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Azure Virtual Desktop: The flexible cloud VDI platform for the hybrid workplace
When we launched Windows Virtual Desktop nearly two years ago, no one predicted a global pandemic would force millions of workers to leave the office and work from home. Organizations around the world migrated important apps and data to the cloud to gain business resilience and agility. And to support the newly remote workforce, many of you turned to Windows Virtual Desktop to give remote users a secure, easy to manage, productive personal computing experience with Windows 10 from the cloud. It has been humbling to work alongside you as you pivoted your operations to meet new challenges – from supporting frontline healthcare workers at NHS to engineers at Petrofac to educators and students. Going forward, organizations will need to support an evolving set of remote and hybrid work scenarios. To help our customers and partners meet these new hybrid work demands, we are expanding our vision to become a flexible cloud VDI platform for nearly any use case – accessible from virtually anywhere. A modern VDI platform needs to be secure, scalable, and easy to manage, while delivering a seamless, high-performance experience to end users. It should also empower organizations with the flexibility to customize and build solutions with its core technology. To support this broader vision and the changing needs of our customers, today we are announcing new capabilities, new pricing for app streaming, and changing the name of the Windows Virtual Desktop service to Azure Virtual Desktop. New platform capabilities for security and management We are continually adding new capabilities to the core Azure Virtual Desktop platform. Today we are also pleased to announce the public preview of new features that will help you onboard and better manage your Azure Virtual Desktop deployment. Enhanced support for Azure Active Directory (coming soon in public preview): Azure Active Directory is a critical service used by organizations around the world to manage user access to important apps and data and maintain strong security controls. We are pleased to announce that you’ll soon be able to join your Azure Virtual Desktop virtual machines directly to Azure Active Directory (AAD) and connect to the virtual machine from any device with basic credentials. You’ll also be able to automatically enroll the virtual machines with Microsoft Endpoint Manager. For certain scenarios, this will help eliminate the need for a domain controller, help reduce cost, and streamline your deployment. While this is a major milestone, it’s just the beginning of the journey towards full integration with Azure Active Directory. We will continue adding new capabilities such as support for single sign-on, additional credential types like FIDO2, and Azure Files for cloud users. Manage Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session VMs with Microsoft Endpoint Manager (available now in public preview) - Microsoft Endpoint Manager allows you to manage policies and distribute applications across devices. You can now enroll Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session Azure Virtual Desktop virtual machines in Microsoft Endpoint Manager and manage them in the Microsoft Endpoint Manager admin center the same way you manage shared physical devices. This simplifies management and provides a centralized view across both physical devices and virtual desktops. Read the Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session documentation to learn more. Deploy in minutes with new Quickstart experience (coming soon in public preview): We are pleased to offer a streamlined onboarding experience for Azure Virtual Desktop in the Azure portal. This new experience will validate requirements, kick off an automated deployment, and will also implement best practices. With only a few clicks, you can set up a full Azure Virtual Desktop environment in your Azure subscription. You will find this new experience under “Quickstart” in the Azure Virtual Desktop blade in the Azure portal. New pricing option for remote app streaming Many organizations are using Azure Virtual Desktop to stream apps to their own employees who are covered by existing license entitlements. But many organizations also want to use Azure Virtual Desktop to deliver applications “as-a-service” to customers and business partners as well. Today we are pleased to announce a monthly per-user access pricing option for organizations to use Azure Virtual Desktop to deliver apps from the cloud to external (non-employee) users. For example, this would enable software vendors to deliver their app as a SaaS solution that can be accessed by their customers. In addition to the monthly user price for Azure Virtual Desktop, organizations also pay for Azure infrastructure services based on usage. Here's what one ISV had to say about the new pricing option: “Sage is trusted by millions of customers worldwide to deliver innovative business solutions to manage finances, operations and people. Streaming applications with Azure Virtual Desktop makes it easy to streamline user access to our solutions on the Azure cloud for a great online customer experience.” James Westlake, Director of Product Management, Sage Try it during our promotional period The new per-user access pricing option will be effective on January 1, 2022. To help organizations get started now, we are pleased to offer a special promotion with no charge to access Azure Virtual Desktop for streaming first-party or third-party applications to external users. This promotion is effective from July 14, 2021 to December 31, 2021. Pricing for monthly user access rights effective on January 1, 2022 will be: $5.50 per user per month (Apps) $10 per user per month (Apps + Desktops) This promotion only applies to external user access rights. Organizations would continue to pay for the underlying Azure infrastructure. Organizations should continue to use existing Windows license entitlements, such as Microsoft 365 E3 or Windows E3 and higher, for app streaming to their employees. Visit our web page for more details. Expanding partner ecosystem As a cloud VDI platform, we work closely with our partners and empower them to build solutions that meet your needs. For example, Citrix and VMware provide desktop and app virtualization solutions that leverage the Azure Virtual Desktop platform capabilities, such as Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session, and allow you to maximize your existing investments and use the tools and solutions with which you are already familiar. We are also proud of our ecosystem of hundreds of partners who build custom solutions and provide technical consulting to help you deploy with confidence. Visit Azure Marketplace for more information on partner solutions, and Advanced Specialization page for certified deployment partners. Getting started My team and I look forward to partnering with you to take full advantage of our flexible VDI platform in the cloud and unlock new end user computing possibilities. We appreciate your ongoing support and welcome your feedback. Join us on our Tech Community to connect with my team and other customers and partners to share your feedback and suggestions. To learn more about these announcements, please sign up for our upcoming webinar.Windows Virtual Desktop Announcements at Microsoft Ignite
We hope you are all enjoying the Microsoft Ignite conference. Here are some announcements on Windows Virtual Desktop that you will be hearing during the event. Azure Monitor for Windows Virtual Desktop - Provides a centralized view with all the monitoring telemetry and visualizations you need to debug and troubleshoot issues. We have received amazing feedback during the public preview and have made several updates to this capability including: A designated report page for your Azure Alerts A prioritized view of Windows Virtual Desktop agent errors and warnings in Host Diagnostics Consistent coloring and default health thresholds Export to Excel option across all relevant reports Accuracy and user experience improvements Thank you for the support during the public preview. We expect to make Azure Monitor for Windows Virtual Desktop generally available in next few weeks, with additional updates in store. Learn more about Azure Monitor for Windows Virtual Desktop In case you had missed, here’re some recent announcements we made leading up to Microsoft Ignite. EU metadata storage now in public preview - We have a public preview of the Europe (EU) geography as a storage option for service metadata in Windows Virtual Desktop. Customers can choose between West or North Europe when they create their service objects. The service objects and metadata for the host pools will be stored in the Azure geography associated with each region. To learn more, read our blog post announcing the public preview Windows Virtual Desktop Specialty certification - We announced a new Windows Virtual Desktop Specialty Certification for professionals planning, delivering, and managing virtual desktop experiences and remote apps on Azure. The related Exam AZ-140: Configuring and operating Windows Virtual Desktop on Microsoft Azure will be available soon in beta version. Smartcard authentication – You can now use smartcard authentication (available in public preview) with the Windows client from outside the corporate network without requiring line-of-sight to the Domain Controller. Learn more about supported authentication methods. You can keep track of these and other news about Windows Virtual Desktop in our what’s new page.Announcements at Windows Virtual Desktop Master Class
Windows Virtual Desktop Master Class is a virtual event where Windows Virtual Desktop experts from Microsoft as well as members of our community come together to share tips and best practices for deploying and scaling virtual desktops and remote applications on Azure. We are making several exciting announcements at the event: Promotion for new customers through March 31, 2021 - New customers save 30% on Windows Virtual Desktop computing costs for D-series and Bs-series virtual machines for up to 90 days. You can learn more about the offer here. Skilling - We are announcing a new Windows Virtual Desktop Specialty certification for professionals planning, delivering, and managing virtual desktop experiences and remote apps on Azure. The related Exam AZ-140: Configuring and operating Windows Virtual Desktop on Microsoft Azure will be available soon in beta version. If you are looking for a certified partner to help with you deployment, you can continue to leverage the advanced specialization program which complements the Azure MSP program. Product announcements – The features that we had pre-announced at Microsoft Ignite in September are now in public preview: Azure Monitor for Windows Virtual Desktop -Provides a centralized view with all the monitoring telemetry and visualizations you need to debug and troubleshoot issues. Learn More MSIX app attach in the Azure portal - MSIX app attach is an application delivery solution that allows you to dynamically attach an application in MSIX format to a user session. Previously, you had to use PowerShell scripts, but now the MSIX app attach capability is available in public preview in the Azure portal and is integrated with Azure Resource Manager. Learn More. Screen capture protection – Disables screen capture for your remote apps and desktop on all the supported Windows Virtual Desktop clients RDP short path – Establishes a direct peer-to-peer UDP connection to the session host rather than over the internal Windows Virtual Desktop gateways taking into account the type of network from which you are connecting. This provides a secure experience with less connection latency and better performance. Learn More Microsoft Defender for Endpoint integration (Generally Available) – With this integration, you get the full investigation experience you have with Windows 10 machines, now for Windows Virtual Desktop VMs. If you are using Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint will support up to 50 concurrent user connections – so you get the cost savings of Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session and the confidence of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. Learn More For a deep dive into these announcements and to learn more about security, cost optimization, and other topics, tune into the Windows Virtual Desktop Master Class!Announcing new management, security, and monitoring capabilities in Windows Virtual Desktop
With the global pandemic, we are seeing increasing demand for technologies that enable remote work. We’ve seen significant growth in the use of Windows Virtual Desktop, as organizations use it to ensure that their employees have access to the desktops and tools they need to stay productive. To help customers continue to accelerate this move to secure remote work with Windows Virtual Desktop, we are announcing several new capabilities that make it even easier to deploy, secure, and scale your virtual desktop deployments. These new capabilities will be available in public preview by the end of the calendar year 2020. Before we dive into the new capabilities, we want to take a moment to share some of the experiences of our customers. Sebastian Meyer, the Global Service Owner for Modern Client Technologies at Beiersdorf Shared Services, shared his thoughts in moving to Windows Virtual Desktop to modernize his virtual desktop infrastructure. "What Microsoft has developed here is simply phenomenal! Windows Virtual Desktop serves so many use cases and is very close to the end user. We were able to achieve maximum success with the project." You can read the full story here. Internally here at Microsoft, we are of course facing the same challenges as many of you. For example, getting a corporate laptop in the hands of new employees and interns takes time and impacts productivity. Windows Virtual Desktop is helping our new hires by providing a secure and productive remote work experience with access to the apps they need to get working immediately: “Windows Virtual Desktop allows you to create virtual desktops that work just like a physical Windows PC would,” says Mark Lawrence, a senior program manager on Microsoft’s digital security team. “That means the people who use one—new hires, interns, and so on—get access to the Windows Start menu, with Microsoft’s productivity applications, the Microsoft Edge browser, and everything else they would need to work at any location. No more waiting for a physical device delivery.” You can read the full story here. Simplified Management With Windows Virtual Desktop, you can move from a simple proof-of-concept (PoC) to a fully operational environment faster than ever before. As you start to scale your deployment, here are some new capabilities that will help you manage and operate your deployment efficiently. Microsoft Endpoint Manager integration Microsoft Endpoint Manager allows you to manage policies and distribute applications across devices. You can now enroll Windows Virtual Desktop virtual machines that are hybrid Azure Active Directory domain-joined (joined to your on-premises Active Directory and registered with your Azure Active Directory) with Microsoft Intune and manage them in the Microsoft Endpoint Manager admin center the same way as physical devices. This simplifies management, provides a centralized view across both physical devices and virtual desktops, and creates new areas of collaboration. The Microsoft Endpoint Manager integration is generally available for Windows 10 Enterprise desktops - you can learn more in the public FAQ. The public preview for Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session will be available in the coming months and will initially support policies at the device level. MSIX app attach in Azure portal MSIX app attach is an application layering solution that allows you to dynamically attach an application (that is an MSIX package) to a user session. Separating out the application from the operating system makes it easier to create a golden virtual machine image, and you get more control with providing the right application for the right user. Previously, you had to use PowerShell scripts to enable MSIX app attach. We will be integrating the app attach capability in the Azure portal and Azure Resource Manager. This will eliminate the need for custom scripts and makes it possible to publish your packaged applications to application groups with a few clicks. MSIX package from Azure portal Proactive Monitoring Proactively monitoring your deployment is important to ensure your deployment is always up and running and your employees have an optimal experience using virtual desktops. Azure Monitor workbook Azure Monitor workbook for Windows Virtual Desktop aims to provide you all the monitoring telemetry and visualizations you need to debug and troubleshoot issues. You can configure alerts to proactively identify issues before they impact your employees. You can look at connection and host level performance and also drill down to specific user session to see if there are any issues. You can also look at usage across host pools and make sure you are optimizing for cost and performance. Improved Security With Windows Virtual Desktop, you can use security capabilities such as Azure encryption, Azure Firewall, Azure Security Center, and Microsoft Defender to secure your entire VDI infrastructure and ensure that your corporate and customer data is protected and stored securely. We continue to add additional security capabilities: Screen capture protection One common attack vector with remote sessions is screen capture. To protect your sensitive information, we are adding the option to disable screen capture for your remote apps and desktop on all the supported Windows Virtual Desktop clients. Direct RDP to session host We are introducing a new capability that can be set at a host pool level and will take into account the type of network you are connecting from, and when possible, establish a direct peer-to-peer UDP connection to the session host rather than over the internal Windows Virtual Desktop gateways. By eliminating the intermediate hops and using a more efficient connection over a trusted network, you get a secure optimized experience with lesser connection latency and better performance. Thank you again for the amazing feedback that you have provided to us. You can track the progress of these upcoming public previews in our roadmap page. If you are attending Microsoft Ignite conference, you can learn more about these features and get your questions answered in our sessions and you can always reach us anytime at the Windows Virtual Desktop Tech Community page. You can also register here to attend our upcoming webinars.
