Cloud PC Rumors Microsoft Desktop As A Service Flying – Too Little too Late?

By | July 20, 2020
Microsoft Cloud PC

News article on ZDNet this week got the rumor mill going on Microsoft finally launching a Windows Desktop As a Service via Azure. The writer found a job description on Microsoft website which details the role.

Microsoft’s vision of Cloud PC is that it is the only M365 powered user compute experience delivered from azure and managed by Microsoft – at a flat per user price.  Microsoft Cloud PC is a strategic, new offering that is built on top of Windows Virtual Desktop to delivering Desktop as a Service. At its core, Cloud PC provides business customers a modern, elastic, cloud-based Windows experience and will allow organizations to stay current in a more simplistic and scalable manner. It has never been a more exciting time for us to start this initiative!  

We’re not convinced.  We can see parallel to Chromebook with a new “EdgeBook” client. We would think there are more web-enabled backends to use and connect with than there are the historical Windows interface. Applications really only need a browser and internet to be an application. What do we need Windows for?

Excerpt from ZDnet

For years, many of us Microsoft watchers have expected Microsoft to create a true virtualized Windows PC experience. Well, it’s happening, likely as soon as spring 2021.

Microsoft is currently calling the coming virtualization service “Cloud PC.” Cloud PC won’t replace locally installed Windows (and Office) — for the foreseeable future, anyway. It will be an option for customers who want to use their own Windows PCs made by Microsoft and/or other PC makers basically like thin clients, with Windows, Office and potentially other software delivered virtually by Microsoft.

I found a  job description posted June 5 for a program manager for Microsoft’s Cloud PC team on the company’s careers site. The description of Cloud PC isn’t super-detailed — or surprising to anyone following Microsoft’s virtualization strategy.