techradar Microsoft drops fresh details about upcoming Windows 10 PC-as-a-Service

[ENTERPRISE]

Quote

The way in which you and your organization use Microsoft's Windows 10 operating system could be about to change completely as the software giant has been secretly working on developing a new PC-as-a-Service offering.

 

Up until now users have purchased new devices with the company's operating system pre-installed or installed it themselves after building a new PC. However, the new direction Microsoft appears to be moving in will see the company distribute its operating system and apps as a SaaS offering over the cloud.

Source

[UltraMega]

 

Figures they would offer something like this eventually. 

Edited February 3, 2021 by UltraMega

[ENTERPRISE]

To be honest I was surprised they did not do this much sooner than they did.

[UltraMega]

7 hours ago, ENTERPRISE said:

To be honest I was surprised they did not do this much sooner than they did.

I think there is actually a simple reason for this. I watched an interview with Bill Gates a while back in which he talked about Microsoft's late entry into the cloud/server business. He explained that MS was never planning to get into this market as they figured companies like IBM, Oracle and HP were better suited for it and MS didn't want to compete with their partners nor risk another anti-trust suite by getting too big in too many markets. Well... those other partner companies didn't act and Amazon noticed. Amazon never planned to get into servers but when they saw the space had been left open for so long, they acted. Bezos describes it as a 7 year gap in which that market was left wide open. Once Microsoft saw Amazon, a business that is just capitalizing on the lack of players in that market, start doing servers; Microsoft decided it was time to stop waiting for their partners to fill the gap and they quickly caught up with Amazon. 

 

So yea they could probably have done it a lot sooner if they hadn't been intentionally staying out of that market until Amazon stepped in. 

[Diffident]

Does this lead to a monthly or yearly subscription just to use your computer?

[ENTERPRISE]

5 hours ago, UltraMega said:

I think there is actually a simple reason for this. I watched an interview with Bill Gates a while back in which he talked about Microsoft's late entry into the cloud/server business. He explained that MS was never planning to get into this market as they figured companies like IBM, Oracle and HP were better suited for it and MS didn't want to compete with their partners nor risk another anti-trust suite by getting too big in too many markets. Well... those other partner companies didn't act and Amazon noticed. Amazon never planned to get into servers but when they saw the space had been left open for so long, they acted. Bezos describes it as a 7 year gap in which that market was left wide open. Once Microsoft saw Amazon, a business that is just capitalizing on the lack of players in that market, start doing servers; Microsoft decided it was time to stop waiting for their partners to fill the gap and they quickly caught up with Amazon. 

 

So yea they could probably have done it a lot sooner if they hadn't been intentionally staying out of that market until Amazon stepped in. 

That is interesting but makes good sense. I remember wondering why MS had not jumped on it, especially when Amazon started to pull out all the stops. MS have made good strides but Amazon for me is the better platform so far as server services and infrastructure.

6 minutes ago, Diffident said:

Does this lead to a monthly or yearly subscription just to use your computer?

From what I understand you are renting cloud computing power, I am not sure as to the real use case for this unless you are running a non windows machine but need access to one...or you are running a low end rig and can better take advantage of the cloud computing services. Either way it's a rental.

[schuck6566]

I see it more as being geared more for small business,they could have an office computer for less than $70.00 plus the subscription and a monitor.The pics show a system that could actually run the cpu/4GB ram license cloud system easily with the only delay really being the internet speed.(system has same 4GB of ram installed)This would make it easier on start up companies hardware wise.For that matter,it would even run off a firestick from what I could gather,all you'd need is a monitor to plug the stick into & a bluetooth keyboard/mouse combo.

[Sir Beregond]

On 2/2/2021 at 8:53 PM, UltraMega said:

 

Figures they would offer something like this eventually. 

 

On 2/3/2021 at 2:44 AM, ENTERPRISE said:

To be honest I was surprised they did not do this much sooner than they did.

 

Yeah. I thought this was the whole point of what they wanted to do with Windows 10. I agree, thought it would happen much sooner.