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Windows 365 Pricing Revealed

15 points by GordonS 5y ago

webmobdev 5y ago
Thin-client PC model with the OS running on Microsoft data centers? I wonder how many IT jobs will be lost in corporates around the world if this becomes the norm ...
- hulitu 5y ago
  Well, IT pushes a lot for this crap so i feel no remorse. MS knows who to bribe to eat the market. IT does not help by promoting MS products.
ergot_vacation 5y ago
I'm suddenly reminded of the sweeping intermittent blackouts we've had on sites like Youtube in recent years. Youtube is ostensibly just a recreational site, and yet it still caused a fair bit of disruption. Imagine a world where a cluster of servers or a CDN config goes down and EVERY WINDOWS PC just stops working. Oh joy. Yes, tech that is MORE fragile is exactly what I wanted, load me up a truckfull.
- anthk 5y ago
  Not Windows, but a lot of data in companies in managed by remote VM's. Halt the comms and half of the industry in my province gets shut down in less than 10 minutes.
ksec 5y ago
I am thinking if this will open up the possibilities of having more Mac in Enterprise since they will all be running Windows 365? ( It used to be one of my dream to see Mac as revenge on PC, but that is no longer the case given how Apple has acted lately ) There are around 750M PC in business sector, and I would not be surprised if around half of those are "enterprise". That is ~300M market. Or would those goes to Chromebook? Many of these big Enterprise hate CapEx with a passion and loves OpEx. ( I assume there are additional benefits in accounting as well ). This Windows as a Services is also something Microsoft has been looking forward to for decades. I remember there were already talks about Windows as Services in Windows 2000 era. Although the Windows 365 isn't anything similar to what they had visioned, the end result of a monthly payment is still the same. I am also wondering if this opens up enough incentive for Windows on ARM, where Microsoft finally owns the whole stack on windows 365 and can do better testing and optimisation for further cost saving. Although the CPU cost in TCO is still relatively small.
- tehbeard 5y ago
  This wouldn't really "cleanup" the CapEx though, would it? You still need bare metal on the client end. Your licence costs just go from ~£90-100 for a key (no idea what MS gives you on bulk rates) to £20/month... Unless they are doing hourly/per second billing and you have some well tuned scripts that won't screw over Jenkins in accounting when he's working on the big report one evening, I just don't see the cost savings.
  - naikrovek 5y ago
    there is no cost savings, just like there isn't with most (all?) cloud services, and that isn't the intent of those services, or this one. the intent is to lower one-time, up-front costs as much as possible, and spread that cost of entry out over multiple fiscal years as a smaller repeating subscription fee, even if the overall cost increases. service vendors, like AWS and Microsoft, LOVE more constant, predictable, and even income, and businesses love lowering one-time expenses, even if it costs more overall in the long run to do it. yes, thin clients (at a minimum) are needed, but those are cheap, easily deployed, and last for years.
    - tehbeard 5y ago
      Hmm, thanks for the info. I'd have normally thought the goal would be to minimize expenses.

15 points by GordonS 5y ago

Thin-client PC model with the OS running on Microsoft data centers? I wonder how many IT jobs will be lost in corporates around the world if this becomes the norm ...

hulitu 5y ago
Well, IT pushes a lot for this crap so i feel no remorse. MS knows who to bribe to eat the market. IT does not help by promoting MS products.

ergot_vacation 5y ago

I'm suddenly reminded of the sweeping intermittent blackouts we've had on sites like Youtube in recent years. Youtube is ostensibly just a recreational site, and yet it still caused a fair bit of disruption. Imagine a world where a cluster of servers or a CDN config goes down and EVERY WINDOWS PC just stops working. Oh joy. Yes, tech that is MORE fragile is exactly what I wanted, load me up a truckfull.

anthk 5y ago
Not Windows, but a lot of data in companies in managed by remote VM's. Halt the comms and half of the industry in my province gets shut down in less than 10 minutes.

ksec 5y ago

I am thinking if this will open up the possibilities of having more Mac in Enterprise since they will all be running Windows 365? ( It used to be one of my dream to see Mac as revenge on PC, but that is no longer the case given how Apple has acted lately ) There are around 750M PC in business sector, and I would not be surprised if around half of those are "enterprise". That is ~300M market. Or would those goes to Chromebook? Many of these big Enterprise hate CapEx with a passion and loves OpEx. ( I assume there are additional benefits in accounting as well ). This Windows as a Services is also something Microsoft has been looking forward to for decades. I remember there were already talks about Windows as Services in Windows 2000 era. Although the Windows 365 isn't anything similar to what they had visioned, the end result of a monthly payment is still the same. I am also wondering if this opens up enough incentive for Windows on ARM, where Microsoft finally owns the whole stack on windows 365 and can do better testing and optimisation for further cost saving. Although the CPU cost in TCO is still relatively small.

tehbeard 5y ago
This wouldn't really "cleanup" the CapEx though, would it? You still need bare metal on the client end. Your licence costs just go from ~£90-100 for a key (no idea what MS gives you on bulk rates) to £20/month... Unless they are doing hourly/per second billing and you have some well tuned scripts that won't screw over Jenkins in accounting when he's working on the big report one evening, I just don't see the cost savings.
- naikrovek 5y ago
  there is no cost savings, just like there isn't with most (all?) cloud services, and that isn't the intent of those services, or this one. the intent is to lower one-time, up-front costs as much as possible, and spread that cost of entry out over multiple fiscal years as a smaller repeating subscription fee, even if the overall cost increases. service vendors, like AWS and Microsoft, LOVE more constant, predictable, and even income, and businesses love lowering one-time expenses, even if it costs more overall in the long run to do it. yes, thin clients (at a minimum) are needed, but those are cheap, easily deployed, and last for years.
  - tehbeard 5y ago
    Hmm, thanks for the info. I'd have normally thought the goal would be to minimize expenses.