14 DAY TRIAL // While Windows and Office continue to be super-popular especially in the consumer market, Microsoft’s main cash cows are now cloud services, with Azure itself setting new growth records every quarter.
And Microsoft has obviously been looking into ways to expand its services offering, including with a virtualization service called Cloud PC.
As its name suggests, the Cloud PC would technically allow customers to use computers that are managed by Microsoft in the cloud, with software like Windows, Office, Microsoft Teams, and others coming pre-loaded. So basically, the Cloud PC is a virtualized experience that users would connect to and access a series of applications that are offered by Microsoft.
According to a report from ZDNet, the work on this Cloud PC has advanced well and now Microsoft plans to release it in the spring of 2021.
But while a generic description of the Cloud PC can be figured out by simply reading the name of the service, more specifics aren’t available as Microsoft is struggling to keep everything secret.
A new cash cow?
As per the cited source, the description of a job related to the Cloud PC provides us with a closer look at how Microsoft sees the future of this service.
“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,” the job description reads.
Needless to say, this isn’t the first time Microsoft is exploring such a product, and not a long time ago, similar rumors were linked with a Windows 365 subscription service for its operating system. Like Cloud PC, Windows 365 was supposed to be built on an approach similar to Office 365, technically providing users with access to a virtualization service built for Windows.
Cloud PC, however, can easily become a cash cow if Microsoft uses the right pricing system. There’s a good chance that Microsoft will use a subscription model, most likely with a certain fee per user, once again with the focus on the enterprise.