Microsoft has reversed the retirement of Windows 10 version 1511, extending support for the 2015 feature upgrade by six months for commercial customers.
"To help some early enterprise adopters that are still finishing their transition to Windows as a service, we will be providing a supplemental servicing package for Windows 10, version 1511, for an additional six months, until April 2018," said Michael Niehaus, director of product marketing for Windows, in a post to a company blog.
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Under its Windows-as-a-service (WaaS) model, Microsoft releases two feature upgrades annually at six-month intervals, and then supports each upgrade for 18 months. However, 1511 was given a 23-month support lifecycle, with the additional time arising from an arcane rule Microsoft implemented but later discarded; it would not retire an upgrade before six months had passed from the most recent upgrade's release.
With the extension, Windows 10 Enterprise 1511 and Education 1511 get a total of 29 months of support, nearly as long a stretch as the historical intervals between major pre-0 versions of the OS, such as the 36 months between Windows 7 and Windows 8, or the 34 months between Windows 8 and Windows 10.
Ironically, the successor to 1511, the mid-2016 feature upgrade designated 1607, will now, absent another Microsoft intervention, exit support in March 2018, before its predecessor. That's not how it's supposed to work.It turns out that big corporations with thousands of PCs to keep up-to-date simply can't manage multiple major OS update cycles per year, every year, especially since Windows 10's updates have a tendency to "break" older hardware. Which means that the Windows-As-A-Service business might just be completely unworkable in the longer term, something that critics like Paul Thurrott have been saying almost from the start. Even the likes of Gartner are having trouble spinning this one.
Again, quoting CW:
"What's been a surprise is how adamant Microsoft has been about this cadence," said Michael Silver, an analyst with Gartner, of the every-six-month release tempo and the 18-month support window. "What's not a surprise is that organizations have been telling us that they can't do multiple updates in a year. They're worried about falling off support from [Windows 10] 1511 or even 1607 after that."
It's virtually certain that Microsoft extended 1511's support because its most important customers - corporations - told the company that they weren't able to make the Oct. 10, 2017, deadline. Niehaus did not specifically cite feedback, as Microsoft usually does, for the decision, but that was probably the trigger.
"The support extension really isn't much of a surprise," echoed Stephen Kleynhans, also of Gartner, in an email reply to questions. "Microsoft is still tinkering with the details of the servicing model to make it work for more enterprises ... working the kinks out."Whether "working the kinks out" involves reducing the number of major feature updates remains to be seen, but with editions of 1511 getting support (for those that pay for it, natch) extended beyond 1607's support window, it's a fair bet that at least some editions of 1607 will get their support windows extended, too. Which means that Microsoft's cost of maintaining all those old Windows editions will continue to rise, even as Windows 10 adoption remain lacklustre. Which is pretty much the opposite of Microsoft's stated goals for WaaS. GG, Microsoft! Well played.
Still... not one but two big corporations backing off from unpopular policy positions on the same morning, both of them in response to consumers' mostly-negative feedback? I'll take it. Put another mark in the "win" column, folks.