Microsoft wants to move Windows fully to the cloud

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kac77

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Microsoft wants to move Windows fully to the cloud

Microsoft has been increasingly moving Windows to the cloud on the commercial side with Windows 365, but the software giant also wants to do the same for consumers. In an internal “state of the business” Microsoft presentation from June 2022, Microsoft discuses building on “Windows 365 to enable a full Windows operating system streamed from the cloud to any device.”
 
Outside maybe stream on any device (you need either Windows, MacOS, Android, iOS, and web browsers right now so I am not sure about smarttv and what not), maybe it is currently limited I feel like it already exist
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-ca/products/dev-box/

Having the nice shortcut to the devbox being in the desktop (the fact the UI show clearly local desktop and cloud PC, make it look like your regular connect to my work cloud computer device working from home affair)
 
It sounds scary but it's really not, Microsoft has been trying for years to build a product to compete with Chromebooks, and ChromeOS is kicking Microsoft's ass in the consumer space.
While we are on here discussing the merrits of the 13700k vs the 7600x the rest of the world is buying N4020s like they are the greatest thing since Tech Jesus invented USB.
 
Agreed. This isn't really anything new, in fact, the idea is pretty old. There are "thin clients" that do nothing but give you an interface to log into a virtual desktop that is actually running on a server somewhere, and those have existed for 25+ years or more. The only thing really "new" about this is marketing trying to make it seem innovative because "Cloud" is trendy, and bringing something that was used almost exclusively by businesses into the consumer space. And, of course, trying to charge endless subscription costs for things that people used to pay for once is also trendy.
 
Lakados said:
While we are on here discussing the merrits of the 13700k vs the 7600x the rest of the world is buying N4020s like they are the greatest thing since Tech Jesus invented USB.
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You could say the same thing about Cars vs 2-stroke gas scooters. Fact is, most of the world loves cheap crap. Doesn't mean it's the way of the future, unless you live in a shithole somewhere.
 
GotNoRice said:
The only thing really "new" about this is marketing trying to make it seem innovative because "Cloud" is trendy, and bringing something that was used almost exclusively by businesses into the consumer space.
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It is yet to be that step I feel like it is (at least for now) an almost pure business account affair:
. Windows 365 Frontline is a new offering designed for frontline, shift, and part-time workers in a bid to offer businesses more flexibility over how they purchase Cloud PC licenses.

Lot of advantage for an enterprise and their IT squad, running license 24 hours with shift worker (or around the world office) and what not.

Are paid office 365 even popular among consumer versus free alternative, maybe for people that do not have computer anymore and could want to rent some Windows PC via tablet-smartTV-macOS device not for work/business reason or school account, but that seem extremely niche, I cannot think why-who that would be.
 
LukeTbk said:
It is yet to be that step I feel like it is (at least for now) an almost pure business account affair:
. Windows 365 Frontline is a new offering designed for frontline, shift, and part-time workers in a bid to offer businesses more flexibility over how they purchase Cloud PC licenses.

Lot of advantage for an enterprise and their IT squad, running license 24 hours with shift worker (or around the world office) and what not.

Are paid office 365 even popular among consumer versus free alternative, maybe for people that do not have computer anymore and could want to rent some Windows PC via tablet-smartTV-macOS device not for work/business reason or school account, but that seem extremely niche, I cannot think why-who that would be.
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Microsoft also needs something to compete with Google in that space, a free Google account gets you a decent word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation suite along with email and file storage.
The best Microsoft can do is $12 a month for that and it gets you less storage space on more expensive hardware with lesser security.

And for many businesses, the PC's are so locked down to the degree they are basically running Office suite with Acrobat and maybe PowerBI, they already have some form of A3 license there with Azure AD and Intune and possibly the enhanced security suite options.
Everything is already being synced with Onedrive and Sharepoint at that stage the box in front of them is basically running a UI and a modern cellphone has enough juice to handle the workload.

Given what a competent IT team costs right now and how few and far between they are something like this for a lot of businesses is sort of a no-brainer, getting an office up and running with full support becomes slightly more complicated than managing a single Google account. Which is about as simple as it gets.
 
kac77 said:
...Microsoft discuses building on “Windows 365 to enable a full Windows operating system streamed from the cloud to any device...
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This would be for Enterprise customers. At least primarily. It's something businesses want, a cloud vdi offering. vdi Virtual Desktop Interface, where the OS is running in a datacenter, and the user uses a client to "remotely connect" to the virtualized OS. When the user logs out the vm is deleted. and when someone logs in a new vm is built. has major advantages for security and OS patching. They update the base image, next user that logs in gets it. And within 24 hours everyone gets it. We use a local vdi Nutanix powered infrastructure at work, and it also serves as a layer of isolation.

Can't see any reason a cloud offering couldn't be achieved.

As far as home users go, a cloud based OS doesn't make sense at least not yet. If it moves this way, your pc could be a chromebook and all of the compute power would be in the cloud. so it would be far more than just the OS. Putting all of our hardware into a datacenter might make sense though in 30 years, who knows.
 
Lakados said:
Microsoft also needs something to compete with Google in that space, a free Google account gets you a decent word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation suite along with email and file storage.
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Wouldn't a google type solution (Browser, not cloud machine that stream on your device) a much cheaper way here ? Office Online style .

Running a full blown windows 11 VM somewhere and streaming it like what is being talked about here must be relatively expensive.

Nanogrip said:
Oh boy. I live in a tiny island in the Pacific and often internet access is a big challenge. Going fully cloud is not good for us folks and living here is already hella expensive.
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I would wait for game to stop to be a big plus for Microsoft Windows to worry about that ever happening, being forced to the cloud (or for Internet tech to change a lot).

GoodBoy said:
Can't see any reason a cloud offering couldn't be achieved.
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Already is they have an for dev centric version and the Winddows 365 frontline offer, an 8 core, 32gb of ram, goes for $1 an hour
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-ca/pricing/details/dev-box/

From them you have superbe access and speed to some microsoft server-github and some other advantage than from home, so it is not purely a make it much easier for employer new employee to get started to work on complicated build-devops type of affair, security and what not.

The news seem to be just about plan to continue to grow that business and make it GUI friendlier for employee that use them to connect them as one of your virtual desktop shortcut.
 
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LukeTbk said:
Wouldn't a google type solution (Browser, not cloud machine that stream on your device) a much cheaper way here ? Office Online style .

Running a full blown windows 11 VM somewhere and streaming it like what is being talked about here must be relatively expensive.


I would wait for game to stop to be a big plus for Microsoft Windows to worry about that ever happening.
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VM’s are cheap and RDP uses nothing for bandwidth. Microsoft has more datacenter capability than it knows what to do with.
Hardware refreshes tend to double cpu and memory capacity but doesn’t double demand on a facility. After their last round they probably saw utilization plummet which is bad for efficiency and actually costs more so finding a way to drum up usage is fine.
 
Ranulfo said:
Just another variant of the Windows 8 desire to lock everything down to the Windows Store and MS control.
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But with so many people trashing Windows and willing to go to Linux to "regain their freedom", Microsoft has no incentive to not do this. You could say to some degree. It's almost like a self fulfilling prophecy.

If all the freedom fighters stayed on Windows and instead fought for a better Windows OS, maybe Microsoft wouldn't do this?
 
bigdogchris said:
But with so many people trashing Windows and willing to go to Linux to "regain their freedom", Microsoft has no incentive to not do this. You could say to some degree. It's almost like a self fulfilling prophecy.

If all the freedom fighters stayed on Windows and instead fought for a better Windows OS, maybe Microsoft wouldn't do this?
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MS not go this route? The freedom fighters said this was where MS was headed years ago. We said it would be a slow burn and eventually happen. Nobody wanted to listen. Nobody believed us.

We've seen this before too with software subscriptions. We said software subscriptions were coming. We said this was a BAD idea. We said people need to fight it. We were told no way it'll never happen. Yet, here we are in software subscription hell.

So buckle up. Windows streaming from the cloud for Joe Average is on the way complete with monthly subscription fees.
 
Vermillion said:
MS not go this route? The freedom fighters said this was where MS was headed years ago. We said it would be a slow burn and eventually happen. Nobody wanted to listen. Nobody believed us.

We've seen this before too with software subscriptions. We said software subscriptions were coming. We said this was a BAD idea. We said people need to fight it. We were told no way it'll never happen. Yet, here we are in software subscription hell.

So buckle up. Windows streaming from the cloud for Joe Average is on the way complete with monthly subscription fees.
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Who is "we?"

Will Microsoft force everyone to upgrade, by disabling a system install of Windows?

What happens when I am on a plane, with no WiFi? Airplane Wifi is crummy already, even without the loads that cloud Windows would create.

On a train that goes through a tunnel and loses WiFi? Or on a subway train? Or on a boat out at sea?

If Apple is smart, then won't follow suit.
 
philb2 said:
What happens when I am on a plane, with no WiFi? Airplane Wifi is crummy already, even without the loads that cloud Windows would create.
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Or you want to play a video game or need for your device to boot to connect to a wifi, have something that is able to connect and stream the cloud content.

I really doubt Microsoft will let everyone boot android-ios device soon, they will still make run on device OS as long as they can and people use them.

Vermillion said:
We've seen this before too with software subscriptions. We said software subscriptions were coming.
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When did software subscriptions not existed, from RedHat, MSDN, SoftImage, by seat, by cpu subscription exist since pretty much the beginnning, who would have not believed you that the people would want to stop to pay upfront for things and much prefer to pay monthly ?

The it is really bad portion I would imagine was argued, if I look at my steam library total cost, how many title were barely played, would a Gamepass type subscription been worst ? Maybe-maybe not.

Vermillion said:
MS not go this route?
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Did people not believe you that once the tech would be good enough would offer remote VM to people that want them ? That seem strawmenish.

Why would Microsoft jeopardy his gaming user base by forcing some cloud only MS account on PC desktop usage anytime soon ?
 
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bigdogchris said:
If all the freedom fighters stayed on Windows and instead fought for a better Windows OS, maybe Microsoft wouldn't do this?
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If all the Windows users actually bought official retail copies of Windows, perhaps Microsoft wouldn't be looking at cloud based subscription models. Don't blame the users that saw the inevitable and jumped ship when people on these very forums shamelessly proclaim to use $40.00 copies of Windows that are apparently 'legit'.
 
I just realized that with all the people I have working from home, I am essentially doing this.
In my server rack, there are 2 Dell T640s with a combined 256 cores, 1TB in ram, and 4 RTX Quadro 6000s that currently supply 30+ remote workers with desktop resources via VMWare Horizon, which is just fancy RDP with better USB passthrough and better video encoding options. (the system scales out to 64 users but when COVID ended more people wanted to return than we anticipated)
I have the money and resources to supply that to the remote workers, I bet there are a lot of businesses out there that don't.

If you have workers who are in other towns, cities, provinces, states, or even countries, sure you can mail them a laptop to do their work from, but then you need a whole MDM platform and support team to deal with it and they need to be equipped to deal with multiple timezones and stuff like that. This essentially takes that whole setup and replaces it with a single RDP link and a VPN gateway, now the employee can use whatever the hell they want to access the virtual machine with.
On our system, I know a number of them are using the Horizon client on an iPad with a keyboard and the touch pen, but it works as well from a Chromebook, Windows, Linux, or MacOS device as well.

So when I stop to think about it there is probably a pretty big business case for this right now.
 
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Vermillion said:
MS not go this route?
We said software subscriptions were coming. We said this was a BAD idea.
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Exactly, remember PC enthusiasts are a small number of consumers. As for software subscriptions, same deal. It always ends up more expensive. Unless it is $1 or free for a month, you should always pass. Game pass for $15 for a month seems great but you don't keep the game. Just wait a year for a sale.
 
philb2 said:
Will Microsoft force everyone to upgrade, by disabling a system install of Windows?
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Yes. They've done it before.

Remember the GWX trojan/virus/malware that they forced on all Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 machines through vaguely worded and disguised Windows Updates that forced Windows 10 on to millions of boxes automatically? They got sued and lost a whole bunch of times over it, that didn't stop them and they kept at it for years. It was an absolute nightmare because they didn't give a damn about whether you were a home user, an embedded kiosk, business or enterprise user, they forced it down everyone's throats. To get around users blocking the malicious updates with GWX, they re-issued the same updates dozens of times, which counted as new updates. If you didn't block those, you were hosed. KB2952664 and KB3035583 are permanently burned in my memory. As are KB3068708 and KB3080149. Hell, they didn't even respect group policy settings blocking updates.

They've been doing the same thing with Windows 11 now since it was released. Randomly forcibly upgrading people's machines without consent or even warning. I've heard from customers that they left their PC running one night and the next morning came back to Windows 11 staring them in the face. Never prompted them or anything.

People were warned for years that with Microsoft on their PC, they no longer owned it. MS can and will do whatever they want to PCs running their operating systems. I see no reason to not expect them to force upgrade from Windows 11 to whatever shiny new OS they roll out in the next few years.
 
Flogger23m said:
Exactly, remember PC enthusiasts are a small number of consumers. As for software subscriptions, same deal. It always ends up more expensive. Unless it is $1 or free for a month, you should always pass. Game pass for $15 for a month seems great but you don't keep the game. Just wait a year for a sale.
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But just your average gamers will prefer low latency local and the non PC enthusiast will not want to pay monthly fee (like they never pay for windows outside included to the purchase price of the device)
 
tangoseal said:
Time to go Ubuntu
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Linux is the future.
greece ww2 meme.jpg
 
GotNoRice said:
You could say the same thing about Cars vs 2-stroke gas scooters. Fact is, most of the world loves cheap crap. Doesn't mean it's the way of the future, unless you live in a shithole somewhere.
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Most people unfortunately fit in that last category
 
GiGaBiTe said:
I've heard from customers that they left their PC running one night and the next morning came back to Windows 11 staring them in the face. Never prompted them or anything.
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This happened to me. While I was planning on upgrading to W11, it was quite a shock. Several WTF's were uttered.
 
jfreund said:
Microsoft wants you to rent your purchased computer from them.

Some users have been warning about this for years while other users said it would "never happen".
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How is this different from say licensing Citrix or VMWare where you would pay huge licensing fees to make remote desktops or applications available?
From my perspective, all it would change is who I pay my fees to. Most enterprise institutions have already moved over to leasing options for servers and core infrastructure, so you are paying monthly for that already.
So if you are looking at a situation where you are leasing your core infrastructure, then paying huge license fees to somebody to make that hardware available remotely, while also having to retain staff to serve and maintain that infrastructure would it not make sense to look at further simplifying the setup more?

Now you are just leasing somebody else's hardware, but they are dealing with power, cooling, backups, routine maintenance, core networking, and security. So your onsite requirements just disappeared to basic employee support and good tech workers are in relatively short supply right now so that is something that is on a lot of companies' oh shit list. And what if half your staff are remote workers, running all those VPN connections and maintaining enough bandwidth for that isn't cheap, this would offload much of those Internet requirements for companies. RDP is cheap on bandwidth, and it greatly simplifies internal firewall configurations as you are no longer dealing with permissions for numerous things just RDP you could choose to lock the rest down and isolate any personal devices such as phones from the core so internal networking security needs are greatly simplified.

From a business perspective, this is a nothing burger and basically expands on things we are already doing and have been for a while, if anything Microsoft is late to this party.

I would never recommend this for a home user, that would be insanely stupid, but for business and enterprise, there are serious cost savings options there that are very easily worth exploring.
 
Lakados said:
How is this different from say licensing Citrix or VMWare where you would pay huge licensing fees to make remote desktops or applications available?
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For one, you can still use your application. What Microsoft is doing is preventing people from turning on their PC without an internet connection, all for profit. Office 360 didn't go so well that Microsoft had to sell Office and not license it monthly.

From a business perspective, this is a nothing burger and basically expands on things we are already doing and have been for a while, if anything Microsoft is late to this party.
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Who has a cloud OS? I want to know so I can mock them.
 
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DukenukemX said:
For one, you can still use your application. What Microsoft is doing is preventing people from turning on their PC without an internet connection, all for profit. Office 360 didn't go so well that Microsoft had to sell Office and not license it monthly.


Who has a cloud OS? I want to know so I can mock them.
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I must be interpreting this very differently than you are because I don't see any mention of them removing functionality or blocking existing functionality.
Just that they would be locking some new features behind things that are getting added to Office 365, something most users don't use. Nothing there reads as mandatory to me, a new boot option that would enable is giving an option not really removing one.

The bigger one for me is the "AI" talk they throw in there, which only works with consuming huge amounts of data which requires it to be uploaded somewhere for integration and training, and much of it needs to be identifiable otherwise it is too generic to assist an individual. So by using the AI services you are choosing to upload identifiable data to be analyzed under the guise of helping you, which really isn't different than what Google does with Chrome, Grammarly does with text, Apple does with Siri, or, or, or, many things out there collect identifiable data. So I guess is Microsoft doing it any better or worse than the other players out there, not sure we'll find out soon enough if or when one or a group of them sue Microsoft for being "Anti-Competitive", which is why they had to lock the good version of Defender behind O365... Norton won that one and Microsoft isn't allowed to offer a robust security suite in their products by default... Silly to me really but Microsoft evil so I get it.

Bah at this rate I am going to be spending most of my time in Azure Stack than any other OS.
Here's hoping more AAA developers start working with Valve a little more closely.
I am perfectly fine relegating Microsoft to work, Linux for Play, and spending more time painting my piles of grey, because the costs of maintaining this gaming hobby of mine are just getting too much for my wife's liking, Mastercard is loving it though...
<Insert old man yelling at clouds meme here.>
 
jfreund said:
Microsoft wants you to rent your purchased computer from them.

Some users have been warning about this for years while other users said it would "never happen".
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Did people really said microsoft will never offer on azure enterprise remote VM machine for their worker ?

Or not more about they will not force desktop user to run on microsoft server (as it cost more to Microsoft and giant amount of people will not want to pay, and losing the gaming market an excellent moat for them would be a really strange move)

DukenukemX said:
Office 360 didn't go so well that Microsoft had to sell Office and not license it monthly.
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You live in an extreme strange media bubble world if you think Office 365 has not been a success or that Microsoft accepting to sales Office to people is a sign their cloud offer is failing. Or that there is 0 benefit for the enterprise that they were force to move.
 
Lakados said:
Norton won that one and Microsoft isn't allowed to offer a robust security suite in their products by default...
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Lakados

Can you explain this a bit. How/what/why/when did Norton win? Why isn't Microsoft allowed to offer a robust security suite?
 
philb2 said:
Lakados

Can you explain this a bit. How/what/why/when did Norton win? Why isn't Microsoft allowed to offer a robust security suite?
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Back around 2009 or 2010 Microsoft and Symantec got into a bit of a legal battle around Microsoft offering Anti Virus, and the general consensus was why would somebody pay for more when Microsoft was giving this away for free, and it looks like they settled things before it got to a full lawsuit but many of the features and functions that were in the Beta never made it into the production versions, those features later got re-introduced with Microsoft Endpoint security, or Enhanced Security which were paid for options. But Microsoft and Symantec/Veritas got into all sorts of legal headbutting around that time over all sorts of stuff on everything from AV to File management, and I'm pretty sure all of it got settled out of court, but Symantec walked away with the win on that for sure.
 
Lakados said:
I must be interpreting this very differently than you are because I don't see any mention of them removing functionality or blocking existing functionality.
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Define functionality. So instead of booting my PC through my super fast SSD, I'm now instead dependent on my ISP's speed? Do I have to worry about my applications loading speed while other people in my home are using Netflix? At a time when SSD's are getting cheaper and bigger, do I really need my apps on the cloud? Don't make me explain to you how the cloud works.
beta&t=IF4eZEIKG8xzLPZeZ09W0zQEL_FtxcpYYNhCwWQg2nc.png

Just that they would be locking some new features behind things that are getting added to Office 365, something most users don't use. Nothing there reads as mandatory to me, a new boot option that would enable is giving an option not really removing one.
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What part of the topic you missed that's about "moving Windows fully to the cloud"? This isn't about some parts of Office 365, this is booting an OS entirely onto the cloud. Don't think they're giving you more functionality with the option to boot off the cloud, because that's marketing speak for super small SSD's like what Google Chromebooks tend to do.
The bigger one for me is the "AI" talk they throw in there, which only works with consuming huge amounts of data which requires it to be uploaded somewhere for integration and training, and much of it needs to be identifiable otherwise it is too generic to assist an individual. So by using the AI services you are choosing to upload identifiable data to be analyzed under the guise of helping you, which really isn't different than what Google does with Chrome, Grammarly does with text, Apple does with Siri, or, or, or, many things out there collect identifiable data. So I guess is Microsoft doing it any better or worse than the other players out there, not sure we'll find out soon enough if or when one or a group of them sue Microsoft for being "Anti-Competitive", which is why they had to lock the good version of Defender behind O365... Norton won that one and Microsoft isn't allowed to offer a robust security suite in their products by default... Silly to me really but Microsoft evil so I get it.
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Sounds like to me they want cloud users to help them train their AI. I think we just confirmed when the year of the desktop Linux will occur, which is when Microsoft pushes for laptops sold with 64GB SSD's that are built for booting onto the cloud.
0n6iyeckasv71.png

Bah at this rate I am going to be spending most of my time in Azure Stack than any other OS.
Here's hoping more AAA developers start working with Valve a little more closely.
I am perfectly fine relegating Microsoft to work, Linux for Play, and spending more time painting my piles of grey, because the costs of maintaining this gaming hobby of mine are just getting too much for my wife's liking, Mastercard is loving it though...
<Insert old man yelling at clouds meme here.>
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AAA developers will go where the money is, and if that's the cloud then it's the cloud. Like all of cloud gaming attempts, I see this failing as well. Nobody wants a laptop that depends on their internet speed and dependability to just turn on their computer. Nobody has that kind of trust with any company, especially Microsoft to let them have their data.
 
Yeah I don't care about my data and them spying (besides how resource intensive that is in the background) so much as I care about offline capability for my OS lol
 
DukenukemX said:
Define functionality. So instead of booting my PC through my super fast SSD, I'm now instead dependent on my ISP's speed? Do I have to worry about my applications loading speed while other people in my home are using Netflix? At a time when SSD's are getting cheaper and bigger, do I really need my apps on the cloud? Don't make me explain to you how the cloud works.
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Why would you do that ?
DukenukemX said:
What part of the topic you missed that's about "moving Windows fully to the cloud"? This isn't about some parts of Office 365, this is booting an OS entirely onto the cloud. Don't think they're giving you more functionality with the option to boot off the cloud, because that's marketing speak for super small SSD's like what Google Chromebooks tend to do.
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The title of the topic is just some click-bait internet hyperbolic, nothing about the actual article is about moving Windows fully to the cloud it even show a functionnality of a very local windows accessing the Remote Desktop.
 
LukeTbk said:
The title of the topic is just some click-bait internet hyperbolic, nothing about the actual article is about moving Windows fully to the cloud it even show a functionnality of a very local windows accessing the Remote Desktop.
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Says it right in their long term goals. Sounds like they really want people to log into Windows with their Microsoft account, and then use that account no matter what computer you log into.
SJVItup.jpg
 
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