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The rise and fall of SCCM Technical Preview

By anyweb, in System Center Configuration Manager (Current Branch)

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Introduction

Microsoft recently released a blog post outlining predictable changes to the cadence of update releases for SCCM formally known as System Center Configuration Manager. The pinned tweet below had some interesting replies which you can read yourself here.

tweet.png

The blog post didn’t even mention SCCM Technical Preview at all, but did TAG it as you can see here.

tagged.png

What exactly is SCCM Technical Preview ?

SCCM Technical Preview has been a test release of Configuration Manager that has been released very regularly (at first) and developed for years allowing SCCM admins to test the latest and greatest features coming to the product in advance, and allowing them to give valuable feedback to the product team, thereby shaping the mainstream product (Microsoft Configuration Manager) into what it is today.

product feedback.png

Technical Preview launched publicly in May 2015 and that journey started a decade long coding frenzy, where a large team of motivated developers led by none other than the great David James (djammmer) developed great features at an outstanding pace, at least until the last few years when things slowed down to a noticeable crawl about a year after David left in October 2021.

Without the Technical Preview releases you could argue that the move to the Cloud would have taken a lot longer.

Moving forward to today, the last documented release of SCCM Technical Preview was 2411 and you can still (at the time of writing) read documentation about that version here.

learn docs.png

I’ve personally tested and blogged about most of those releases over the last 10 years. Below you can see the timeline of upgrades I’ve done in my lab via the History feature within Configuration Manager.

Note how it states Evaluation, 8 days left.

And below are my many blog posts on the subject:

Who cares ?

My trusty SCCM Technical Preview lab support is coming to an end, and currently there’s no sign that Microsoft will do anything about it. It has 8 days left of support and after that, if Microsoft doesn’t release an update for Technical Preview, then it will become unsupported and unusable.

I’ve pinged some of the official product teams on Twitter, asking if SCCM Technical Preview is dead but so far, there is no response. If they do update or reply I’ll post it here.

This IMHO is a crying shame as many dedicated SCCM admins like me have updated these labs for years, and now those very same labs are left to die by the very company that encouraged us to not only use them, but to provide ongoing feedback.

My Technical Preview lab shown below, was used for things like setting up bitlocker management via Configuration Manager, Co-Management setup, Cloud Managed Gateway (CMG), hybrid management of Windows 365 Cloud PCs, tenant attach, OSD via CMG and most recently the integration of Microsoft Intune’s Cloud PKI & SCEP when I technically reviewed this great book from my friends Paul & David.

my tp lab.png

But now the clock is ticking and soon I won’t be able to even use the console.

8 days left.png

Is this the end of Configuration Manager Technical Preview ? it certainly looks like it and based on this quote in their opening paragraph, I think the answer is yes.

Microsoft Intune is the future of device management, and all new innovations will occur there.

Update: No sooner than I posted this I got an reply on Twitter from Arnie, and here it is, confirmation from Jason Sandys @ Microsoft that Technical Preview is no more.

RIP

Screenshot 2025-11-20 195556.png

 

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