Latest / The Windows Podcast with Fexingo: Microsoft, PC, and Enterprise Windows Conversations / Windows 11 Is Killing Enterprise Group Policy
Transcript
- Lucas: So, Luna, I want to talk about something that's been quietly worrying enterprise IT admins for a while now — and on June 11, 2026, I think it's finally time to name it directly. Luna: You're talking about the slow death of Group Policy, aren't you? Lucas: Exactly. Microsoft has been signaling this for years, but the signals have gotten a lot louder. The message is: Group Policy is being deprecated in favor of cloud-based device management via Microsoft Intune and Configuration Service Provider — or CSP — settings. Luna: And this is a big deal because Group Policy is the backbone of how most enterprises configure Windows — for like, two decades now. Lucas: Right. It's been the gold standard for applying settings across domain-joined machines. But Windows 11 is increasingly designed for modern management — think cloud-native, zero-touch provisioning — and Group Policy is really an on-premises, Active Directory-era tool. Luna: So what's the concrete evidence that this is really happening — not just rumor? Lucas: Let me give you two numbers. First, as of early 2026, Microsoft reports that over 60 percent of enterprise Windows devices are now managed by Intune — that's up from under 40 percent just two years ago. Second, the number of new CSP settings added in Windows 11 surpasses new Group Policy settings by a factor of about 5 to 1. Luna: Wow. So the writing is on the wall. Lucas: It is. And there's a real-world case that made this concrete for me. A mid-sized financial services firm — about 5,000 endpoints — migrated from on-premises Group Policy to cloud policy using Intune in just under four months. They used a tool called Group Policy Analytics in Intune to map their existing GPOs to equivalent CSP policies. Luna: And how did that go? Was it smooth? Lucas: They reported about 85 percent coverage — meaning 85 percent of their GPO settings had a direct CSP equivalent. The other 15 percent required some creative workarounds, but they got through it. The key benefit they saw was a 40 percent reduction in helpdesk tickets related to policy misconfigurations. Luna: Because cloud policies are per-device, not per-domain — so you don't have those weird GPO replication or loopback issues. Lucas: Exactly. Group Policy is applied at the domain level and tied to Active Directory. CSP settings are per-device and can be managed via cloud or on-premises MDM — but the natural home is Intune. Luna: So what's the timeline? Is Group Policy going away next year? Lucas: Microsoft hasn't set a firm end of life date, but the rumor among MVPs is that they'll stop adding new Group Policy administrative templates in Windows 11 by late 2027, and then deprecation will follow a few years after. But the clear message is: if you're building a new Windows 11 deployment today, you should be using Intune and CSPs, not Group Policy. Luna: And what about hybrid environments — some machines domain-joined, some cloud-managed? Lucas: That's actually the most common scenario right now. Microsoft supports co-management where you can gradually move policy workloads from ConfigMgr or Group Policy to Intune. There's a slider in the console — literally drag from on-prem to cloud. Luna: That's kind of elegant. But I imagine for IT admins who've been doing Group Policy for 20 years, this is a painful shift. Lucas: It is. Group Policy is incredibly powerful — you can drill down into registry keys, apply security templates, configure printers, map drives, all with granular filtering via WMI. CSPs are still maturing in terms of breadth. Luna: But the trade-off is that CSPs are more secure by design — they're tied to the device identity, they support certificate-based authentication, and they don't rely on the domain controller being reachable. Lucas: Exactly. And there's one more thing that I think is underappreciated. Windows 11 includes a built-in tool that most admins don't know exists — the 'Group Policy to CSP mapping' tool. You can run it from an elevated PowerShell prompt: 'Get-WindowsPolicyMapping'. Luna: Wait, that's actually in-box? Lucas: Yes. It ships with Windows 11 22H2 and later. It maps any Group Policy setting to its equivalent CSP URI — if one exists. That's a huge shortcut for migration planning. Luna: That's exactly the kind of concrete tip our listeners need. I didn't know about that. Lucas: And it's free. No additional licensing. So if you're an IT admin starting to plan your Windows 11 migration, that's where you begin — run that command, see what maps, and then decide which policies you need to redesign. Luna: Look, if today's episode gave you something actually useful — whether it's that PowerShell command or just the bigger picture on Group Policy's future — I want to mention that the way we keep these conversations ad-free is through listener support. Lucas: Yeah, it's a small thing, but it really helps. If you found value, you can head to buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. That's all lowercase, dot com slash fexingo. Luna: And we mean it — only if you found it useful. No pressure. Now, back to the migration story — Lucas, you mentioned that 15 percent of settings needed workarounds. What did they do for those? Lucas: Great question. For settings that didn't have a direct CSP equivalent — like some legacy security templates or custom administrative templates — they used a combination of PowerShell scripts deployed via Intune and proactive remediations. That's another underused feature: you can run detection and remediation scripts on a schedule. Luna: So it's not a one-to-one replacement, but with a little creativity, you can get there. Lucas: Exactly. And the benefit is that once you're in the CSP world, your policies are declarative and device-centric. You can target policies based on device category, location, or even real-time compliance status — things that are really hard to do with classic Group Policy. Luna: So the bottom line: start planning your Group Policy exit now, even if the end of life date is a few years out. Lucas: Exactly. Run that mapping tool, test your critical policies in a pilot group, and shift to Intune gradually. The tools are there — and Windows 11 is designed for this future.