IT teams still rely on MDT as cloud shift accelerates

Recast has published survey findings on Windows operating system deployment among IT administrators, showing that many organisations still rely on older deployment methods as they move towards cloud management.

The survey covered 84 IT professionals across education, government, healthcare, finance, managed service providers and other sectors. According to Recast, 80% of respondents manage more than 1,000 endpoints, while 34% oversee fleets of more than 10,000 devices.

Legacy Tools

A central finding was the continued use of Microsoft Deployment Toolkit and Windows Deployment Services for bare-metal operating system deployment. Eighteen per cent of respondents said they still rely on MDT or WDS, even though Microsoft retired MDT earlier this year.

This leaves some organisations needing to replace a key part of their deployment process within the next six to 12 months. The issue appears urgent: 99% of respondents described bare-metal or disaster recovery operating system deployment as important, and 81% rated it high or critical.

The findings suggest that full operating system deployment remains a core requirement even as IT teams adopt newer management systems. Respondents linked that need to ransomware recovery, hardware replacement and large-scale imaging across device fleets.

Pain Points

When asked about the biggest frustrations in operating system deployment, respondents most often cited maintenance overhead at 28%. Driver management followed at 25%, with speed at 20% and cost at 11%.

The responses suggest that long-standing operational issues remain unresolved for many systems administrators. As environments become more mixed, with devices managed through different tools and policies, the burden of keeping deployment processes current appears to be growing rather than shrinking.

Cloud Shift

The survey also pointed to a broad shift towards Microsoft Intune. Nearly half of respondents, 48%, said they now work in Intune-only environments, while 40% operate in hybrid setups that combine ConfigMgr and Intune.

That transition has not removed the need for operating system deployment. Instead, it appears to have created a gap for some teams, as provisioning tools such as Windows Autopilot do not cover all bare-metal rebuild or disaster recovery scenarios.

For organisations moving away from ConfigMgr, the challenge is not just migration but maintaining continuity in device recovery and reimaging. The results indicate that cloud-first management does not remove the practical need to rebuild machines from scratch after failure, compromise or hardware changes.

OSDCloud Use

Recast's data showed strong uptake of OSDCloud, a deployment tool used as an alternative in some modern management environments. Half of respondents said they already use OSDCloud for bare-metal operating system deployment, and 47% said they use it regularly in production.

Recast said the tool is used across ConfigMgr, hybrid and Intune-only environments. The survey presents that uptake as evidence that IT teams are seeking MDT replacements that work across both older and newer management models.

Although the survey was conducted by Recast and focuses on issues closely tied to its own product area, the figures reflect broader pressures in endpoint management. Many IT departments are balancing a shift to cloud-based administration with the need to preserve established workflows for deployment, recovery and hardware refreshes.

Transition Planning

The findings point to several immediate decisions for IT teams still using MDT or WDS. These include identifying where legacy tools remain embedded in production workflows, testing replacement options and documenting gaps in Intune-based deployment processes.

This may be especially relevant for larger organisations, given the endpoint counts reported by respondents. Disruption to operating system deployment can have wider consequences in environments where thousands of devices need to be rebuilt, replaced or recovered quickly after an incident.

Recast said organisations managing the shift most effectively are those that have already started planning for the end of MDT, rather than waiting for those tools to fail.