AppTunnel vs Microsoft Intune

Microsoft Intune is a powerful modern endpoint management tool, but it was never designed for complex legacy desktop applications.

What Intune Does Well

  • • Excellent at deploying modern Windows applications (.msix, Win32)
  • • Strong device management, security policies, and compliance
  • • Deep integration with Microsoft 365 ecosystem
  • • Widely used and well-supported

Where Intune Falls Short for Legacy Apps

  • • Poor handling of complex COM, OLE, and legacy installers
  • • No built-in persistent tunnel to cloud databases (RDS, etc.)
  • • Usually requires a VPN or complex networking rules for database access
  • • Does not maintain real database session state
  • • Limited intelligence around application updates and registration

This is where AppTunnel shines

AppTunnel was specifically built for the exact scenario Intune struggles with: legacy desktop applications that need to talk to a database securely from anywhere.

You get full application lifecycle management + a true persistent TCP tunnel in one solution.

See If AppTunnel Is Right For You →