Windows Fall Creators Update now rolling out to everyone, including businesses

After being out for a little under three months, Microsoft has moved the Fall Creators Update to full availability, signaling that the company believes it to be ready for corporate deployments.

Microsoft rolls out the big Windows semi-annual updates on a staggered basis, making the update available to an ever larger range of users as the company builds a clearer picture of any hardware and software incompatibilities. Once it's satisfied that any of these wrinkles have been ironed out, Microsoft offers the update to every machine that's compatible. With the Fall Creators Update on 100 million machines, Microsoft has decided that the update is ready for its full deployment.

This development process has been refined over the last few years; the 2016 Anniversary Update raised a number of problems, causing Microsoft to be more conservative subsequently. The previous update, the Creators Update, took about four months to reach this same stage. The decision to make the Fall Creators Update, version 1709, widely available in less than three months shows that the company is more confident in this release and its wider deployment.

Microsoft has encouraged corporate customers to use this wide deployment as the signal that the update is ready for enterprise rollouts. On January 18, Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise systems that are configured to use Windows Update for their servicing will be offered version 1709 after January 18. Updated media for volume license and other business customers will be published on January 22.