Windows Store for Business Closing

• The Windows Stores for Business and Education will not be available for Windows 11 and will be retired for Windows 10 in early 2023.
• Organizations that adopted them for private applications need to plan migration to a private repository and the Windows Package Manager.

The Windows Stores for Business and Education are being deprecated. They will not be available for Windows 11 and will be retired for Windows 10 in early 2023. (See the illustration “Windows Store for Business Deprecation Timeline”.) These Windows Stores were useful because in combination with Group Policy they allowed an organization to manage which applications a user could install on a managed Windows 10 device. In the future, organizations will need to deploy a private application repository, the Windows Package Manager, and a unified endpoint management (UEM) tool such as Endpoint Manager to fully manage application deployment.

Application Taxonomy Complicates Store Utilization

Going forward, how an organization will deploy applications will depend on elements of the application, including whether an application is public or private and free or paid. Microsoft defines a public application as one that is available from an ISV or a third party and generally is generic (organization neutral). In contrast, a private application is used by a single organization and is a line-of-business application. Such private applications are generally organization specific. For example, a word processor that is available by subscription would be a public, paid application. In contrast, an engineering firm’s in-house application that calculates loads for roads and bridges would be a private, free application. A browser such as Chrome is a public, free application.