Following up on its reveal in February, Microsoft has now opened up registration (via ZDNet) for its Windows Insider Program for Business. Open to IT professionals, Microsoft hopes to leverage the program to gain more of an insight into the needs of enterprise users as builds are being tested.
From Microsoft:
The Windows Insider Program for Business is for IT Professionals, like yourself, who are shaping the future of technology for your organization. Now you can incorporate Insider Preview builds into your deployment plans using your corporate credentials, deepen connections with the IT Pro community, collect feedback within your organization, and increase the visibility of yours and your organization's feedback-especially on features that support your productivity and business needs. Together we can resolve blocking or critical issues to better support your organization's needs sooner.
The Windows Insider program as it exists is already open to everyone, but the move to silo corporate users should help to bring more light to business-centric concerns during testing.
Anyone looking to participate in the Windows Insider for Business program can now sign up with their Azure Active Directory corporate credentials. Builds will presumably start shipping once Microsoft begins testing its next big feature update, codenamed Redstone 3.
Reader comments
Registration opens for Microsoft's Windows Insider Program for Business
I guess a small business with no desire to implement Azure is not something that they care about.
They are already covered in standard insider, they would most likely be using Windows pro without domain accounts.
Nope, small factory, about 80 users, 20 servers, domain, wsus, antivirus, deployment and support with a one person IT department. I don't have time to learn Azure too.
You should. It's pretty great, especially for small IT shops.
I might, just for the ability to join this program.
Sounds like a personal problem, you need to find time before your employer finds someone else. Consider making a great relationship with an MS partner who can help you and make you look like the rock star for taking advantage of cloud. If you have 20 servers on prem your company is throwing away cash keeping them all running. You need to look at Azure if only for backup and DR to start.
20 servers for 80 users
Lol give me a calendar with snooze time between 15 minutes and an hour...and a reminder between 1 hour and 12 hours. Smh
Love the humor... Open up!...🤣
Why do businesses need Insider program to get buggy builds? Productive people just need to get their work done, and I don't think a busy guy will have time to report bugs to Microsoft through Feedback Hub app and also share full diagnostic data risking their privacy.
May be Microsoft want to work closely with businesses for better experience.
I agree in part but there are parts of the os that businesses use that consumers don't regularly so I could see testing those during insider builds.
Finally... For a phone enrolled in Intune MDM the Insider Program has been a complete nightmare.
Unenrolling requires a phone reset. You then have to use an MSA account for the OOTB experience just so you can get insider builds.
Once you've done that you can opt in to Insider. Doing that requires the phone to restart. Then you check for updates, download and restart.
Once you've updated you then have to reset the phone again so you can enrol in MDM as part of the OOTB.
Now imagine doing that for every new insider build!
IT ?
Our business is federated with Azure, but we still join our machines to the domain onsite. This doesn't work for that.
IT shops want to be enrolled in the program to shape the future of Windows 10 enterprise, but often (and in our case) MSA is not allowed.
I'll join one or two to AAD maybe, but that is not the way we work, so will not be a use case really.
getting there though, very positive move Microsoft.
You don't have to join machines to AAD, just have an AAD login. If you're using Office 365 or Azure with single sign on already that account is sufficient.