Microsoft Expands Continuous Support for Windows 10 Enterprise and Education Feature Updates at 30 Months

In response to IT professionals who have found that the pace of feature updates in Windows 10 is too fast, Microsoft is relying on the support time for new system feature updates. 39; operation. The company does not give up publishing two updates of Windows 10 features a year. This policy, whereby Microsoft releases new feature updates to March and September each year, will not go away.

Instead, Microsoft is moving to a new support schedule for Windows 10 Enterprise and Education Only editions, which will effectively allow these users to update their operating systems only every two years. Here is how it will work.

First, for Windows 10 Home, Pro and Office 365 ProPlus customers, nothing changes. The biannual updates of the features of these products will be supported for 18 months for the March and September versions. Windows 10 Enterprise and Education customers are the customers affected by the changes announced today, September 6.

All currently supported feature updates for Windows 10 Enterprise and Education (versions 1607, 1703, 1709, and 1803) will be supported for 30 months – 2.5 years – from the date of initial release. And all future feature updates of the Windows 10 Enterprise and Education editions with a September release (from update 1809 / October 2018) will be supported for 30 months from the date of publication.

Rather confusing, future updates to the Windows 10 Enterprise and Education editions with one month of targeted March release (from 1903 / Windows 10 19H1) will continue to be supported for 18 months from the date of publication. Microsoft officials say this 18-month support date remains to help those who are correct with the faster deployment of Windows 10 features.

Why did Microsoft extend the support period for the fall / september updates and not the spring / march updates? Jared Spataro, vice president of Microsoft 365, said that customers are more likely to update in the fall because of budget cycles and when "high-speed conversations" about updates take place . the fall.

I asked Spataro if the difference in support for the spring / fall updates indicated that Microsoft considered the spring update to be "minor" and the update "major". He said that was not the case.

"The biannual pace remains our star of the north," he said. "We want to continue to kick off the road."

Even though Enterprise and Education customers will only be able to apply feature updates to Windows 10 once every two years and they will still be supported, it does not think most Feature day twice a year. He added that he doubted that client companies would be included in the latest security technology for two years at a time.

Prior to today, Microsoft was gradually extending support to Windows 10 Enterprise and Education users. Last year, Microsoft added six months of additional support for Windows 10 1511 to these users. In February of this year, Microsoft did the same for Windows 10 1607, 1703, and 1709. These extensions increased the support period from 18 months to 24 months for these customers, giving them a little more time to implement Windows. as a service.

I think it's laudable that Microsoft recognizes (finally) that the pace of updating features of Windows 10, twice a year, is not realistic for some of its major customers. And I'll be curious how many people choose to apply feature updates every two years, despite Microsoft's security argument.