I'd say SUS is comparable to receiving a government issued car in a commie country after waiting on the list for years and years. It does the job in a crude way, but you are grateful that you don?t have to walk or bicycle.
Microsoft has the resources and ability to quickly bring SUS up to a decent product.
The problem is, by doing so Bill Gates won't be hearing the cash register bells ring.
I think of it this way, Microsoft is re-affirming it's commitment to security every few months, so they had to do something for the masses to address patch management.
But it's probably killing them that SUS could affect sales of SMS Server. Therefore they must keep SUS a bit on the Lame side.
SUS needs:
Better logging / analysis
More extensive and flexible Group policy controls. For example you should be able to schedule it by the minute not the hour. It should also have the ability to be scheduled for multiple days of the week, instead of everyday or a specific day.
SUS should be able to manage non-critical patches
A roll back option to roll back some of Microsoft?s Bogus Hotfixes
Old hotfixes and service packs should be able to be deleted without them re-synchronizing and downloading again.
etc etc. etc.
