Windows 10 Spotlight Enterprise: More secure, faster to update

Terry Myerson officially announced on January 21 that customers running Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows Phone 8.1 devices will get a free upgrade to Windows 10, and that day after lunch, they can actually The first year to upgrade. We suspect that ordinary consumers and many small businesses will be thrilled to hear the news, which is the first time in our history to offer a free upgrade of this size. We believe this will allow millions of of customers to upgrade to Windows 10 immediately after lunch, creating a wide range of business opportunities for our partner ecosystem and bringing value to all Windows 10 customers. As Terry said last week, this is by no means a one-time upgrade: Once a Windows device is upgraded to Windows 10, we will continue to keep it up-to-date with Windows Update within the support lifecycle of the device, and it's completely free. We call it Windows as a service, and we believe that this is definitely the news for many of our customers and partners. For example, customers running Windows 7 Pro and Windows 8/8.1 Pro, especially small businesses, have the opportunity to upgrade to Windows 10 and enjoy the first year of free. In this way, they have the opportunity to enjoy the latest technological innovations, and their devices are always up-to-date with the latest features and security updates that have been added at any time. We recommend that the above customers do not miss the first year free upgrade, so please upgrade as soon as possible after the official release. Our website also provides more information on this.

For business customers and partners, we continue to deliver unique value, and as Windows evolves into a service, it also creates tremendous flexibility for the deployment and management of Windows 10. Windows Software Assurance (SA) continues to provide the best and most comprehensive tangible benefits for companies that require these enterprise-class features. Windows 7 Enterprise and Windows 8/8.1 Enterprise do not belong to the Windows 10 free upgrade category that we released last week, and customers who still have Software Assurance services will still be entitled to upgrade to Windows outside of the above products Enterp Rise products, another benefit is the full deployment flexibility of Windows 10, which can still be inherited from your existing management infrastructure.

Since we announced the news on January 21, I have had the privilege of telling many people about this. Some of the questions I hear are mostly about how we deliver Windows as a service and how to deliver new functionality to the same device. You no longer have to wait for the next major release, and Microsoft will regularly provide the latest features, security updates, and critical fixes. We believe that this means Windows 10 will always be more quality, more efficient, more secure as its responsibility.

Windows 10 helps enterprise customers achieve higher levels of security and faster update speeds

Now, I'd like to start by explaining the special significance of this formal upgrade for business customers and partners. As far as we know, many of our customers have continued and complete flexibility and control, and have allowed their users to innovate at their own pace, rather than relying on so-called all-in-one solutions. Our mission to Windows 10 is precisely to meet this need.

We often hear business customers say that their current systems and ways of thinking are difficult to adapt to a rapidly changing world. Bringing your own devices to work, cloud computing, disappearing network boundaries, and other technological changes have shaped a very different world.

Many consumers today expect their devices to receive persistent feature updates, and they don't want to do anything for them alone. However, we know that companies are demanding tighter control over the delivery and tempo of updates.

For example, the hospital emergency room, flight control tower, financial transaction system, factory workshop and other facilities of the power supply system may require a very strict change management strategy, and long-term consistent implementation. To ensure that Windows 10 devices are functioning properly in the above-mentioned customer environment for life and property safety, we will open some long service sub-stations every time. Customer devices will receive enterprise-class support from these sub-stations, meet the needs of critical systems, and the latest security updates and critical updates will keep the system more secure, while the new feature delivery cycle no longer follows the main support cycle (5 years) and the Extended support cycle (5 years) model. On long service stations, customers will have the flexibility to provide security updates and patches through Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), which allows the system Center Configuration Manager to be used such as existing management solutions to fully control the intranet update distribution behavior, or you can have Windows update automatically receive these updates.

We also learned from our customers that while it is critical to take control of critical environments, there are still many end-user devices that are not part of critical facilities. Managing such devices as part of a critical system can result in a huge amount of unnecessary cost and complexity, as well as a loss of access to the most up-to-date functionality of business users. Many IT organizations have told us that they are more willing to abandon end-user device management functions. They are trying to keep their devices in a more autonomous way, rather than simply copying the way consumers are updating their devices.

To this end, we will launch a new approach for enterprise customers, which we call the current enterprise sub-station. By placing devices on the current corporate substation, companies can receive feature updates after their own qualification and application compatibility are evaluated by the consumer market, while at the same time receiving security updates on a regular basis. This gives the IT department time to verify the effectiveness of these changes in their environment on the day when changes are being widely marketed to consumers, or, if the user has already joined the Windows Insider program, this validation can be done much earlier. By the time the current enterprise sub-station hosts are up to date, these changes have been validated by millions of of insiders, consumers, and customers within a few months ago, ensuring that the updates deployed by the enterprise are guaranteed to be more efficient. Enterprises can decide whether they want to receive updates from Windows update WSUS, or whether they want to control how updates are distributed in their environment through some administrative tools.

If your business connects end-user hosts to Windows Update, you have the opportunity to reduce administrative costs, get security updates and critical patches faster, and continue to enjoy Microsoft's latest technological innovations. Keeping non-critical end-user devices on the current corporate sub-site is a best practice approach that we recommend to many Windows 10 enterprise users, using Windows Update to receive updates automatically.

As we continue to introduce new business features, we will provide new long-term service sub-stations to deliver new features every time. Customers can easily move devices from their current long-term service station to the next long service sub-station at any time, in addition to jumping over-site and using in-place upgrade technology in Windows 10. In order to ensure the smooth implementation of the customer's deployment plan, we promise to give reasonable notice to the customer before the long-term service sub-station is officially launched. In addition, to keep up to date with the latest feature updates, IT Pros can move devices from the long-service station to the current corporate substation, or, if necessary, move the devices in the current enterprise station to the next available long-service sub-station.

We've learned how important it is to establish an initial long-term service station for enterprise customers who want to test Windows 10 as quickly as possible, so we plan to publish our first Windows 10 long service sub-station in the same timeframe that Windows 10 officially releases. We encourage our customers to test them as soon as possible after the first long-term service sub-station is officially launched.

Given the information we receive from our customers, we will do our best to use a comprehensive approach to keep our customers ' Windows 10 systems in constant new state. They will use different update rhythms for different users and systems, depending on the unique needs of each user base.

With regard to migrating to the Windows as a service model, application and device compatibility is often a key concern for customers. As mentioned earlier, our main objective is to further ensure that existing applications are "focused" on solving the challenges that many organizations have experienced during Windows XP's transition to Windows 7, and we will work to further ensure that Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10 Excellent compatibility with each other. This also applies to hardware: As with Windows 7 and Windows 8 systems, we also want to keep Windows 10 's overall hardware requirements to a minimum so that Windows 10 can run on your existing devices, and of course some new features may require device manufacturers or standalone software The Developer (ISV) provides new hardware performance, software, or firmware updates. We are working together with our equipment and ISV ecosystems to ensure that Windows 10 is widely supported.

In the process of customer assessment WINDOWS10, we encourage our customers to describe user devices so that we can use the various options Microsoft offers to help enterprise customers continuously improve the security, compliance, and keep them up-to-date with their needs. We look forward to the next dialogue with our customers and partners, and let us turn Windows into a service together.

Join the Windows Insider program and try out the next generation of Windows 10 Technology Preview

If you're not ready, I want you to join the Windows Insider program and download the next-generation Windows 10 Technology Preview. Please give your feedback directly to the Windows Feedback app provided in this product to let us know what you think. We look forward to your valuable comments, we hope this is the most satisfactory version of the Windows enterprise customers.

* need to meet certain hardware and software requirements. Specific features may vary by device. Some versions are not included. For more information, please see http://www.windows.microsoft.com.

** more information about the device Support Lifecycle policy will be shared later.

Windows 10 Spotlight Enterprise: More secure, faster updates