Back in February we shared news about Microsoft's plans to expand their very successful consumer based Windows Insider Program to business users.
This week they took the wraps off the Windows Insider Program for Business and are now accepting registrations from IT Pros and businesses.
Microsoft has been producing a lot of content over the last 20 months about Windows 10. That content focuses heavily on how businesses and IT Pros can prepare for deploying Windows 10 in their organizations and establishing their own system for slowly rolling out feature updates to their users.
IT Pros have been able to participate in the Windows Insider Program since its started back in October of 2014 however, participants had to use their personal Microsoft Accounts to enroll and obtain new testing builds. That also meant any feedback they provided through the Feedback Hub in Windows 10 would also be public. This of course could be an issue if that feedback included proprietary data about business systems and similar content. Business critical feedback can also get lost very quickly among all of the consumer related items in the Feedback Hub.
The Windows Insider Program for Business aims to address those concerns by allowing business users to sign up for the program using their Azure Active Directory credentials, providing a means to see feedback from program participants within their organization, and to better sort out blocking/critical issues within a companies network.
There will also be management tools so that admins can control who is participating and what ring they will receive testing builds from on their devices.
Microsoft says that it is important for businesses to have their own insider program to test these new updates:
"Incorporating Insider Preview Builds into your deployment plans enables you to prepare your organization for the next update of Windows 10, to deploy new services and tools more quickly, to help secure your applications, and to increase productivity and confidence in the stability of your environment."
If you are interested in getting started with your company you can register from the Windows Insider Program for Business portal.
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