What is the difference between Intune update rings Vs. Intune Windows Auto-patch?

Question

Hello team,

We are a business premium license, I saw the feature Intune Windows Auto-patch that is available for entreprise users. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/windows-autopatch/prepare/windows-autopatch-prerequisites https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/windows/autopatch

We are doing the upgrade using Intune update rings, however, we would like to know what are we missing if we don't enable the Windows Autopatch, why should be recommended to move from business premium to E3 to get this feature?

Answer 1

@Sergio Londono,Thanks for posting in Q&A.

From your description, I know you want to know the difference between Intune update rings and Intune Windows Auto-patch.

Based on my research, Intune Update Rings and Intune Windows Auto-Patch are both Microsoft services that use Windows Update for Business (WUfB) to manage updates.

However, Intune deployment rings use Windows Update for Business (WUfB) to allow administrators to control patch deployment, scheduling, and approval at a granular level from the cloud.

And Autopatch uses WUfB as well but removes scheduling and approval from admins which means that with Autopatch, administrators can assign devices to one of the three groups (First, Fast, Broad), but don’t have control over when updates are pushed to devices, or when they move from one ring to another. Administrators can’t control the dates or times of patch deployments either.

If you use Intune update ring policy only, here are the features might be missing.

• Close the security gap.
• Close the productivity gap.
• Optimize your IT admin resources.
• On-premises infrastructure.
• Onboard new services.
• Minimize end user disruption.

Moreover, E3 is more powerful than Microsoft 365 Business Premium

• User Limit: Microsoft 365 Business Premium is limited to 300 users, whereas the E3 plans are unlimited.
• Additional Features: E3 provides additional security features.

Hope this can helpful.

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Answer 2

I haven't seen Autopatch hands-on my self, because I don't have license for that, but what I've talked about others, my understanding is that Autopatch if for Intune admins who doesn't have skills/time/efford to control their policies and scheduling by themselves. I think, that you can archive everything without autopatch, you just need to configure Update Rings and update behavior level yourself. You also can create endpoint devices clustering groups manually, by inventing right detection method with Entra ID groups. It could me name pattern differences or model differences, or something else.