What is Windows as a Service?
In today’s environment, where user expectations frequently are set by device-centric experiences, complete product cycles need to be measured in months, not years. Additionally, new releases must be made available on a continual basis, and must be deployable with minimal impact on users. Microsoft designed Windows 10 to meet these requirements by implementing a new approach to innovation, development, and delivery called Windows as a Service (WaaS).
The key to enabling significantly shorter product cycles while maintaining high quality levels is an innovative community-centric approach to testing that Microsoft has implemented for Windows 10. The community, known as Windows Insiders, is comprised of millions of users around the world. When Windows Insiders opt in to the community, they test many builds over the course of a product cycle and provide feedback to Microsoft through an iterative methodology called flighting.
Builds distributed as flights provide the Windows engineering team with significant data regarding how well builds are performing in actual use. Flighting with Windows Insiders also enables Microsoft to test builds in much more diverse hardware, application, and networking environments than in the past, and to identify issues far more quickly. As a result, Microsoft believes that community-focused flighting will enable both a faster pace of innovation delivery and better public release quality than ever.
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