I am not disagreeing with you.
Steps 1 and 2 are a manual action for Express users; but in practice this is a 10 minute process max. (3x a year excluding hotfixes)
For-pay customers enjoy the repo benefit, so they just set up our repo as a source so everything is automated.
I'm not sure I understand the product responsibility part; as a security practicioner, it is my due-diligence to keep my software updated; Enterprises don't use independent Windows update to patch their systems, they have a process where they test the software for functionality, then they update their WSUS, SCCM, Altiris, etc to distribute the software; granted, MSFT does not ask you to authenticate; but most likely, if you want to get the patches ahead of time, you would use your MSDN subscription to get the software, so I think there is a potential improvement to make EA bits available (which we provide to for-pay customers).
The feedback that we get from customers is that we update our software (for features, fixes and security) with timeliness that exceeds most other vendors in the same space.
(BTW, I thought the idea exchange was open to Express users, this way you can suggest the idea, and if it reaches a certain threshold a PM will add it to the queue; that definitely an area of improvement; same for the policy site); The community coordinator is reading this post and will chime-in.
Noted 4 potential improvements:
- Have an Express idea exchange
- Make sure the Policy site is visible to Express users
- Revise the EA process
- Look into extending the repos to Express (as long as we can continue to gather leads and prevent abuse)
(note is that all I can do is jot them down and communicate them)
In addition, do you want someone from Centrify to contact you directly to discuss this over the phone? I'm not sure this medium is the best.
R.P