Windows 10 Anniversary Update in Current Branch for Business

As announced in a TechNet blog, Microsoft has released version 1607 of Windows 10 for the use in enterprises, and has added it to the Current Branch for Business (CBB) distribution ring. Starting in January 2017, the release that is also known as Anniversary Update will be deployed via Windows Update.

Systems running Windows 10 Pro, Education, or Enterprise will not obtain this update if the “defer upgrades” option has been enabled and, in addition, a Group Policy has been set to postpone the update up to 8 months. All other systems will get Windows 10 1607 starting from January 2017 as in-place-upgrade.

Within the scope of Windows as a Service, Microsoft plans to release at least two Windows 10 upgrades per year. Four months after being published in the Current Branch for Windows 10 Users, the new OS releases will be lifted into the Current Branch for Business (CBB). In the CBB, the Windows 10 release is supported over a minimum of 8 months, or until the release after the next version has been added to this distribution ring. As a result of the availability of Windows 10 release 1607 in the Current Branch for Business (CBB), the support for release 1507 will be discontinued. Microsoft will provide the last updates for Windows 10 1507 in March 2017. The next coming release of Windows 10 – Creators Update – will remove the version 1511 out of the CBB in autumn 2017 at the latest.

The declaration of Windows 10 Release 1607 as Current Branch for Business (CBB) is insignificant for the Windows 10 Enterprise Edition, which is liable to the Long Term Service Branch (LTSB). Here, updates occur at an interval of two or three years, and over a period of ten years they will not contain any new functions but only quality updates.

Source: Microsoft