Windows 10's 1607 becomes the enterprise deployment default

The just-released Windows 10 Anniversary Update will be the version Microsoft's biggest customers use to migrate their PCs.

Due to timing on the part of both Microsoft and enterprises, Windows 10's support cycles -- and old habits -- this week's upgrade, tagged as 1607 to mark year and month, will shoulder the responsibility as the version destined for deployment.

"[Anniversary Update] is the right version for enterprises [because] it's like the first service pack," said Steve Kleynhans, an analyst at Gartner.

Microsoft may have abandoned the term "service pack" -- a label for the intermittent updates composed of previously-released bug fixes -- but the moniker remains alive among IT professionals. Service packs marked milestones in each Windows edition's lifetime, and the first was considered the most important because it represented a more stable build from which the biggest bugs had been expunged. Many swore to await Service Pack 1, or SP1, in a new Windows release before daring to migrate from a predecessor. The initial release, the rule of thumb went, was too risky to roll onto corporate PCs.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here