Moving Beyond Microsoft for a Modern Workspace

Build the Cloud-Native IT Foundation That Lets You Scale AI

IT leaders are in a time of excitement and stress: AI is here, and there’s pressure (and desire) to move quickly with it. Yet many are still tied to an identity architecture that was built before the iPhone even existed.

Think about how quickly technology changes: iPhones used to be about flashlight apps and novelty. Now, they’re an important business tool that helps people work on the go. AI is on a similar arc. It’s not a plaything for generating (unintentionally) surreal images anymore. It’s a foundational part of working in the modern era, and the expectations around adoption and speed-to-value are reaching a crescendo.

Your employees need to be able to use AI seamlessly and safely. They expect to open their AI tool of choice (or your choice, hopefully) and get to work immediately, whether they’re working on an Android phone, an iPhone, or a desktop somewhere. Modern technology is ready for that world, but a lot of IT foundations aren’t.

This shows up clearly and painfully for organizations still running traditional, Microsoft-centered stacks built around an on-prem directory.

The solution is to move to something cloud-native, and suited for modern work. Moving to a modern workspace can actually feel a lot like moving house. First, you check the foundation. Then, you clear out everything that’s been piling up in your garage for the past 10 years. And finally, you settle in.

By the time you finish reading this guide, you’ll see:

Why your IT foundation shapes how fast your team can move with AI
Where potential savings lie
What a practical move to a modern workplace looks like

Check the Foundation: Why Traditional Architecture Stalls AI Progress

AI tools thrive in a SaaS-first, work-from-anywhere world. Traditional IT environments do not.

Picture two employees getting hands-on work done between meetings. One opens an AI assistant on their phone and is able to get a list of talking points for their next call nearly immediately. The other has to run back to their laptop, connect to the company VPN, and route back to a central office before they can get started.

This second scenario is still common. Users are tied to a company laptop or desktop. They VPN back to a central location, or they still need to be on-site. These steps work against the ease-of-use AI is meant to invoke.

Every barrier between a user and their access is a barrier between your business and safe AI adoption. Employees often find unsafe workarounds to get work done when safe routes are unavailable. BlackFog’s 2025 survey found that 51% of surveyed employees admitted to connecting or integrating AI tools with other work systems or apps without IT department approval or oversight.

Hosted Isn’t the Same as Cloud-Native

Upgrading your current stack can feel like the safe move. But an upgrade often means using the same tools, but hosted somewhere else. Or, you retain dependencies that still route back on-prem.

This is a “lift-and-shift” approach. It’s a bandage, not a new cloud-native foundation. You might ask yourself:

1

Does sign-in still depend on an on-prem directory?
2

Does device access still route through a VPN?

If you answered yes to either of these questions, you’re not fully modernizing.

Identity Must Be Part of Every AI Conversation

AI also brings new telemetry, new logging, and new access requirements…across more systems. When identity, devices, and networking each live in a separate tool, getting a single view of that activity is a burden. And IT is already being asked to take on more.

Organizations now use an average of 2.7 AI tools, and AI reaches an average of three types of company systems or data. Proving what that AI did is difficult. In our Q4 2026 Pulse Report, 72% of organizations reported a moderate-to-large gap between what AI is permitted to access and what they can prove it accessed. Only 37% were fully prepared with the records an AI-related audit would require.

72% | Report a gap between what AI can access and what they can prove it accessed
37% | Are fully prepared for an AI-related audit
2.7 | AI tools in use, on average

Source: JumpCloud Q4 2026 Pulse Report, n=250 IT decision-makers

The scope keeps growing. Enterprise AI now goes far beyond a chatbot. It can connect to your crucial systems and perform on its own, without a human at the keyboard approving every step. Every one of these connection points raises a crucial control question: who, or what, is allowed to touch this data? Why, and for how long?

This ultimately comes back to an identity question. This is actually good news. Once you’ve got a solid plan in place where agent access is registered, managed, and governed, you can make access decisions with context at scale.

So rebuilding this identity layer comes first. And while you start here, it’s the perfect time to decide what you don’t need to take with you from your traditional IT architecture.

Clear Out the Garage: The TCO Many Business Cases Miss

When you live in a house long enough, things begin to pile up. Your two-car garage? Only one car fits in there. The basement is full of boxes nobody remembers packing.

IT environments become cluttered in the same way. That’s why the real TCO case for moving beyond traditional tools is about more than just a cheaper license.

This Isn’t Just a One-to-One Tool Swap

A strong migration case doesn’t just look at one tool. It walks through multiple areas of your environment, from collaboration to security operations, from devices to identity. It then maps a new enterprise architecture that accounts for the tools you use today and the contracts you’ve already signed.

This review is like the spring cleaning you do before you pack everything up. What still earns its place? What needs to go?

There’s a chance you find the answer a bit surprising. Maybe you find traditional networking tools you no longer need. Or a sprawl of out-of-date intranet sites you’re still paying to maintain. Licenses fall away as overlapping tools require.

Soft Savings Show Up in Every Workday

License costs are a big deal. But they’re not the only components draining your budget. There are two kinds of savings that rarely make it into the business case. They should.

The first? Training. Many of your employees likely already use modern suites like Google Workspace at home, and newer members of the workforce arrive with fluency using them.

The second is productivity. The best identity platform is the one that employees don’t notice. Sign-in is easier. Access feels more seamless. This is the experience you ultimately want employees to have: safe, secure access that keeps the business moving.

These savings aren’t on an invoice. But they are present in everyday work.

Settle In: A Practical Path to Cloud-Native

The beginnings of a migration can feel like a shock to the system. Identity moving, device moving, everything feels like it’s moving. But in practice, the process is more standard than it looks.

Half the journey is change management. Here’s how it works:

Start with the whole architecture. Review your full traditional environment. Then, factor in current contracts before you decide what moves and when.
Put IT in the front seat. As an IT leader reading this guide, this is probably intuitive. But your IT admins and managers must lead the process. For example, when teams transition to JumpCloud and Google Workspace, they work side-by-side with professional service teams on onboarding and training. That way admins are never in the dark.
Train by persona, not by tool. Educate your employee base with their daily work in mind, not specific technical capabilities—you can get into that later. Show your developer team how privileged access helps them with their deployments. Show HR how employee transitions are made seamless within the IT system of record. Think with workflow in mind, and get into details as you go.
Show value beyond IT. This one’s crucial. Don’t stop at the CIO or CISO. Show your CMO and finance leaders what they can do differently, and that their data stays secure from a coffee shop.

This fourth step is important, because it’s where a lot of resistance lives. A familiar Microsoft standard has pull, because it’s what the team is used to. The way through is to show business problems getting solved, not features getting sold.

Become the Department of Possibility. Yes, Really.

Once your modern IT foundation is in place, something shifts. Instead of IT being an innovation blocker, you become the team that enables.

The core environment stops being a limitation that keeps you up at night. You can finish projects, and help other teams bring on the tools and capabilities they’ve been asking for. All with a clear framework and foundation in place. You’re able to say “yes”, with guardrails in place.

This has business value, of course. You probably wouldn’t read this far otherwise. But it also solidifies your role within your organization: your seat at the executive table changes. Your team is a facilitator, a forward-thinking operation. A gas pedal, not a brake.

Take a Second Look: Google Workspace and JumpCloud Together

If you evaluated Google Workspace years ago, it’s time to take a second look. JumpCloud and Google work together via one shared mission: to make modern work secure, innovative, and frictionless. By pairing Google AI-first suite with JumpCloud’s identity, access, and cross-OS device management platform, you get a foundation that’s 100% cloud-based and ready for AI.

See Every Identity in One Place

JumpCloud gives you one platform to manage every human, non-human, and agentic identity, along with the devices they use and the access they have. This is one system of truth across your entire environment, a seamless alternative to managing a separate console for every IT tool you use.

This becomes increasingly important as AI agents spread. Among organizations using agents, 59% haven’t yet brought them fully under the identity and access management (IAM) policies they use for employees. A unified foundation makes this a reality.

Control Access Wherever Work Happens

Zero Trust access, strong multi-factor authentication (MFA), and device trust follow your users across every OS and location. Build conditional access policies that depend on a healthy, managed device, not just a valid password. Give your users freedom to work wherever they are, without loosening your security guardrails.

Accelerate Your AI Adoption

With JumpCloud, you can set policy in one place and apply it across all relevant resources. This makes it easier to adopt new tools and say yes more frequently. This speed matters, because AI tools and capabilities keep changing. It can feel like every day something better and new is announced. A cloud-native foundation lets you take advantage of these new tools as they arrive.

Meet the Authors

This piece is created from a conversation between Lindsey Thompson, Director of Product Management at JumpCloud, and Rob Gailey, Global Head of Workspace Architects at Google, during JumpCloudLand 2026. Learn more about how JumpCloud and Google Workspace work together.

Lindsey Thompson
Director of Product Management
JumpCloud

Rob Gailey
Global Head of Workspace Architects
Google

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