It would appear that IT administrators are campaigning hard for Microsoft to slow their roll when it comes to their Windows 10 upgrade schedule.

Approximately 78% of more than 1,100 business professionals charged with servicing Windows for their firms said that Windows 10’s feature upgrades — now released twice annually — should be issued no more than once a year. The 78% was split almost evenly, with 39.2% arguing for one upgrade per year while 39.3% picked one every two years from a questionnaire on Windows patching, updating and upgrading.

Only 11% agreed that the current twice-a-year release is their preference, and a very small 1% wanted an even quicker tempo than that.

The questionnaire, created by Susan Bradley, who moderates the PatchManagement.org mailing list, asked administrators about whether feature upgrades are useful to their businesses and if Windows 10 has met company needs. Bradley used the responses to support her plea that Microsoft’s top executives address what she and her colleagues believe is an ongoing deterioration in the quality of Microsoft’s monthly patch updates.

But she also raised the issue of the Windows 10 feature upgrades’ release calendar. “If Microsoft is not realizing that [their] enterprise customers are having issues with the timing of the feature updates, then Microsoft is not listening to their enterprise customers.”

And questionnaire commentary by IT administrators vividly paint the frustration felt from the feature upgrades’ frequency.

“Most feature updates introduce so many bugs and problems,” said one respondent. “With the current pace of releases of new feature updates, the entire IT department is busy constantly dealing with all the problems that follow, instead of spending time on activities that actually create value for users.”

“At twice per year, you’ve barely got over one before you need to do it all again, leading to the temptation to skip every other update,” asserted another.

“This may come as a shock to Microsoft management, but our bonuses aren’t geared to the matrices that their bonuses are geared to,” said another participant. “We have better things to do with our time than run on the treadmill that is their business cycle.”

Windows 10’s upgrade tempo has gone through several iterations since mid-2015, when the OS debuted. Initially, Microsoft envisioned four upgrades annually. In 2015, it released the first upgrade, labeled 1511 using the company’s now standard yymm format, about three and a half months after the original 1507. But then Microsoft issued just one upgrade in 2016, the mid-year 1607.

Shortly after that, Microsoft announced that it was formalizing a two-times-each-year schedule, with March and September as release targets. Since then, it’s delivered 1703 (April 2017), 1709 (October 2017) and 1803 (April 2018); it appears to be on track to release 1809 next month.

To complicate matters, for a time Microsoft extended support from the usual 18 months to 24 months for Windows 10 Enterprise and Windows 10 Education. Microsoft justified the extension – which ended with version 1803 – as necessary because “some customers” asked for more time to migrate from one feature upgrade to another.

With 24 months of support, it was feasible for IT to skip one feature upgrade in any given year. But with the return of 18 months of support, it will again be tough for companies to move all PCs to a supported version before the one currently powering the machines stops receiving patches. That was one reason Gartner Research urged enterprises to pressure Microsoft into making permanent the 24-month support period.

Gartner has assumed that Microsoft will not retreat from its two-times-a-year cadence but that it will be pressured, likely by or before the end of 2020, into making the 24 months of support permanent. While that won’t change the release frequency, it will, Gartner has said, allow adopting just one upgrade each year.

We’ll see what happens.

I’ll end with what Michael Wayland, Managing Director of Byte-Werx in Houston (Elite member of The 20) told me:

With the major releases there are often several unforeseen issues that can crop up. This can cause several hours of downtime for endpoints and cost small businesses money. It’s one reason you want a managed IT department to follow the releases, the issues, and release in a methodical and planned way after lab testing. They’re also available to quickly backstop, remediate, or walk through end-users for issues that arise.

Everyone talks about employee onboarding, but what about offboarding? Whether the change in employment is due to termination, a layoff, the end of a contract, or employee choice, the circumstance can elicit a strong emotional response. Even employees who leave on good terms can get curious in the result of their departure. Without proper offboarding, former employees continue to hold the “keys to the kingdom.” Do you really want to risk your organization’s reputation?

Of course not.

Did you know that only 29% of organizations have a formal offboarding process in place? Or that 59% share access credentials with other employees? How about that 52% share access with contractors? Heck, 53% say it’d be easy for a former employee to log in and access data! And 50% report that it can take up to a week or more to remove access to all sensitive systems!

Well, surely you know that 55% of US companies report that their organizations have been breached in the past, and that 44% of them had breaches that together cost millions of dollars…?

You didn’t?! Wow. Well, isn’t that crazy?

Offboarding Checklist

Don’t be one of those statistics. Click here to get our offboarding checklist that you can use to reduce your organization’s security risk.

The 20 and Ciardi Ciardi & Astin are hosting a tax reform webinar on Wednesday, June 27 at 12:00 PM CT with Stephen J. Slade, CPA that you don’t want to miss. Stephen has extensive expertise using planning strategies to benefit owners of small to mid-size companies. REGISTER NOW!

A tax loophole is something that benefits the other guy [but] if it benefits you, it is tax reform.

– Former U.S. Senator, Russell Long.

For nearly all small to mid-size business owners, the major challenge presented on a daily basis is the adequacy of cash flow and whether there is enough money coming in the door to cover their ongoing operating expenses. Business owners must ensure that funds are available to pay their employees’ wages, vendor invoices, the rent owed to their landlord, utility and telephone bills, just to name a few things… Any misstep can cause a significant interruption in the services provided to customers which can put a business on the brink of failure.

Once the operating expenses are accounted for, a small business owner can finally decide if there is enough money left over to pay themselves! That’s when the “a-ha” moment begins to settle in — and a conversation with the CPA is required to determine how much money is necessary to keep Uncle Sam happy. It is normally at this point in time that the CPA delivers bad news and the dreams of simply getting ahead may be unattainable. This cycle is endless, and the small business owner always has higher hopes for next year…

Taking advantage of Tax Reform

The scenario I described above is before “The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” (aka tax reform) was passed into law. Beginning with 2018, many small and mid-size business owners will enjoy substantial tax savings which should certainly lead to a huge sigh of relief.

In many cases, Tax Reform will lead to a reduction in taxes for small business owners which will help to ease ongoing cash flow concerns. With the prospect of lower taxes on the horizon, business owners can use this excess cash in a variety of areas, such as: 1) ownership in real estate to build equity vs. paying rent, 2) investment in machinery and equipment to increase capacity and sales, 3) investment in new employees to increase productivity and sales, or to simply 4) increase the owners take home pay for all the years of hard work and dedication.

The good news is that tax reform comes in all shapes and sizes! Business owners should consult with their CPAs NOW so that they can begin to strategize ways to maximize their savings. It is important to develop a plan that considers the tax attributes of both your business and individual situation. What works for one small business owner may not work for another. By developing a strategy NOW, steps can be taken during 2018 so that there is enough time for the strategy to bear fruit. If you decide to wait until tax time next year, you could potentially miss the boat on an entire year of savings.

Below are several ideas that small business owners should consider to make the most of the benefits of tax reform:

• Maximize the new 20% Qualified Business Income deduction available to owners of S-Corporations and Partnerships and to Sole-Proprietors.
• Determine if you are eligible for a more favorable method of accounting.
• Convert to a C-Corporation to take advantage of the rate reduction from 35% to 21%.
• Maximize accelerated depreciation methods.
• Maximize the benefits of charitable giving.

Tax reform has significant potential to directly impact the liquidity of your small business by leaving more money in the hands of business owners while paying less to the IRS. Please join me for a webinar on June 27^th as I go into more detail on how many of these new strategies can be implemented during 2018 to reduce your tax burden NOW!

Stephen Slade will answer tax reform questions like these and much more during the webinar on June 27. REGISTER NOW!