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Windows Update for Business Reports Can Now Show Software Update Bandwidth Details
Microsoft's Windows Update for Business Reports now has the ability to show bandwidth savings from Microsoft's Delivery Optimization software delivery feature, according to a Wednesday announcement.
Delivery Optimization is Microsoft's technical approach for distributing software updates to Windows client devices in organizations. It uses some of an organization's PCs as "peers" to deliver software bits to other PCs. Microsoft's Windows Update for Business Reports, on the other hand, is a relatively new Azure Portal addition that shows software-update compliance information for Windows 10 and Windows 11 machines.
Windows Update for Business Reports (formerly called "Azure Workbooks for Update Compliance") reached the "general availability" (GA) commercial-release status back in November. Microsoft had mentioned back then that it could provide stats on Delivery Optimization, but that feature apparently wasn't fully baked. Now, the ability to show Delivery Optimization information in Windows Update for Business Reports is at the GA release stage, per Microsoft's Wednesday announcement.
The Delivery Optimization capability in Windows Update for Business Reports will show how software bits got distributed over "the last 28 days." Various Delivery Optimization stats get shown, such as "total bandwidth savings," which is broken down by "peer-to-peer" deliveries and "Microsoft Connected Cache" data. The latter capability houses the software content on Microsoft's servers ("cloud") in a configured way, as described in this Microsoft document.
Oddly, Microsoft Connected Cache is still at the preview stage, even as the Delivery Optimization capability in Windows Update for Business Reports is at GA.
In any case, the Delivery Optimization capability in Windows Update for Business Reports will aggregate an organization's Windows content delivery activities. The aggregated data can be customized as well into dashboard views. It'll show pie charts for peering, and bar charts for configuration details, for instance. Microsoft also provides "tabs" for commonly used group settings, such as "GroupID," "City," Country" and "ISP," which will show the associated Delivery Optimization stats.
The new the Delivery Optimization capability in Windows Update for Business Reports was described as being "just the start of a new offering" to help organizations with their reporting needs. Microsoft is looking to enhance it based on user feedback.
Windows Update for Business Reports notably will be replacing Microsoft's Update Compliance capability. Microsoft had previously indicated that it will stop supporting Update Compliance on March 31, 2023 for existing users.
About the Author
Kurt Mackie is senior news producer for 1105 Media's Converge360 group.