Microsoft reveals $31 per user per month price tag of one of the coming Windows 365 SKUs
Microsoft launched its Windows in the cloud offering -- Windows 365/Cloud PC -- on July 14. But officials declined to reveal one of the most important details of the coming new offering, the pricing, on launch day. Instead, officials said, Microsoft will share pricing closer to the general availability date of August 2 for the service.
However, during a session during the virtual Inspire partner conference this week, a Microsoft official did share what looks to be official pricing for one of the Windows 365 SKUs.
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Windows 365 will be available in Business and Enterprise flavors, Microsoft officials said this week. Derek Gabriel (@dsghi on Twitter) shared a screen capture of one of the Windows 365 Business SKUs that showed it would cost $31 per user per month. This is for the 2vCPU, 4GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage version for customers with up to 300 users. This particular SKU supports the desktop versions of Office apps, Outlook and OneDrive; the desktop version of Microsoft Teams; Visual Studio, Power BI and Dynamics 365; and to access and manage Cloud PC virtually.
I asked Microsoft to confirm that this $31 per user per month Windows 365 SKU is in its line-up. No word back so far.
Update: Yep, the pricing is correct. "This is pricing for just one SKU. We have many more options, both in terms of configurations and price points, to share when the product becomes generally available on August 2," a company spokesperson confirmed.
Microsoft officials haven't yet said how many Windows 365 SKUs they plan to offer. They did publish yesterday a chart showing how they plan to target the coming SKUs, which will range from 1vCPU/2GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage for users with simple needs like frontline workers, call center users, education/training and CRM access -- to 8 vCPU, 32 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage for software developers, engineers, content creators and designers.
In a handy explainer, Microsoft partner Nerdio has broken down how potential Windows 365/Cloud PC users should be thinking about licensing and pricing. There will be two cost components for Cloud PCs: A computer license and a software license. Nerdio noted that Microsoft is planning to support 12 Cloud PC sizes as of August. Users will need an enterprise subscription to Windows to use Cloud PCs, which means they'll need M365 Business Premium E3, E5 or Windows 10 Enterprise E3/E5/VDA.
While Windows 365/ Cloud PC will be accessible on Windows desktops and iOS, macOS, Android devices, and via the Web, the best experience will be for those with Windows PCs, as another Microsoft-provided chart indicates. Windows 365 support for features like multimonitor support, Teams AV redirection, screen-capture protection, Start menu integration and more will be available only on Windows PCs.