Microsoft is pushing forward with the availability process of Internet Explorer 8, with a new wave of downloads scheduled to hit today, August 25th, 2009. The Redmond company announced since the end of June 2009 that it would start serving IE8 RTW to business users by the end of August, and the bits come right on schedule. The gold build of Internet Explorer 8 will be offered to all companies leveraging the software giant’s update server distribution solution designed to help administrators manage Microsoft Update releases across corporate networks.

“Starting Tuesday August 25, 2009, Internet Explorer 8 will be made available as “update rollups” via WSUS (Windows Server Update Services). This is critical for customers who manage their desktops via WSUS; they need to be aware of these updates and make necessary preparation to insure there are no unintended upgrades to Internet Explorer 8 on their desktops,” revealed Kevin Dean, Microsoft technology specialist, Education.

Ahead of August 25, WSUS admins had the option to disable auto-approve for “Update rollup” packages in Windows Server Update Services. In such scenarios, IE8 would only be offered to machines across a network after the updates were manually approved by the administrator. Business users and admins should be aware that even in the context in which Auto-Approve for “Update rollup” is enabled, the IE8 EULA still has to receive manual approval before the browser is installed on all downstream clients.

But seeing as August 25, is already here, admins will need to perform a synchronization of their WSUS server and block IE8 Update rollup packages. The auto update for “Update rollups” setting can be re-enabled afterwards.

“On default installations of SBS, this will not be automatically approved for installation. You will need to manually approve it in the SBS Console or the WSUS Console. However, if you are automatically approving Update Rollups by manually configuring WSUS, then it is important for you to know that the IE 8 Installation Blocker Tool used to block Automatic Update deployments to your machines will not block WSUS deployments of IE 8,” explained a member of the Microsoft Small Business Server (SBS) team.

IE8 was released to web in March 2009, but as the needs of business users differ from those of end users, Microsoft is only offering the browser through WSUS almost half a year later. And chances are that corporations are still not ready to embrace IE8 and will in fact wish to dodge the WSUS IE8 RTW Update rollups.

Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) RTW is available for download here (for 32-bit and 64-bit flavors of Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008).