What's new in Windows 365: Microsoft Ignite 2022 edition

Microsoft

Oct 12, 2022

Your guide to Windows 365 sessions and news—from Windows 365 app public preview and the general availability of Windows 365 Government to integration with Citrix and more.

This week Microsoft is hosting Microsoft Ignite. At a time when the scope of IT has shifted considerably, Microsoft Ignite has expanded to welcome all roles—from IT decision makers and IT implementers to developers and data and security professionals. Organizations around the world and across every industry are seeing the benefits of migrating and modernizing their workloads to the cloud. And Windows 365 is expanding too.

Windows 365 is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution that combines the security of the cloud with the familiarity of the PC, allowing employees to stream their personalized Windows desktop from the Microsoft Cloud to any device.

Windows 365 enables new scenarios

Today, we announced the Windows 365 app public preview, Windows 365 Government general availability, Citrix HDX Plus for Windows 365 public preview, and cloud-optimized IT management. We also announced that soon you will be able to use Windows 365 for shift and part-time employees who only need a Cloud PC for part of their workday.

Read on for more information and find key links to Ignite sessions, additional blogs, and the Microsoft Technical Takeoff event schedule October 24–27!

Announcing Windows 365 app public preview

The Windows 365 app is now in public preview in the Microsoft Store on Windows. With Windows 365 app, you can access your Windows 365 Cloud PC from the taskbar or the Start menu, enjoying a full Windows 11 experience while moving between your local and Cloud PCs. Supported by all Windows 11 devices, the app delivers high-performing and reliable experiences optimized for Microsoft Teams and your other Microsoft 365 apps.

Announcing Windows 365 Government general availability

Windows 365 Government is now generally available for Government Community Cloud and Government Community Cloud High organizations in the United States. This enables US Government contractors and the local, state, and federal customers they support to securely stream their Windows apps, data, content, and settings from the Microsoft cloud to any device, any time.

Announcing Citrix HDX Plus for Windows 365 public preview

Citrix HDX Plus for Windows 365 is also in public preview and will be generally available later this calendar year. It is available for all customers in the Microsoft Intune console. Once endpoint admins have completed a few simple steps to enable environments and assign licenses, Citrix components are automatically installed to Cloud PCs. After installation, licensed employees can begin using their Cloud PC from the same Citrix environment they use today.

Windows 365 is built for Zero Trust security

Security is of the utmost importance to all organizations around the world. We're making additional investments for Windows 365 tied to Zero Trust, specifically around securing both organizational data and user access.

To better audit and manage the data in your environment, we will make a new device action generally available later this month for eDiscovery that allows IT to capture the latest snapshot of an employee's Cloud PC with options to remove access when doing a forensic investigation. We are also investing in capabilities to allow organizations to encrypt their Cloud PC disks with your own customer-managed keys to meet security and compliance requirements.

To provide a seamless user experience while also reducing the risk of credential theft in your environment, we will soon be releasing single sign-on features as part of Windows 365. With single sign-on enabled, employees will only see a single credential prompt to prove their identity:

Employees using a managed Windows device will receive the familiar password-less experience of logging into their local Windows device, using Windows Hello for Business or a FIDO2 security key.
Employees using an unmanaged device—like a personal PC—will receive the same single sign-on experience once they authenticate to Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) where they can provide a password-less credential.

This single sign-on experience even carries into the Cloud PC, so the employee can immediately be productive on any Microsoft 365 or Azure AD-registered app.

Stay tuned for more updates.

Announcing new cloud-optimized IT management capabilities

Windows 365 cloud-optimized IT management is a set of capabilities that empower IT admins to provide the best employee experience. It harnesses the flexibility and agility of the cloud and delivers intelligent and actionable insights with out-of-the-box tools that are simple and scalable.

The following capabilities are included in the base offering of the Windows 365 Enterprise edition:

Cloud PC connection quality on the Cloud PC performance page allows IT admins to get visibility into roundtrip time, time to connect, and available bandwidth—allowing admins to take actions to optimize network configurations to reduce latency.
Cloud PC utilization on the Cloud PC performance page is an optimization tool that enables admins to identify devices with low utilization and take actions to either deprovision, reallocate to new users, or downsize Cloud PCs.
Real-time connectivity health checks and troubleshooting can be initiated by both the IT admin and the employee.
Point-in-time restore is the built-in business continuity and disaster recovery solution (BCDR) allowing employees or admins to recover Cloud PCs in case of critical disasters such a zone outage or device damage with an automated, simple, out-of-the box tool.
Resize functionality now allows endpoint admins to downsize Cloud PCs, in addition to upgrading them.
Alerting allows IT admins to receive alerts for critical factors that impact devices such as failed network connections, provisioning policies, or image uploads.
Resource performance on Endpoint Analytics helps admins identify devices that are under-resourced on compute (vCPU and memory) to take an action to resize.

Windows 365 Business

We also continue to enhance Windows 365 Business to be even more accessible for smaller organizations to buy, deploy, and manage.

At windows365.microsoft.com, as well as in the Microsoft 365 admin center, admins will soon have a push-button capability to enroll all newly provisioned Cloud PCs into Microsoft Intune if the tenant has the requisite Intune license.

And in the future, we will be making it even easier for small businesses to sign up for Windows 365 Business and seamlessly log into Cloud PCs using a Microsoft account—a personal account—that may already be in use for services like OneDrive or Xbox Live.

Windows 365 sessions at Microsoft Ignite

Tune in to watch and learn more about Windows 365 at Microsoft Ignite this week!

Microsoft Ignite Opening : October 12 at 8:59am–9:50am PDT
Re-energize your workforce in the office, at home, and everywhere in between: October 12 at 11:00am–11:20am PDT
Windows: Building what matters most for your business: October 13 at 9:00–9:40am PDT
Secure your workforce with Windows + Intune: October 13 at 1:00pm–1:35pm PDT
Ask the Experts: Windows 11, Windows 365, and Microsoft Intune: October 13 at 2:00pm–2:30pm PDT
Experience Windows in the cloud with Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365

Search the session catalog to find Windows 365 at Microsoft Ignite or visit https://aka.ms/WindowsAtIgnite.

Learn even more at the Microsoft Technical Takeoff: October 24–27

Join us for four days of demos, deep dives, and live Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA) sessions—all designed to get you up to speed on the latest features, capabilities, and scenarios for Windows 11, Windows 365, Microsoft Intune, and more! We'll have experts from across the engineering and product teams standing by to answer your questions during each session.

RSVP to save your spot at https://aka.ms/TechnicalTakeoff!