You don't know much corporate environment, at least you give off such an impression. We don't get patches straight from Microsoft servers, we have our own update servers. Only tested patches get through with some delay, something like this wouldn't make it. This is standard in big companies.

And we don't use Win10 at all, no sane CIO would ever approve it and stayed in his position for more than a week. Windows 7, no issue paying directly to Microsoft to produce patches long after public support is finished.

You're claiming that your internal IT department does better QA on Windows than Microsoft does. That's amazing. Do you have evidence to support this? How many major bugs do you report upstream? What's your QA system like? Can you confirm that your test suite checks upgrades using Known Folder Redirection when the default path is still in use?

I find it awfully hard to believe that you're arguing for using Windows on the basis of TCO, while on the other hand apparently have (and need) a QA department and test protocol that exceeds Microsoft's, and are willing to pay Microsoft to produce patches for an old OS just for you.

You've got 100,000 systems in a highly constrained environment. You pay for the licenses, and to run your own upgrade servers, and to do your own QA on their software, and to get patches for it, and you can't even run the current version because you think it's not "sane". I'm sure there must be external constraints you're not telling us, because this doesn't sound rational.

Windows 10 is rapidly becoming the standard, the "no sane CIO" remark is absurd. The entire DOD has standardized on Windows 10, and they're the largest enterprise in the world.

> You don't know much corporate environment, at least you give off such an impression.

Based on one post, where I point out TCO is not significantly driven by hardware purchase price? Ok then.

Anyway, the argument of lower TCO cited by the GP comes from (not exclusively) IBM, who I’d say know their own business, also used WSUS/SCCM and claimed they were better off with Apple and Jamf.

If there's anything IBM does better than anyone else, it's metrics. It's almost like they invented the field of IT metrics measurement and analysis, in fact.