As companies embrace hybrid work, a new era of hybrid computing emerges with Windows 365

As some regions begin to make their way out of the challenges and disruption of the past 18 months, a new world of work is emerging. Organizations everywhere have been transformed through virtual processes and remote collaboration.

Microsoft’s latest addition to hybrid computing is Windows 365, a cloud service that introduces a new way to experience Windows 10 or Windows 11 (once it’s available later this year) to businesses of all sizes. Windows 365 takes the operating system to the Microsoft Cloud, streaming the full Windows experience – apps, data and settings – to any device.

Secure by design and built with the principles of Zero Trust, Windows 365 secures and stores information in the cloud, not on the device, providing a secure, productive experience for workers from interns and contractors to software developers and industrial designers.
Windows 365 also creates a new hybrid personal computing category called Cloud PC, which uses both the power of the cloud and the capabilities of the device to provide a full, personalized Windows experience.

Head over to the press release to get more details.

On the Microsoft 365 Blog, Wangui McKelvey, general manager of Microsoft 365, shares why bringing the cloud revolution to personal computing will be such a milestone for how customers work in the future and the opportunities this will create for Microsoft’s partners.

“The Windows experience is consistent, no matter the device. You can pick up right where you left off, because the state of your Cloud PC remains the same, even when you switch devices. You can get the same work done on a laptop in a hotel room, a tablet from their car between appointments, or your desktop while you’re in the office,” McKelvey says. “Seasonal workers also can ramp on and off according to the needs of the business, allowing the organization to scale for busy periods without the complicated logistical and security challenges of issuing new hardware. Further, companies can be more targeted in how they outfit specialized workers in creative, analytics, engineering, or scientific roles who need greater compute power and access to critical applications.”

Over at Innovation Stories, you can go behind the scenes to see how Microsoft developed Windows 365 and how it chose the Government of Nunavut – a territory in northeastern Canada that spans three time zones and features fjord-cut isles that stretch into the Arctic Circle off the west coast of Greenland – to pilot Windows 365.

McKelvey also appears in that story, revealing how Windows 365 was in the works before COVID-19, but “what really put the firecracker behind it was the pandemic, it accelerated everything,” McKelvey said. She explained that customers were asking, “’How do we create an experience for people that makes them still feel connected to the company without the physical presence of being there?”