hello and welcome to microsoft mechanics
coming up i'm joined by scott manchester
take a first look at windows 365 your pc
in the cloud that lets you securely
stream your personalized windows
experience including your desktop your
apps your settings and your content at
any time to all your devices and for it
we're going to show you how is a fully
managed service just how easy it is to
assign and configure cloud pcs using
familiar tools like microsoft endpoint
manager all right so scott we've had you
on the show now quite a few times over
the past few years but now you're back
with a special announcement yeah jeremy
it's been a while well i sure am excited
to have windows 365 finally announced
today and i can't wait to show it in
more detail that's right and you know
given the need to work remotely and
securely over the past year we've seen
this huge demand for cloud-based
solutions so what's the significance now
that we're doing here with windows 365.
so with windows 365 we are modernizing
the way that windows experiences are
delivered for anyone on practically any
device now it's a premium experience for
both users and it it's easy to use and
just as easy for it to manage
and this as you mentioned is a whole new
category of computing we call cloud pc
now that said the best way for me to
explain this is really to show it to you
so for example here i have my personal
laptop and my ipad which is a typical
combination for many travelers so i'll
use the browser first on my windows
laptop and go to
windows365.microsoft.com
now i can see my cloud pc along with its
specs now it actually has a higher spec
than the laptop i'm connecting from
now there are also a few other things
you can do from this portal but i'll
show you that in a sec
first let me launch right into my
desktop so here you can see my personal
desktop it still has my apps even the
ones i was using from the last time i
was here and my custom desktop
background everything my it department
has installed for me is in the start
menu like office and teams so i'm
immediately ready to work now i'll open
another app in this case excel
and here i'll open this periodic table
and let's change nickel into gold
all right we'll come back to that later
also everything you connect to is super
fast whether you're downloading
streaming or uploading content from your
cloud pc just to put this into context
the average wireless connection speed in
the us is around 27 megabits per second
which is more than enough for a full
fidelity experience to access and use
windows 365 but once i'm in my cloud pc
things get way faster i've got a speed
test running here and in my case you can
see here i've got a crazy fast five
millisecond ping time and my download is
almost peaking at 10 gigabits per second
and look at that upload speed it's
almost coming up to four gigabits per
second and i've got to say those are
pretty amazing speeds and it really
shows you that the device that you're
connecting to your cloud pc with doesn't
need to have a fast connection and it
also means that your cloud pc's
connection is never going to be the
bottleneck when it comes to using online
services accessing things via the
browser or uploading or downloading
content that's right basically if you
can stream a movie you have enough
bandwidth for a great experience
now i'll close this browser window here
on my laptop and i'll pick up exactly
where i left off on my ipad
now i'm on my ipad i'm in the safari
browser and i could launch here from the
browser but also we have native apps for
ios android mac and windows with linux
on the way
so i'll switch over to the native ios
app connected to my cloud pc and you'll
see it opens exactly how i left it in
windows now here you can see my speed
test results are still there and in
excel nickel is still gold
now in my case i went straight from my
windows pc to my ipad but i could have
logged out on friday in the us on my
laptop and resumed on monday in france
for my ipad and the experience would
have been exactly the same right and to
be clear just like you have your own
physical pc this is your own persistent
windows pc in the cloud so it'll be the
same one today or a year from now as
long as it's still active absolutely and
this really opens up new possibilities
to securely connect to a persistent and
always ready windows environment with
your personalized desktops apps files
and even your settings all delivered
from the microsoft cloud okay so if this
is running though in the cloud can you
still get to things that are in your
local offices network like shared files
or folders internet apps you know where
you might have to otherwise drive into
the office or connect via vpn yeah you
can we designed windows 365 from the
ground up to fit the hybrid work
experience we've all been living now
ordinarily connecting directly to your
work network with a personal device can
introduce risk because your cloud pcs
can always be connected to your work
network you don't need to worry about
local or vpn access from a personally
owned device with windows 365 your cloud
pc experience is effectively the same as
if you were in the office
so this is great for anyone whether
you're a front line worker in a high
security environment or an everyday or
advanced user working from home or the
corporate office your favorite spot like
a cafe or even on the go
it doesn't matter where you're working
from you still have a secure and premium
experience okay so we've seen that what
your personalized cloud pc looks like
but let's say it's my first day on the
job and you've given me a cloud pc then
what does that experience look like so
let me switch back over to that end user
portal and show you the guided
experience now when a user launches the
portal for the first time they get a
welcome and brief tour of the portal
what to expect and how to manage their
cloud pc so let's take a look once i'm
logged in so here again you can see your
cloud pc specs and again i can open
directly from the browser but i can also
manage a few settings here i can restart
rename
and also troubleshoot any issues i might
encounter coming soon admins will
optionally be able to set additional
optional settings like reset and resize
so you can do those actions right from
here as well okay and speaking of rit
admins are probably watching right now
what else have you done to make their
lives easier well for it this has huge
benefits from the management perspective
because you don't need to worry about
the infrastructure to set up and manage
this type of experience you don't have
to learn new management tools and
paradigms we've built windows 365 to be
consistent with how you manage your
physical devices now using microsoft
endpoint manager or mem in fact i'm in
the all devices list in memnow and you
can see your physical and cloud pcs
appear side by side now in my case i
just happen to have a lot of cloud pcs
running
and i can manage apps and policies from
here like any other windows device okay
so it's a familiar and consistent
management experience it's like managing
all your other windows pcs but can you
walk us through the steps it would take
to deploy a cloud pc sure there are
really just two requirements for a user
to be assigned a cloud pc
first they need a license and second
they need to be part of an aad group
that's assigned to a provisioning policy
let me walk you through that so you
start here in the microsoft 365 admin
center and assign licenses just like you
would from any other microsoft 365
service and this step could be done by
your licensing admin
now i'll click into active users and
assign one to our new intern adele vance
now i'll go ahead and give her a cloud
pc in this case let's do four cores and
16 gigs of ram and while i'm here i'll
also set her up with microsoft 365. now
i have a group for our interns already
assigned to provisioning policy so for
her account i can just add a dell to
this group
so you can see she's already in two
default groups but now i'll assign a new
membership and search for west u.s and
there's our intern group and once i add
her that will kick off the cloud pc
provisioning and will be ready to use
shortly one of the great things about
windows 365 is that is offered at a
fixed price per user per month like any
other microsoft 365 subscription so you
don't need to agonize over things like
tracking utilization or keeping idle
resources running when people aren't
using them got it so it's more or less
the same user licensing experience you'd
be used to for microsoft 365 but what
did you have to do to get that group
assignment then to kick off the
provisioning process so let me show you
how we set this up first in mem you can
see i have 26 machines provisioned and
three network connections in three
different regions now in our case we
have set up a dell to access our cloud
pc using the west us standard network
connection
in our provisioning policies i'll click
into the one i assigned to this group
and you can see under image we are using
our curated windows 10 20 h2 build from
the gallery but also we could have
uploaded and selected our own custom
image adele is assigned to the west u.s
interns provisioning policy that
contains all of these settings including
the network connection now you see the
policy name in this case as a best
practice matches our group name
and in assignments you'll see the aed
group of west u.s interns we added a
dell to earlier can you have more than
one group then assigned to a
provisioning policy yeah you can add
multiple aad groups to a provisioning
policy now if i go back to the windows
365 tab we should see all our existing
provision cloud pcs and a new cloud pc
being provisioned for adele and she
should have access to this cloud pc in
about 20 minutes so can i localize then
the connection to just the regions or
specific networks where that group
should probably have access then for the
best experience that's right you can
create network connections in azure
regions that are closest to where your
users are physically located for the
best performance which is great too for
multinational works so once everything
is up and running what do we have then
to monitor health and performance i know
that's something that's top of mind for
a lot of people and this was a huge area
of focus for us so first let's look at
the network connections
we've built analytics into the service
to look at health across your v-nets and
domain connections as you can see here
to make sure cloud pc's users can reach
everything they need to on your network
to be productive
and once you've configured a network
connection our watchdog service
continually runs diagnostics to ensure
connections are up and running at all
times now if a diagnostic check fails
we'll alert you and even give you
suggestions for how to correct the issue
now we've also built rich out of the box
reporting and analytics for cloud pcs
this enables admins to take actions to
improve end user performance and can
reduce calls to your help desk so here's
how this works so i'll go into the new
remoting connection report and this
lists out key performance metrics for
connecting to your cloud pcs and the
impact on the user's experience for
example with cloud pc sign-in time we
see the total time to connect to the
cloud pc and round-trip time kpi shows
you the speed and reliability of network
connections from the user locations
so next if i click into the resource
performance report i can see whether my
cpu and memory configurations are
optimal across my cloud pc users i can
drill into device performance for even
more details well here i'll select this
cloud pc
and i can see it shows a poor
performance score of only 18. now the
ideal score should be somewhere around
50 or higher so i can resolve this by
adding more memory or cpu to this cloud
pc for the user so are you able then to
change the cloud pc specs to match the
demand on that device yes you can
and you know not all users will have the
same needs and a user might even start
out being fine with the basic level
cloud pc but then outgrow it and this
ability to upgrade is new with cloud pc
to help you know when you might want to
upgrade we give you the right visibility
and information before a user calls you
for support to resize this cloud pc i
just need to click on the recommendation
and select the right size for this cloud
pc and i'll select resize
and i can change it to have more virtual
cores memory or storage for example i
could choose an option here with let's
say eight cores and then resize
and once the change is made the next
time the user logs in you will get this
new spec nice but i really want to
switch gears to security and compliance
though
how do we make sure that our cloud pcs
meet our requirements well like the rest
of our microsoft cloud services we've
made windows 365 service itself
compliant in the region and industries
we operate in and you can find the
latest info on the trust center at
microsoft.com trust
from a security perspective of course
the primary benefit is that your cloud
pc is abstracted from the device you're
using to access it so as an admin you
have full control over the data in the
cloud pc and can prevent people from
copying data their local pc now beyond
that windows 365 follows the zero trust
security model
for example you can use multi-factor
authentication to explicitly verify any
login or access attempt to a cloud pc
and you can pair this with conditional
access policies to assess login risk
instantly for each session
now we've also designed the user and
admin experiences around the principles
of least privileged access so for
example you can delegate specific
functions like licensing device
management and cloud pc management using
specific roles
so you don't need to be a global admin
you can use the baselines for microsoft
defender and edge just like you would
for your physical devices
and we've built a windows 365 specific
security baseline to help you get
started quickly and of course microsoft
defender for endpoint also works
seamlessly with your cloud pc also as
you would expect encryption is applied
across the board for all data at rest
and in transit so this makes it a lot
easier than to securely deliver windows
experiences to just about any device and
really anyone with a device management
background can add cloud pcs to their
device landscape right we took a ton of
input from our early adopters combined
with our experiences from delivering
other desktop services to make windows
365 manageable for both small and large
organizations and you can use your
familiar tools with rich controls now
everything i've shown you today is part
of our vision to transform the pc
experience so that you can work remotely
or in hybrid office environments
securely and from any device so the
overall experience then is pretty game
changing for both end users and it so
congrats to you and the team but how can
the folks watching try out windows 365
for themselves well we'll be launching
windows 365 in early august so depending
on when you're watching this it's either
super close or generally available
already just go to microsoft.com windows
365 to get started awesome stuff thanks
so much for joining us today scott and
always great to have you on so to stay
up to date with the latest news and see
the tech in action be sure to subscribe
to microsoft mechanics and as always
thanks so much for watching
you