EUC · 8 min read

From devices and users to platforms and agents.

For a long time, End User Computing was relatively easy to understand.

Most workplaces revolved around a fairly predictable relationship between users and devices. Applications were installed locally, management happened on the endpoint and the majority of operational effort was focused on keeping those devices secure, compliant and available.

Looking back, it feels almost simple.

Not necessarily better.

Just simpler.

When I started working in IT, the workplace was still heavily tied to the device itself. If a user had a problem, chances were fairly high that the device was part of the answer.

Applications lived there.

Data often lived there.

Management happened there.

The endpoint was the workplace.

Over time, that slowly started to change.

Applications moved into the cloud. Identity became increasingly important. Management capabilities evolved and users became more mobile. People expected access to the same applications and data regardless of whether they were in the office, at home or somewhere in between.

None of those changes felt particularly revolutionary on their own.

But together they gradually started reshaping what the workplace actually was.

Then COVID accelerated a transition that was already underway.

Organizations suddenly needed to support large numbers of remote users. The workplace could no longer depend on a specific office, network or physical location.

Access needed to work everywhere.

Security needed to follow the user.

Management needed to happen at scale.

Looking back, that period probably changed End User Computing more than any individual technology ever did.

The workplace moved away from the device

One of the most interesting consequences of that shift is that the workplace itself became less dependent on a specific endpoint.

The device still matters.

In many organizations it matters a lot.

But it is no longer the center of everything.

Today, users interact with applications, identities, data and services that often exist independently from the endpoint they happen to be using.

A user may start their day on:

• a laptop
• a mobile device
• an Azure Virtual Desktop session
• a Windows 365 Cloud PC

The workplace remains largely the same.

The device changes.

That may sound like a subtle difference, but operationally it changes almost everything.

Modern EUC became a collection of delivery models

One of the biggest misconceptions today is that modern EUC is simply endpoint management.

In reality, modern EUC has become much broader than that.

Most organizations no longer operate a single workplace model.

A typical environment may contain:

• Traditional fat clients
• Intune-managed devices
• Hybrid-managed devices
• Azure Virtual Desktop
• Windows 365 Cloud PCs
• SaaS applications
• Mobile devices
• Shared devices
• Frontline devices

None of these approaches are necessarily better than the others.

They simply solve different problems.

The interesting part is that they increasingly coexist within the same organization.

Modern EUC is therefore no longer about selecting the right workplace model.

It is about operating multiple workplace models consistently.

The platform slowly became the workplace

As workplace delivery models expanded, another shift became visible.

The workplace itself increasingly moved into the platform.

Identity determines access.

Policies determine compliance.

Security determines trust.

Applications determine productivity.

And increasingly, the endpoint becomes one of several ways to access that platform.

This is one of the reasons technologies such as:

• Intune
• Entra ID
• Conditional Access
• Azure Virtual Desktop
• Windows 365

have become so important.

Not because they replace traditional devices.

But because they allow the workplace to exist independently from them.

In many ways, the platform slowly became the workplace.

User experience became the real metric

Historically, many workplace discussions revolved around devices.

Questions such as:

• What hardware should we buy?
• How quickly can we deploy it?
• How do we keep it compliant?

still matter.

But increasingly, users judge the workplace differently.

They care about:

• Application performance
• Authentication speed
• Reliability
• Collaboration
• Productivity

In other words:

They care about the experience.

When a user experiences poor performance in Azure Virtual Desktop, the issue may not be AVD at all.

It could be:

• Networking
• Storage
• Identity
• Policy
• Authentication
• Session management

The workplace is no longer a single device.

It is a collection of interconnected services that together create the user experience.

And that makes operating the workplace fundamentally different from managing an endpoint.

Enter the agent

While organizations are still adapting to platform-centric workplaces, another shift is beginning to emerge.

The introduction of agents.

The technology itself is evolving rapidly, making it difficult to predict exactly where things will end up.

What is already becoming visible, however, is that agents increasingly participate in environments in ways that feel surprisingly familiar.

They:

• Access information
• Perform actions
• Interact with systems
• Operate on behalf of users

From an operational perspective, this creates many of the same questions we traditionally asked about people.

• Who owns it?
• What permissions should it have?
• How is it monitored?
• How is it governed?
• How is it retired?

Those are not necessarily AI questions.

They are operational questions.

And that is why I suspect agents will become part of the EUC conversation sooner than many people expect.

The future of EUC

For years, EUC was largely about managing users and devices.

Today, it increasingly revolves around operating platforms.

The workplace depends on:

• Identity
• Applications
• Policies
• Security
• Automation
• User experience

The interesting part is that none of these areas exist in isolation anymore.

The workplace depends on all of them simultaneously.

That is also why the boundaries between EUC, Infrastructure and Operations continue to blur.

The workplace no longer lives on a device.

It lives on a platform.

And whether that platform is accessed by users, devices or agents may become less important than how effectively it is operated.

Because ultimately, users rarely care how the workplace is delivered.

They simply expect it to work.