Talk to me! WSUS is too old and inflexible for modern IT requirements

Sooner or later, every IT administrator learns an important lesson: using WSUS to tackle Windows patching is unpleasant. Unpleasant in every respect, because many administrators see WSUS as a necessary evil. Using the supposedly free WSUS is often the first choice an organisation makes to automate Windows patching. After all, it is better than doing the whole process manually.

However, WSUS itself is notoriously cumbersome to manage. It also lacks many functions that would make life much easier for administrators. This is hardly surprising, as the actual service concept here is limited to Windows itself. Third-party software is often not even considered by WSUS and because WSUS is free, there is no great interest on Microsoft's part in improving WSUS further or at least equipping it with the functions that would make life much easier for administrators. There is no way to track the status of your tasks, report on work done or install non-Microsoft updates.