On Wednesday last week Microsoft warned that organizations running Windows 10 version 1703 will stop getting “quality updates” (security and nonsecurity patches) on Oct. 8, 2019.
Organizations running Windows 10 version 1803 will stop getting quality updates on Nov. 12, 2019.
So our advice is to upgrade to the latest version to continue to get patch support from Microsoft.
Patching systems is more complicated with Windows 10. Microsoft admitted a couple of year ago that it had stopped testing its quality updates when it released Windows 8 and it reduced its app testing. It now follows more of a combination of a DevOps ‘crowd -QA’ feedback approach and its “telemetry” data collection, to hold off delivering potentially problematic upgrades. It hasn’t been a problem-free approach, and there have been failures in delivering problem-free patches. Enterprise organizations also have more complex software environments to patch for in its own testing.
If Microsoft continues as indicated down the road of making Windows a service billed on consumption, then it may have to look close at the relationship between QA and its SLAs
