In the last half of August 2006, the Redmond Company announced that it planned to discontinue SUS updates by the end of this year. The actual date that Microsoft provided then for the disallowing of Software Update Services (SUS) updates was December 6, 2006. By killing SUS, The Redmond Company aims to focus the consumers onto Windows Software Update Services (WSUS). Microsoft had calculated that it was allowing its clients sufficient time to migrate from patch Website synchronization with SUS to WSUS version 2.0 and WSUS 3.0 public beta.

The news wasn't received according to Microsoft's plans. Although WSUS deliver a plethora of additional features on top of the capabilities of SUS, including support for Windows Vista, a large number of corporate networks still rely on SUS for patch download, testing and implementation.

"We had announced that SUS 1.0 would be retired on December 6, 2006. In response to customer feedback, and to provide customers with additional time to migrate off Software Update Services (SUS) 1.0, we've gone ahead and announced an extension to the end of support date," revealed Mike Reavey, Operations Manager at the MSRC.

The new date for the discontinuation of Microsoft Software Update Services is Tuesday, July 10, 2007. "So we want to encourage anyone still running SUS 1.0 to migrated to Windows Server Update Services, (WSUS) before July 2007," added Reavey.