SharePoint 2013 SP1 Pulled, Hinders Future Updates

On April 3, 2014, Microsoft pulled the 1^st Service Pack for SharePoint 2013, stating that a bug in the release prohibits future updates from being available.

The associated KB article (2817429) states:

Notice

We have recently uncovered an issue with this Service Pack 1 package that may prevent customers who have Service Pack 1 from deploying future public or cumulative updates. As a precautionary measure, we have deactivated the download page until a new package is published.

Public perception of Microsoft has greatly improved over the past several months, with new CEO Satya Nadella seen as “fixing” the public persona of the company. However, it seems the company has yet to fix the QA portion for product releases, which has soiled the company’s reputation for over 2 years. Each month, Patch Tuesday releases are followed by customer complaints about bugs and regularly Microsoft has been required to pull, fix and then re-release public updates.

Possibly due to a Cloud First development mentality, updates targeted toward on-premises services seem to be missing one of the most important pieces of the release process: quality assurance. To the company’s credit, Microsoft has been extremely quick in fixing botched releases. And, Microsoft products are used across vast and varying environments, making a perfect release almost impossible.

Still, the type of bug identified in Service Pack 1 for SharePoint 2013 seems like something that should have easily been identified before release.

There’s no word as to when customers can expect a fixed release. Also, there’s no indication of what customers who have already applied the service pack will need to do once the update to the update is available.