Technology giant Microsoft seems all geared up to launch its Desktop as a Service (DaaS) offering, dubbed the Windows 365. First up, the company has developed an extraordinary fondness for the suffix “365”, as this is yet another offering that has it in the name.
For all intents and purposes, Windows 365 will be a cloud powered variant of Microsoft’s cloud hosted desktop. It comes as little surprise that the Windows 365 DaaS offering will be powered by Microsoft’s Azure infrastructure, which is already up and running.
Microsoft CEO has drawn a comparison of its Windows 365 offering with that of Software as a Service (SaaS). Just as SaaS brought productivity applications to the Cloud, Windows 365 seems all set to bring the entire operating system (OS) to the cloud.
This latest move by Microsoft could potentially un-nerve hardware makers in the market. Regardless of that, Windows 365 end users will be receiving a “streamed” version of Windows 10, and maybe Windows 11 as well, somewhere down the road.
The official launch of Windows 365 has been scheduled for August 2nd. However, the service is initially being made available only for business / corporate clients. One can expect that the service will also become available for individual users in the near future.
So far, Microsoft is tight lipped about the pricing, which could be a calculated move to gauge the market sentiment first. However, what’s clear so far is that the pricing model will be based on a flat monthly rate per user, regardless of the usage levels.
Twelve different configurations can be had for the Windows 365 virtual machines. Although you can have these VMs in twelve different specs, the overall offerings have been clubbed into just five groups or price points.
Microsoft is yet to unveil the more critical and minute details of its Windows 365 offering. Most of the industry experts believe that these details will be disclosed before or on the launch date, which is August 2. Till then, fingers are crossed.
