Windows Update for Business and the retirement of SAC-T

Hi John Wilcox,

From the perspective of K12 schools out here in Belgium which I happen to deal with a lot , I couldn't agree more with SusanBradleyGeek as her situation is quite comparable.

Schools are happy to deploy feature upgrades but NOT when Microsoft selects to do so. For them the summer holiday is an ideal period for example. Apart from that -imho- Microsoft needs to realize that -this is an understatement- not every customer is:

1. working in an A/D environment but rather using a simple workgroup concept

2. even less customers are using WSUS or have the knowledge to use / manage it

3. even less are using deployment rings (not necessarily because they don't like it; they simply don't have the resources)

In fact most are just after a lean, mean (= not bloated) & stable Windows OS and not waiting for yet some other feature they most probably don't need. Your telemetry probably does confirm that if you look at the number of Enterprise LTSB/LTSC deployments out here even given the fact that it is still a widely unknown version for most -volume licensing- customers (unfortunately). Please don't reply that LTSB/LTSC is for ATM's or that they need to look for Windows 10S.

To add to the confusion it is still totally unclear as to how things work: a school that will deploy version 1903 with 365 days of deferral (the maximum available) becomes a sitting duck as of march 2020. Depending on how fast Microsoft effectively rolls out version 2003 chances are that somewhere in the April-June time frame they get the feature upgrade forced upon them with the potential of causing all kinds of issues (remember 1809 ?). It could even happen while students are taking their exams and using those PC's. That's just not acceptable.

To add to the confusion it is still totally unclear to me and my customers what Microsoft means with 18 months of support; If a version is supported for 18 months then I'd expect the maximum deferral period available to be 548 days not 365 days. I'd greatly appreciate some light being shed on this.

Moreover Microsoft has announced in september 2018 that it will "support" the "09" autumn Enterprise & Education releases for 30 months rather than 18 months for all other versions. So for those versions I'd then expect a maximum deferral period of 913 days ? I'd greatly appreciate some light being shed on this as well.

I also wanted to express -reading this article https://www.ghacks.net/2019/03/06/will-microsoft-remove-advanced-update-options-in-windows-10-1903-pro/- my regret that Microsoft seems to have decided to remove the Advanced Update settings (like the deferral setting). For many K12 customers this means extra complexity as many of them are not even familiar with local GPO's or messing around in the registry.

The local education volume licensing program out here is called MS-KIS (Keep it simple) ; at this stage however we couldn't be any further away from keeping things simple...

Thank you