As we celebrate the third anniversary of Windows 365, we’re reflecting on the incredible achievements of our customers over the past three years. You’ve navigated the complexities of the hybrid workplace, transitioned aspects of your business to the cloud, and maintained connectivity and operations in a challenging cybersecurity landscape. We’re honored to be part of your journey towards an AI and cloud-powered future of work.
Our customers have emphasized the importance of business resiliency, security, and productivity, all while reducing IT costs and complexity. From the outset, our goal with Windows 365 has been to ensure the security of corporate data and employee information, reduce IT management overhead, and provide a flexible, fast-to-deploy Windows experience. Windows 365 Cloud PCs enable employees to work from anywhere, accessing their Windows 11 or Windows 10 desktop, apps, data, and settings on any device.
Companies like FedEx, Regeneron, ING, Carlsberg, Nationwide, Crocs, and Kantar have transformed their work processes and enhanced business resilience with Windows 365. Today, we’re excited to announce new updates to Windows 365, inspired by customer feedback and new use cases, to keep businesses secure and employees productive, even amidst uncertainty and change.
New Cloud Solutions for Business Resiliency
Windows 365 is cloud-native, offering customers the tools to keep teams connected and productive, manage their device estate, and maintain business continuity as part of the Windows commercial family of solutions. John Cable, Vice President of Windows Servicing and Delivery, recently highlighted the importance of prioritizing change and innovation in end-to-end resilience, alongside ongoing security improvements and collaboration with partners who value the security of the Windows ecosystem.
We’ve introduced cross-region disaster recovery and data resilience for Windows 365 Cloud PCs, adding an extra layer of protection against regional outages. This feature creates “snapshots” of Cloud PCs, stored in geographically distant locations defined by customers. These snapshots can be recovered to Cloud PCs in the selected location during a disaster recovery event. This feature is easily configurable and integrated into existing reports and workflows, providing robust resilience and streamlined management to ensure business continuity during challenging scenarios. It also reduces the risk of data loss and allows IT admins to respond quickly to unexpected disruptions.
Customer-Centric Innovation
Customer-centric innovation is at the heart of Windows. We listen to your feedback, understand your challenges, and strive to deliver solutions that meet your needs and expectations. We’re continually enhancing Windows 365 with new features, integrations, and capabilities based on your input.
One frequent customer request has been for simple managed access to a graphics processing unit (GPU) in a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution. Today, we’re announcing the general availability of Windows 365 GPU-enabled Cloud PCs, supporting intensive graphic design, image and video rendering, 3D modeling, and data processing or visualization workloads. These new GPU-enabled Cloud PCs offer the freedom to produce, collaborate, and share work from Windows in the cloud.
Additionally, customers have asked for a unified app that provides one-click access to Windows 365, Azure Virtual Desktop, Microsoft Dev Box, and other Microsoft virtualization solutions. We’re pleased to announce that the Windows App will be generally available on Windows, macOS, and iOS, and in public preview for Android this fall. The Windows App offers employees easy, one-button access to their Windows 365 Cloud PCs from any device, enabling productivity with Windows wherever they are. Since the preview launch, we’ve seen over 10 million active hours of usage across platforms, adopted by customers like Zurich Insurance Group and Vodafone.
We’re also excited to announce that AI-powered Windows 365 Cloud PC recommendations are now generally available, helping IT administrators determine the optimal configuration for each Cloud PC based on employee usage patterns and performance needs, from 2vCPU to the newly available GPU-enabled configurations.
Work More Flexibly and Securely Across Any Device
Security is paramount in cloud computing, which is why we’ve invested in numerous solutions to protect employee identity, access, and company data on Windows 365. Today, we’re announcing the latest security updates for Windows 365:
Secure Identity: Granular IT-defined re-authentication policies (remote lock screen and quicker session time limits) ensure that only authorized individuals can access your Cloud PC.
Secure Access: Purview Insider Risk Management with Forensic Evidence helps detect and mitigate insider threats by monitoring employee activity, identifying risky behaviors, and providing evidence for investigations.
Secure Data: Encryption with Customer Key allows you to encrypt your Cloud PC data at rest and in transit with your own encryption keys, giving you full control and ownership of your data. Unidirectional clipboard prevents data leakage by limiting the direction and type of data copied and pasted from the local device to the Cloud PC.
Companies like Crocs have adopted Windows 365 for over 8,000 employees and contractors, simplifying systems management, enhancing security, and achieving significant financial savings.
Windows 365 Prepares You for AI at Work
Windows is the best platform for AI innovation and productivity, extending to Windows in the cloud. Windows 365 ensures all employees can access Microsoft Copilot, streamed from the cloud to Windows PCs, Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Android devices, with IT controls and data protection. Copilot for Microsoft 365 works on Windows 365 Cloud PCs just like physical PCs, enhancing productivity with AI on any device.
Customers, developers, and partners are embracing Windows as an open AI platform, creating AI-enabled apps and powerful Copilot+ PCs that accelerate innovation. With Windows 365, this creativity extends to every employee and aspect of our customers’ businesses.
Our commitment to enabling flexible work and empowering productivity and creativity is recognized in the latest IDC MarketScape reports, where Microsoft is named a Leader in Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) for 2023-2024. “Microsoft, through its position as the developer of Windows and its long history in the market, has a broad and deep ecosystem of relationships and technology related to virtualization.”
We continue to build Windows 365 with our customers’ needs in mind. Our goal is to provide you with choices, features, and tools to drive your business success. We will keep innovating to help secure your business, provide a great employee experience, and streamline operations.
