Microsoft announces general release of Enterprise State Roaming for Windows 10

Jack Wilkinson

For Azure AD customers, Microsoft has released Enterprise State Roaming for business customers using Windows 10. In an email that is sent regularly to Azure customers to let them know of pricing and feature changes, the company announced the release of this setting synchronisation service for enterprise customers.

This new feature allows businesses to synchronise their employee’s work account settings across devices; just how it works with standard Microsoft Accounts today, where you sign-in on one device, and your settings propagate to all of your others. This change is likely to increase productivity, as there will be less twiddling around with setting panes, and more work being completed.

Settings will be stored in the cloud against the employee’s work account, and downloaded to any devices that they sign-in too. These accounts are directly connected to Azure Active Directory.

As part of this feature release, Microsoft has stated three differences between a personal Microsoft account being synchronised and a work account being synchronised, with work accounts receiving the following as additional benefits:

  • Separation between enterprise and consumer data: consumer data will not be stored in the enterprise cloud, and likewise, enterprise data will not be stored in the consumer cloud.
  • Security enhancements: data that leaves Windows 10 will be encrypted automatically using Azure Rights Management Services, and stays encrypted whilst in the cloud.
  • Management: control over where data is being synchronised and which devices are receiving the data.

Certain features of synchronisation are only available depending on account type and device type, and you can see which ones here. Azure customers with Azure AD Premium can begin using Enterprise State Roaming immediately, available now for all customers, although, it is not currently available in all server regions.

Windows Server SKUs do not currently support this feature as yet.