With Windows 7 and 8 now very much in the rear-view mirror I was recently looking up the version history of Windows 10 and discovered that the May 2020 update (release 2004) is the 10th release of Windows 10. Happy 10th birthday, Windows 10. The realisation, however was that it appears support for Windows 10 is now only about 18 to 36 months which is a far cry of the days of old where operating systems were left to sweat it out and work hard for their retirement well beyond 3 years.
This got me thinking about how businesses both large and small are keeping up. Are they are still managing Windows 10 like an OS of old with a gold image processes? Or, are companies switching to what is now referred to as Modern Management – managing Windows 10 like a smartphone as we call it at Mobile Mentor. 
Windows Updates released at ever increasing frequencies
With two core updates per year and security patches monthly, Windows 10 has certainly found its legs. It’s a modern OS that wants to be, and quite frankly needs to be, managed out of the cloud rather than an enterprise domain.
Not slowing down, Microsoft have also recently and quietly announced that “feature experience packs,” are now a part of Windows 10 and are separated from the core OS. This gives us quality updates monthly (bug fixes), OS updates bi-annually and feature experience update packs at an unknown cadence. That certainly feels a lot more like a mobile OS update pace than a traditional desktop OS.
Is there any hope of managing Windows 10 like Windows 7 of old?
Adapting IT operations to keep pace with change
Bringing some of our mobile heritage to the conversation, I have had many conversations over the years about change control being the process where IT was in complete control of all components of the standard operating environment (SoE). This of course led to a big decrease in usability due to the OS being out of date most of the time (Think Internet Explorer 6 and Active X intranets).
This change control paradigm gave way to change management as cloud services like Salesforce started to integrate to the enterprise. These major cloud services forced upgrades at the cadence of the software vendor and IT was forced to keep up. Finally, we’re now at manage change, which came about with the modern mobile operating systems and was largely driven by Apple and iOS. With users now effectively having admin rights to the device including apps and the operating system, manage change was really the only alternative left.
Are you still hanging onto change control, have you moved onto change management or are you embracing manage change?
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