Last month Microsoft announced Windows 365 as its new cloud-based service aimed at small businesses and enterprises, with the big selling point being able to offer customers a virtualised desktop environment for them to work with more flexibility. At the time, pricing and plans was unknown, but more details would be shared come 2nd August.
Well the date has come and gone, and now we have more details on the Windows 365 offering, what plans will be on offer in South Africa and how much it will cost you.
“The Cloud PC draws on the power of the cloud to provide a powerful, simple, and secure full Windows 10 or Windows 11 experience that you can use to empower your workforce, regardless of location or device. Windows 365 provides an instant-on boot experience that enables users to stream all their personalized applications, tools, data, and settings from the cloud across any device including your Windows, Mac, iPad, Android, and coming soon Linux device,” explains community manager, Scott Manchester in a forum post.
Manchester also directs readers to watch a 12-minute long video, which we have pasted at the end of this story, that walks viewers through the ins and outs of Windows 365 and how to set it up.
The Windows 365 portal has also been updated to reflect plans and pricing for both small business and enterprise customers. Said pricing has also been localised with the South African currency.
The Basic plan for business starts at R641.60 per user per month and offers a two vCPU environment with 4 GB RAM and 128 GB storage, along with access to the necessary suite of Windows applications. Microsoft says this option is designed to, “Run light productivity tools and web browsers”. The business plans top out at the premium package which costs R1 283.10 per user per month and features four vCPU , 16GB RAM and 128GB storage.
In terms of pricing, the enterprise plans are little less expensive, starting at R568.20 per month per user, but that is likely because such packages would be rolled out to a far larger workforce than in a small business environment.
Snapshots of both the business and enterprise plans have been pasted below.
It remains to be seen what appetite there is for Cloud PCs locally, but given the fact that working from home is still the go-to for many organisations, virtualised desktop environments could become popular once again.
