Over the last decade I’ve worked with organisations of all sizes, and I’ve noticed the same pattern almost everywhere. One team manages PCs. Another owns mobile devices. A third is responsible for virtual desktops.
Twenty years ago, building separate teams around separate technologies made perfect sense. PCs were managed differently than mobile devices. Virtual desktops required specialist infrastructure skills. Technology boundaries defined organisational boundaries.
Today, I’m no longer convinced that’s the right abstraction.
It’s time to start tearing down those walls and instead think in terms of a One Logical Estate where we look beyond form factors and focus on what actually enables work:
- Who is the user?
- What risk is the device exposed to?
- What applications should be available?
- What data should be accessible?
- What level of access can we grant right now?
These are not platform-specific questions. They are universal.
And they should apply consistently regardless of device, user, or delivery model.
An endpoint is no longer just a device. It’s your ticket through the door. Whether that ticket happens to be a physical laptop, a mobile phone, a Cloud PC or a virtual desktop is becoming increasingly irrelevant.
What matters is who the user is, what they can access and under which conditions.
But what do we mean with “One Logical Estate”?
A logical estate is not about architecture, it’s about control.
A logical estate isn’t about managing everything with one tool. It’s about applying a consistent operating model across different technologies. The tools may differ. The principles should not.
It’s not about “one size fits all”. It’s about one operating model.
Enabling the model
An operating model still needs a control plane.
For many organisations, Intune increasingly fills that role by providing a consistent way to define policy, enforce compliance, deliver applications and govern access across different endpoint types.
Intune becomes your cloud-based control plane, the place where you:
- Define policies
- Enforce compliance
- Configure devices
- Deliver applications
But adopting a One Logical Estate doesn’t mean you have to be fully cloud-native from day one.
It’s not about where workloads run.
It’s about how you manage and govern them consistently.
Different tools, same strategy
The discussion around Windows 365 and Azure Virtual Desktop often starts with technology.
I think that’s the wrong starting point.
If two teams use different management models, different security baselines and different application delivery mechanisms, you’ve already lost long before the platform decision is made.
The key is not the product—it’s your operating model.
Deliver the right user experience to the right user, based on their needs, not based on organizational silos.
The real challenge: silos, not technology
The biggest challenge I see isn’t technical, it’s organizational.
I’ve spent years hearing organisations debate whether they should modernise devices, move to Intune, adopt Windows 365 or move away from legacy infrastructure.
In reality, many are solving the wrong problem.
They modernise technology while keeping the same organisational boundaries that created the complexity in the first place.
And suddenly, aligning towards a common goal becomes incredibly difficult.
This is not just a tooling problem.
It’s a culture and operating model problem.
What should we aim for?
The goal is simple in theory, but powerful in practice:
Treat all endpoints and form factors consistently.
That means:
- Managing endpoints through a common control plane
- Using a shared identity platform
- Applying consistent security and compliance principles
- Delivering applications through a unified operating model
From a user perspective:
It shouldn’t matter whether I’m on a physical PC or a Cloud PC.
From an IT perspective:
I shouldn’t need four different tools to manage them.
Why this matters (also for TCO)
This is where the business value becomes clear.
Many organizations are already paying for capabilities within Microsoft 365 (E3/E5) that enable this model.
By aligning around a One Logical Estate, you can:
- Reduce dependency on legacy infrastructure
- Decommission or repurpose on-premises systems
- Lower operational overhead
- Increase consistency and automation
Even if existing infrastructure is “already paid for”, it still carries hidden costs in maintenance, operations, and complexity.
When you have talked that key question, then you can start looking at what tools you need to reach that goal. But unless you fine what your goal or north star is, you will never get there.
What should you do next?
Don’t start with this question:
“Should we choose AVD or Windows 365?”
Start with this one instead:
“How do we want to manage and govern our digital workplace as one logical estate?”
That’s your north star.
The industry spent the last decade consolidating infrastructure. The next decade will be about consolidating operating models. Organisations that succeed won’t necessarily have the newest technology. They’ll be the ones that stop organising around devices and start organising around outcomes.
Because if we continue organising work around device types, we’ll keep creating new silos every time a new endpoint appears. Different tools. Different names. Same old silos.
Once that is clear, the technology decisions become much easier.
But without that guiding principle, you risk continuing down the same path
with new tools but the same old silos.
