View Recording: Secure Endpoints & Access: Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365

Joe Steiner 0:05 Hello, welcome everyone to our discussion today on secure endpoints and access focused on virtual desktops. My name is Joe Steiner. I’m a Solutions Architect here at Concurrency. Along with me today we have Ben Lockwood and Kevin Arden who will be helping us cover this topic. Virtual desktops and its multiple forms through the Microsoft platform. We’ll discuss kind of the value of virtual desktops, the number of different use cases that can be used for that, and then specifically diving into Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365 and having a conversation about. What’s best to use where given the economics of those platforms, the technical capabilities of those platforms and so on. So welcome. We do invite you to pose questions through the course of this through the Q&A. We’ll be addressing those throughout and then certainly be looking for. Or anything at the end of the session. So thank you for joining us today. So when we talk about virtual desktops, just kind of backing up, you have, you have a combination of of things combined in here. We have kind of the core cloud technology that has to exist behind here that we look at as you know kind of the modern cloud operations governance side of things. We have the need to enable people here, which we, you know, have our as part of our frontier workforce enablement practice. And then you know, ultimately we’re trying to solve for different business needs. And we will talk a little bit at the end today about how you can leverage virtual desktops for A I agents specifically with some of the offerings there. So kind of touches on all you know technology people and and process here and and A I certainly. You know, and just as we look at things, we look at this as part of the Secure Endpoints and access need that exists in the market related to enabling your people to be able to leverage technology such as a I such as you know anything else in your environment. So you know, driving through that, you know, kind of the key pieces of that are, you know, being able to control obviously securely their identities, being able to secure devices and desktops, which is a lot of what this will be about, but also allows for application access. Maybe in in and be able to control that and all while controlling the data as well. Virtual desktops has really been part of a, you know, ongoing process over time here where we’ve gone from kind of the classic I have my computer and you know I’m operating with within that. Onto beginnings of virtualization, VDI and you know that’s been leveraged in the mobile world and allows for the bring your own device movement which which started you know some time ago hasn’t necessarily taken off everywhere, but there is there is use cases for that. You know, on through to cloud where the virtual desktop. I didn’t have to have that environment inside of my my own data centers. Now I can actually have those hosted in the cloud. It’s certainly been useful for enabling remote work and then. You know now we’re in kind of this age of cloud PCs and agents which really allows for a lot of different combinations and and go to market strategies in terms of how you deliver secure devices and desktops to your end users and or to those third party users that maybe need to be operating with you too. Which is a great use case for this. Now value virtual desktops are you have desktop or app access anywhere in a secure deployment model. So I’m not delivering data to these devices, I’m just permitting them access to interface with that data. So it does provide a different security construct there, which can be rapidly scalable if you set these things up the right way, far more even than the historical BDI infrastructure you might have on premise. It’s one of the advantages of the cloud offerings here is you can start to. Deploying desktops at will there can flexibly adapt because of that to any organizational situation you may find yourself in, and ultimately you can in some cases can reduce the overall computing expense per user. Barring what those needs actually are over what you’d have in a more traditional give them a laptop kind of deployment model. So again, you know you do this inside or outside the organization, high flexibility and be able to, you know, secure, securely provide agile compute access anyone, anywhere. Host of use cases here. We’re just going to kind of give you kind of a high level view, but certainly worthy of further discussion as you get into this. Obviously remote work. If I need you, I just want to provide a secure access to certain applications to certain data. Do that in a secure fashion so that that doesn’t exist. On the devices that they’re using for that being able to provide higher capacity computing. So this may be a situation where this laptop I have might be due for a refresh. I need some more compute power to run the applications using the virtual desktop to do that. Might be a more cost efficient way to do that than replacing the laptop. Or you may have you know certain use cases that it’s just for this one thing I need more power, but I really don’t need it 90% of the time. Another great great use case for that. Development, you know, development in terms of securing the code and it can be a little more sensitive from a security standpoint. Virtual desktops can be very useful for that legacy computing. So I need to be able to provide an app that maybe is too difficult to run in my current environment, but. I’m still able to host that. That can be a great way to to deliver the app to the end user without having to have them constrained by tech debt where we’re trying to appeal to this one legacy piece of of technology I can actually move. The 90% of the use cases forward and handle that in a different way. Being able to handle disaster recovery situations. So if somebody’s laptop goes out, there are solutions for that. Bring your own PC, bring your own device. Being able to allow have a model where people are bringing their own device. That could be very useful for some of the other, you know, situations we’ll talk about with contractors, right? So rather than shipping them a laptop, I can have them use their work laptop and just give them access to my environment using that that virtual desktop enterprise. Temporary seasonal workforce and maybe I don’t want to have this pool of of laptops in the same way there. I want to be able to to surface that and just give them temporary access. And if it particularly if it’s a more of a part-time basis, there’s a lot less risk and cost to doing that. Shift based workforces where maybe they’re sharing a PC, but each need to have their own profile on there. This can be a really easy way to to do that. Contractors, third party as well as an M and A and divestitures. There’s a lot of change going on there sometimes. The change can’t keep up with the business needs there from a technology standpoint. Being able to adapt to providing, you know, virtual desktops to kind of broker while that change is happening can be very, very useful, so. Considerations as to, you know, kind of what to use where one, if you have a current VDI environment or are used to managing a VDI environment, that’s different than if you don’t. And I think that’s going to be a big divide between the two solutions we’re going to talk about today and talk about that, you know, the technical experience, when we talk about that, that’s really your own internal technical experience. With operating these kinds of environments, the number of users, it may more make more sense to go to one platform or another if I have a high volume of these because I can leverage certain aspects of that in different ways. The hours of use that are going to happen here, the the economics of these are different. And so you’ll see that, you know, based on the the number of hours. So I’m not using this all day, every day that might lend itself to one solution or another differently. The technical needs, you know, what are the the, what is the application that really needs to be shared? What’s what’s the underlying technology that’s got to be shared out through that that virtualized environment? Standardization requirements. So you know if I have a I need to deliver this desktop, it doesn’t doesn’t need persistence of data there. Can it just be the same generic laptop to laptop desktop environment to each one of these users? OK, that lends itself to maybe more pooling multi session kind of technology. Versus single session persistence. So and kind of the variety of use cases that you have within there, kind of taking all those together holistically can be very beneficial to deciding on which technologies. You might want to use two primary platforms from Microsoft are Windows 365 and Azure Virtual Desktop. Windows 365 is a more productized version of a virtual desktop environment where I’m giving them each individual a. Desktop. It doesn’t have all the configuration options that Azure Virtual Desktop does, but it does allow for a very simple, quick, easy to use deployment model. You really don’t need a lot of special. IT skills to be able to to leverage Azure Virtual Desktop is more of a platform. You need to manage it, you know accordingly, but the economics of that you have far more flexibility with the different use cases that you can be applied there and there may be some cost benefits to to doing that, but you have to have the technical expertise. To run that. So we’re talking about all that a little further as we continue to go. We’re actually going to start with Azure Virtual Desktop and I’m going to turn it over here to Kevin Arden to discuss and kind of give you a view of what Azure Virtual Desktop’s about and maybe some of the use cases that you might want to use there. So Kevin, take it away. Speaker 1 10:48 Thanks, Joe. Thanks everyone else for joining. I’m going to walk through Azure Virtual Desktop at a practical high level, what it is, where it fits well, the value it delivers, and some of the realities you should be aware of. This isn’t a technical deep dive. The goal is to give you clarity so that you can evaluate whether AVD aligns with your environment and business goals. So at its core, Azure Virtual Desktop is Microsoft’s cloud-based VDI platform. It’s managed by the organization, not by Microsoft, which means you retain control over architecture, security, configuration. It supports both cooled desktops where users share the infrastructure, and personal desktops where users have persistent environments. That flexibility is important because different workloads require different models. It’s also highly customizable, which is powerful, but it also means it benefits from thoughtful design. And finally, it uses a consumption-based pricing model, so you’re paying for the infrastructure you actually use rather than static capacity. You can move on. Thank you. So from an end user perspective, access is simple. Users connect through a single client, the Windows app which we’re showing here, which can connect to not only AVD but also Windows 365 Dev Box. And other remote environments. The experience becomes consistent regardless of device. Importantly, the data remains in the cloud rather than on the end point. This supports flexibility without sacrificing control. You can move on. This is easier when you do it yourself. So this slide essentially summarizes what a VD is really designed to solve. It enables access to Windows 10 and 11 from anywhere while allowing organizations to maintain full control over configuration and management. You’re leveraging the security and reliability of Azure itself and you gain cost optimization benefits through multi-session capabilities and pay for what you use consumption. This is why AVD is often positioned as both a security play and an operational flexibility. Security is one of the strongest drivers behind AVD adoption. It’s built on the broader Microsoft ecosystem, Intra, Intune, Defender and Azure itself. It aligns well with Zero Trust principles, centralized identity. Conditional access and strong audit ability. And from a compliance perspective, it sits within the broader Azure compliance umbrella, which matters for regulated industries. That said. It is important to be clear that ABD gives you the tools for strong security, but architecture and configuration still matter. It’s a powerful platform, not automatic security by default. One of the unique strengths of AVD is Windows Multisession, which allows multiple users to share a single VM. That significantly improves cost efficiency when workloads are compatible. You can use auto scaling to align infrastructure with actual usage rather than paying for everything 24/7. Many organizations can leverage existing Windows and Microsoft 365 licensing, which further improves the economics when designed correctly. This slide captures where virtual desktop solutions like AVD tend to be a strong fit. I mean, we kind of went over this a little earlier with Joe. Remote and hybrid work, contractor access, legacy apps, disaster recovery, task workers, seasonal workers. These are all common patterns that we see. On the right side are considerations that influence whether ABD is the right fit, the number of users. How many hours they work, whether data needs to persist, the level of standardization, and the organization’s technical maturity. The key point is that success comes from alignment between the use case and the design, not from trying to force fit everything into VDI. Organizations that already run Citrix, VMware, Horizon or RDS often find AVD compelling. The skills translate well, the use cases are already proven, and AVD becomes a modernized cloud-native alternative. The value here is typically around scaling. Ability, cost optimization, simplified management compared to legacy VDI stacks and long term platform direction. This is one of the strongest economic use cases. Part-time users, temporary workers, contractors, disaster recovery scenarios. These benefit from consumption based billing. You can scale environments up quickly, onboard users rapidly, and then scale down when the demand goes away. That elasticity is extremely difficult to achieve with traditional physical devices. This is another very common scenario. Organizations have applications that are difficult to modernize quickly, older dependencies, on Prem integrations or vendor limitations. AVD provides A centralized controlled platform that allows. Those applications to remain usable while buying time for proper modernization planning instead of forcing rushed rewrites. When you have standardized workloads, call centers, task workers, shift based teams, cooled desktops and auto scaling can be very effective. These scenarios often benefit from cost efficiency. And operational simplicity because the environments are highly standardized. On the left, you see watch organizations choose AVD, strong security alignment, scalability, flexibility, centralized management and tight integration with the Microsoft ecosystem. On the right are the realities. AVD is powerful, but it’s not magic. It does require good architecture. Costs need governance. Performance depends on proper sizing. Someone must own the platform operationally, and not every application works. Well, in a multi session environment, being honest about both sides builds better outcomes and more realistic expectations. The take away is this. ABD is best viewed as a service platform, not a simple product. It’s strategic, not tactical. It works well when properly designed and managed, and it’s particularly well suited for modernizing. Existing VDI environments, part-time and temporary use cases, legacy computing and standardized task workers. If aligned to the right scenarios, it becomes a strong enabler for security, flexibility and modernization rather than just remote desktops. But happy to open it up for questions or discussions. I guess we’re going to do that later. Sorry, Joe, I don’t see anything in the Q&A. Joe Steiner 19:31 No, no, no. Quite, quite all right. Yeah, just it’s a it’s a great reminder. If anybody has any questions as we go, please, as you’re thinking about them, feel free to put them into the the the Q&A, the chat. We’ll respond to them at as we as we go through, but. With that, let’s turn it over to Ben Lockwood and we’re going to talk about a Windows 365, which is the other cloud platform that’s that’s available from Microsoft to to address these kinds of needs, Ben. Ben Lockwood 20:01 Thanks, Joe. Yeah, so Windows 365 is a little bit different than AVD. So it really gives you that secure Windows experience from any device, meaning I can connect to it through the Windows app, whether that’s on a Mac, an iPad, Android, or a browser. It closes that gap between BYOD flexibility and corporate device requirements. It enables a a hybrid workforce with the the purpose built for flexible, secure, remote and hybrid work. It provides on demand cloud PCs that scale with user needs and support. Persistent, dedicated, or shared scenarios across the organization. It’s ideal for frontline or temp labor developers or knowledge workers. Because it’s built with Entre involved, you have a cloud native identity and management and then it has centralized and granular IT control options working through Intune to manage those cloud PCs. So some of the same use cases that we talked about before, the remote work, data security, development, disaster recovery, BYOPC or BYOD, the temp and seasonal workforce, shift based workforce with the frontline options that we’re going to talk about. Contractors and third-party workforce. You know, we see this a lot where we currently get laptops shipped to us because they want us to work on secure devices. Windows 365 is an amazing opportunity to to not have to buy a device that you ship out to someone and have to worry. About getting back, it’s it’s just a license at that point and you turn it on. So some of the and then M and A and divestitures kind of same thing a lot of times want us to have a a secure device and ship us one. So this is an opportunity to make that a little simplified. For the contractors and the people who are managing those devices. So some of the current considerations, the technical experience is a lot lower. When talking about EBD, you really need someone who’s an Azure expert at times. With. With Windows 365, you have your end user compute engineers. They’re typically able to spin this up and manage it because it’s built into Intune, so they already are using the policies and set up that’s already built in. Hours of use is mainly full-time. We’ll talk a little bit about the the frontline options and being able to use that across different shifts with their licensing and then user data persistence is still there. And standardization. Like we said, there’s a variety of use cases for these. The different models that we have with Windows 365 that we’ll talk about W 365 Enterprise. So that’s a dedicated license, a per user license. Windows 365 Frontline gives you the option to have 3 users per license, not concurrently using them so. Think about a shift worker. So in a factory if they come in on 1st shift they they have a dedicated PC for them or a shared PC and then as that second shift comes in they take over that license and 3rd shift and so on. W 365 Cloud Apps pairs with the frontline shared model, so we’ll talk a little bit about that. W 365 Reserve is something that was announced at Ignite that passed Ignite here. It allows the ability to provide AW365 machine for someone who has their laptop broken down or they need an immediate backup basically. And then W365 link. That’s kind of like a thin terminal that you used to use to connect to AVD. Or remote desktop infrastructure in the past. So we’ll go a little bit deeper on each one of those. So Windows 365, it’s loved by users. You can connect to it from any device. It’s always ready and updated. It’s turned on and easily accessible. It’s personal and familiar. It has that Windows feel and. And and look to it so people know how to use it. As far as IT is concerned, you know it’s scalable and resistant, resilient. You can change the size of it based on the license model that you have. Predictable cost. It’s a monthly cost. It’s a license just like your. M365 license would be or Office 365 so you know what that cost is per license per user throughout your your EA or your your your subscription and it’s simple to buy, deploy and manage it’s. All done through Intune. It’s done through your volume licensing, so you can scale it up and down depending on on your the number of users that are needed. So the different options for W365 Enterprise, as you can see you really pick it based on how many VCPUs you need, then how much RAM and how much SSD or drive space you need. So you you it’s really flexible. You can really scale up if you need a really high end developer with a lot of E CPU’s, a lot of RAM and a lot of storage space. It’s all stored within the within Azure. This is more. Available to you whenever you boot up and you can access it. If you need some GPUs, they have options for that as well, so it’s it’s extremely flexible on what size the device is. For your end users. So as we look at W365 Enterprise, that’s a dedicated cloud PC with access 24/7. Each employee requires a license and it’s a personalized full Windows experience. You deploy and manage everything through Microsoft Intune. You can have different features with both of these, the frontline and the enterprise. As far as a network is concerned, you can have just an a Microsoft provided network that basically just gives you Internet. So then if you need to connect to your own resources you would need a VPN or if you have the Entre suite. You could use Entra Private Access to do that. Your other option is you can connect to an Azure network connection and with that then you would have access to your Azure network that you have already built and if you have that connected through Expressroute or VPN you would have access to. So you’re on Prem as well. So there’s some flexibility on the network side that you can play with. As far as the Windows 365 frontline, those are for your users who need access to their cloud PC during their shift. So they log on, they access it. You can have up to three employees with a single license. As that person logs off, the next person logs on and uses that same PC. So it gives you that flexibility. It’s a little bit cheaper than a full Windows 365 Enterprise. It gives you the options to. Kind of stretch that that PC a little bit and use it across the the different shifts. But with the Windows 365 frontline, you do have two different models. You have a dedicated mode for personalized, so each person would have their own dedicated version of that desktop, or there’s a share mode and. When they sign off it, it’s not a persistent session. So when they log back on the next day, it’s gonna be a new new desktop for them basically. So that’s where utilizing things like Microsoft 365 for like OneDrive or SharePoint really comes in handy so that. All that information comes back to the user and is stored there. If you want to go to the next slide there. So then with the shared model we’re able to stream apps to the end user because it it destroys that basically destroys that session every time with W 365 cloud apps. We’re able to publish applications for the end users that will be there when they log on. So it it provisions that app as they’re logging in and gives them access to all the applications that they would need every time, so. Next one Joe. So Windows 365 Reserve. This is a a new offering that just came out from Ignite. So upon user request, IT can quickly provide a Windows 365 Reserve cloud PC pre-installed with the Microsoft 365. Apps or corporate apps. It’d be provisioned through Intune again, so you can have all your same policies and configurations within it. It gives you the ability to spin it up when the user needs it. It’s a new offering. The user would get 10 days for you to replace that that PC for someone or spin up a long-term W 365 Enterprise license for them. So it’s it’s really about making that end user productive quickly without having to have multiple laptop. Laptops on standby, so a user would be able to connect via their personal iPad or a personal home PC, and it’s secure if you’re accessing it through a browser or anything like that because it’s set up through your Entre identity, so your conditional access rules all come into. Play. It’s all protected and instead of just having someone accessing your data on their personal PC now and downloading that, this is all secured within the cloud for you. Windows 365 link. It’s a cloud PC that’s built for connecting directly to AVD or W365. It’s think of it as similar to a thin client that you used to see on a lot of production floors. You know it’s it’s a. A little little tiny box that does not have any need for admin setup or admin passwords on it. You literally plug it in or connect it to the Wi-Fi, boot it up and then when the user logs on to it, it connects them directly to their. Their instance of Uh W 365. So why do organizations choose W365? The costs are fixed. You know how much it’s going to cost per license per user on an annual basis. Strong security and zero trust alignment. It’s going through Entre. It’s using conditional access to connect to it. You can build in different policies, like if you don’t want screen captures happening, you can block those sorts of things. You don’t have to have your drives reallocated or provisioned from your local device, so there’s flexibility in how you’re protecting that device. In the cloud. Scalable and cloud native. You’re able to upgrade your your SKUs if you need to. It’s essentially managed through Intune. So if you’re if you’re currently using Intune, it’s got that familiar feel and and configuration for you and obviously it’s integrated with the micro eco Microsoft ecosystem. So um. Windows 365 can be used for many scenarios, but be mindful of the costs are fixed and it’s a more limited deployment with fewer configuration options. So if you really want to control that remote environment, AVD is probably a better way to go for that. But if you need simple and you need fast. W365 is is a good answer for you. So some final thoughts here. It’s best views viewed as a licensed product similar to your Microsoft 365 or Office 365 license. It’s it’s going to be in your volume license or your EA. It works very similar to that. It’s a rapid deployment with fewer decisions. You really are more basing your configuration on how are you configuring your current desktop and and laptop rollouts. So it’s it’s really blends in very nicely to that set up the fixed cost so you know what it is, how much it’s going to cost. What it’s a really good choice for is single session, persistent use cases. Do you have a smaller number of of people that really need access to it and quickly? Do you have a developer where you want them to have a real beefy machine but you don’t want to give them a beefy laptop? Those types of things, contractors, remote workers, it’s those are really great use cases for that. Joe Steiner 34:19 Very true. Yeah. No, thank you, Ben. Appreciate it. Notice we have a couple of questions in the Q&A. One timeline on the GPU. GPU is available, but they don’t have published pricing on it. So you have to talk to your whoever you’re getting your Microsoft licensing for for that. We are about to share you with some of the pricing that’s available for standardized models there just to give you a sense of of where this comes in at. But it is a GPU. There is some availability today in terms of ordering a GPU machine. As far as Windows 365 Reserved, it is a license. Uniquely, it’s an annual license where you’re allowed ten days of. Use per year. You can almost think of it as kind of an insurance policy in terms of if I have users there and I maybe want to use Windows 365 as a backup option there, that’s really kind of where that’s positioned as. You’d buy that for the year for that user and it it kind of covers you just in case something would happen with their laptop and you need some time to offer them service while their their device is being replaced. So very good questions. Looks like we maybe have one more. One we’re looking to replace Citrix. Yeah, I mean, you certainly could use either. It really depending on your use cases. If you like the Citrix management model, you can apply Citrix to the Azure Virtual Desktop environment. So I can still use the Citrix management. Management plane against the Azure Virtual Desktop space. If you’re trying to get away from that completely, I would say you certainly going into Azure Virtual Desktop would be a if you had Citrix already, you probably have enough volume and enough knowledge for running that platform and it gives you. More. Flexibility, but you may find there are use cases there too. And it’s really as we’re about to talk about, it’s not always it’s either or by use case. But inside of your environment you may have both kinds of use cases where hey, for this one this makes sense, for this one this does. And really the economics of these two platforms, one being fixed. The other being variable or what will dictate that? So very good question. Yeah, most Citrix platforms I have seen and I would guess these gentlemen would be the same that is that a lot of Citrix use cases tended to go to Azure Virtual Desktop primarily for. Use cases. All right, sorry, we had one more question here. Reason the legacy computing use case wasn’t migrant for Windows 365 PCs. Mainly in that with Azure Virtual Desktop, I have the option beyond Windows 10 and Windows 11. I also have the Windows Server option there which allows me to run in some cases some older applications and software, and I have some other tighter integration with my back end environment, so it allows me to surface some things differently. Than I could in the Windows 365 construct. So there are some. It’s not that there may not be right. If it works inside of Windows 1011, your operating system isn’t really the problem. We can install it there. That may still be when we’re talking about that. It’s more things that are reliant on maybe. I had to use that off of Windows Server historically because it allows for some capabilities that and technical considerations that you know kind of modern modern OS does not. So that’s that’s really the reason we’re we’re referring to that. You’re welcome Sir. So with that, let’s continue talking about Windows 365 and or Azure Virtual Desktop. As both Ben and Kevin have outlined so far, Windows 365 is a monthly subscription, so I’m paying. That price monthly, whether I don’t turn it on or whether I’m using it 24/7. The difference there is Azure Virtual Desktop. I’m paying for the hours of use and so if I have something that’s hence why we’ve noted kind of, you know, the part time use cases doesn’t mean you can’t use Azure Virtual Desktop. For full time, there’s certainly some good economic benefits for that too, but particularly if you’ve got a part time situation, frequently there’s kind of a break even point between the cost that it takes to run Azure Virtual Desktop below a certain number of hours of use. Makes more sense with Virtual Desktop over the monthly subscription for Windows 360. 365 Windows 365 is a little more full desktop focused. If I have situations where maybe I need to deliver both desktop or maybe I just want to deliver an app, Azure Virtual Desktop can be a little more flexible in terms of that. For the broader audience there is cloud apps. For the in the front line SKU you I would expect you might see that extend a little bit where I don’t need full desktop delivered, I just need to deliver the app which allows me to do more of the pooled multi session kind of delivery. But that’s kind of another piece. Bring your own license, pay as you go or reserved instance models exist with Azure Virtual Desktop. So one I can leverage my Windows license inside of here. I and or I can pay, you know, as I consume it. I also can buy reserved instances there. So if I’m gonna have a certain volume of usage, I can get some cost benefits there too for the volume of usage that I’m committing to. On a regular basis, you also again tying in with the kind of the app. I have the ability to do remote app streaming for external users off of AVD. So there’s some additional use cases here that allow me to if I’ve instead of delivering a whole PC, I’ve got maybe a contractor or somebody that was part of a divestiture. As part of a divestiture and they still need to access an old application. We’ve seen this before where they still they’re still housed in this shared application. We haven’t been able to split that yet or replicate. I can allow for remote app streaming. ABD is a great platform for doing that because I can just service the serve the app. I’m not serving the whole desktop. And the rest and it’s designed to allow for external user access there. So again, Windows 365 primarily is we see this used in single session and allows for and primarily for persistence there too of. Of data. So I’ve got my I’ve licensed for this for the month. I have this access to this frontline. Obviously I have it during my shift, but it’s still for the full month and it gives me all my data stored in there so that I can go and operate. Azure Virtual Desktop again have the flexibility I can be single or. Multi session, multi session. I frequently will see with those that they don’t necessarily have the data persistence there. I’m delivering that generic desktop each time and then you know, particularly if I’m just using cloud apps in that, I don’t need the data stored inside of that instance. Saves you a lot of costs without having the additional storage inside of there. Azure Virtual Desktop, as we noted a little bit earlier, does also support and beyond Windows 10, Windows 11, you can run Windows Server there too, which allows for again that particularly in the legacy application. Some of those can be run in that environment, but don’t operate so as well in the Windows 10, Windows 11 in some cases. And again, being able to offer, you know, full desktops or or app only in virtual desktop. Again, I think you’ll find virtual desktop offers a a host of different options, but with that great power comes great responsibility in that I’ve got to manage that environment too. Right. And so that’s the trade-off. I have the more flexible economic view of this. I also have the more flexible, you know, technical deployment models, but I’ve got to manage it versus. Windows 365 gives me give me my compute desktop. I I want to have a fixed predictable cost and I I just want to go and I don’t want to have the the additional management for that. That’s the trade-off right there. And so different use cases call for different things and and lend themselves sometimes what you’re doing within the organization. Again, if I’ve got no existing virtual desktop infrastructure and just need single session and maybe it’s full time or economics of it, maybe those could be part time too, but it just gives me that quick easy. Virtual desktop option to be able to to offer again you know contractors is a good one for that. I could just spin that up for them, give them, give them access and and off they go. Virtual desktop again if I have existing virtual, virtual infrastructure like we’re talking about Citrix earlier. We see a lot of customers opt for this. You already have that knowledge inside of it and you can take advantage of all the additional flexibility that comes from running that platform, but in the cloud in a cheaper, less expensive, more cost effective way than perhaps running it on premise. Again the legacy applications if I you know can operate that Windows Server app only use cases generally easier to deliver there if I can manage the underlying environment pooled multi session use cases and certainly a part time because I’m only paying for it while they’re using it. So if I have somebody that needs to access this. Couple hours a day, probably more cost effective than delivering a full desktop every day of the month. So those are some of the advantages there. Give you a sense of some of the pricing because of Azure Virtual Desktop and it’s really based on what you’re paying for. For Azure and some of the users, I don’t have a great example for that, but just to give you kind of the view here, there’s the Enterprise which is monthly per user. There is Frontline which provides monthly instance that can be used by three users, just not simultaneously as Ben noted. There also then is that pooled model which off of cloud apps I can have multiple people accessing and it just gives me that that construct. But and then I have reserve which is again that annual price per user, that insurance policy if you will, that includes 10 days of use per year, so. You know, basic Azure Virtual Desktop here, 4 gigs, 128 gig of storage, $31.00 up to, you know, you get into the, you know, 16 gig, 128 storage. And you know more CPU power and then on to the GPU enabled ones which are available, but you need to contact Microsoft for or your licensing provider for pricing on that. There you can see that starts at a. And gets into, you know, higher more power there. So kind of great for those higher capacity computing use cases. Frontline, you’ll see it’s a little more expensive, but I’m keep in mind I’m sharing that across 3 users, right. So you know if I look at at things comparable. Like the frontline 2 CPU to a basic, you know, 4 gigs of RAM, slightly less storage, but I’m looking at $14.00 a user versus 31. So you start having some economic benefits from. From the sharing that occurs there and then again I’ve got you know that kind of multi session option with particularly with cloud apps. I could be leveraging that against that that same compute infrastructure. So here’s some of the different models and kind of a comparison here. We also show Microsoft Devbox here. We didn’t spend a lot of time talking. Talking about that today, it’s kind of a hybrid between the two that’s kind of a little more productized, but does still need to be managed inside of Azure. You do have the monthly price for that one, really designed for developers, but kind of operates within this. The same constructs, yeah, you look at Windows 365 again, just that productized version per user per month versus virtual desktop, far more customizable, but you know it’s drawn on consumption based and again I’ve got to manage that inside of Azure, so. Just, you know, kind of quick comparison there. Extending beyond this, where Windows 365 relates to, you know, kind of the frontier from I’m trying to adopt AI and maybe having an agent run inside of a computer, there is Windows 365 for agents. So being able to leverage and have a, you know, a basically a A I robot operate within a compute environment that then spins up and spins back down as that agent calls it. You can. There is a offering for this where you it’ll actually offer you, you know, OK, I’ve got to do something in a compute environment, produce a result and then go on to the next step. It can do that and it provides A construct for that, which we’re expecting to see some pretty interesting use cases there as you get into, you know, kind of robotic automation and. Agentec work within you know a computer construct can leverage this in a more cost effective way where I can spin up the desktop for the agent to leverage, spins it back down and then it’s available for the next agent call for for that. So really they’re continuing to invest in this. A lot of announcements with this with Ignite. Ben noted some of this. You align it to the right use case. Windows 365 or AVD both provide a lot of value there. We just wanted to make sure you’re aware of the considerations there. We’d invite you as you know next steps to schedule time to talk to us. We’d be happy to to review this with you. We do have a a a very you know kind of entry level offer about where we come in and review your existing entre into an architecture and any existing virtual and desktop use cases. The reason we review the entre into into an architecture is because it’s very important. That that’s ready to be make that deployment as easy as possible in either case, highly related there, but we kind of go through, we can walk through the use cases with you. We’ll help you prepare the business use case for Windows 365 and or Azure Virtual Desktop based on. Our discussions with you and can provide a recommended road map with actionable next steps off of that. So but either way just love to love to talk to you if you if this is a area that you’re interested in, we certainly can help you out with. You know the great minds that we have here with Kevin and and Ben and others that that really understand the space. So with that thank you for your time today. If there are any further questions we’re we’re glad to take those otherwise we hope everybody. Has a great rest of your day, but we will be here for a couple more minutes. Again, happy to take any questions you want to post in the chat and thank you for your time. Please note too that I believe Amy put a survey in the chat. We’d certainly welcome your your feedback on what you got out of the the webinar today, so. Thank you all. Amy Cousland 50:43 OK. I don’t see any more questions, so we’ll go ahead and end the event. Thank you all for your presentation. Appreciate it. OK. Joe Steiner 50:49 Appreciate it.