According to the date on the relevant pages, Microsoft started talking about SUS (Software Update Services) on 20th June, but it"s only today we"ve had the press release from the UK arm. Granted, it might have been announced somewhere else during the past couple of weeks, but it doesn"t seem to have made it to the main press release pile at microsoft.com.
Which is a pity, because it says here "Formerly known as Corporate Windows Update or Federated Windows Update, SUS is a security patch management tool targeted at small to medium sized enterprises..."
So corporate Windows update is dead, right? As regular readers will recall, The Register regularly gnaws away at the mismatch between Microsoft"s drive for direct contact with individual users and the corporate sector"s desire to manage its own users, and corporate Windows update was central to this.
With SP1 for WinXP Microsoft will be checking validity of licences before permitting the service pack to install, but as we pointed out a little earlier this doesn"t matter a great deal while corporate Windows update exists.
IT management in major businesses wants to download the updates itself and decide whether or not users should get them, and it does it (did it) via corporate Windows update.