionally, ConfigMgr 2016 (ConfigMgr as a service, which is called just 'ConfigMgr' from now on) will support MDM-based management for Windows devices, fully on-premises, with no ConfigMgr agent required. In that case you can choose between full (with ConfigMgr agent) and MDM-based (no ConfigMgr agent) management.

But what to do if organizations are still on ConfigMgr 2007 these days?

On Microsoft TechNet there was a question about this several months ago. I did a post on Twitter today as well. The answer sounds promising: ConfigMgr 2016 does support migrating from ConfigMgr 2007 R2 SP2 and R3 SP2, which is really great news! So no need to migrate to ConfigMgr 2012 first before going to 2016. Thanks to Peter Daalmans (@pdaalmans) on this one.

ConfigMgr 2016 will be generally available in Q4 CY2015 (which is really soon!). Technical Preview 4 is released last week, which is the last technical preview before the general availability (GA) of the current branch of ConfigMgr.