Choose an image from the Azure Gallery, give it a name and assign it to a region, and then sit back and wait for Azure to provision your server.

You'll see a list of all your deployed servers, and any VPNs and templates they use. Click on a server to set up users and apps.

A Quick Start view makes it easy to complete the configuration of a new server. Once set up, you can hide this view if required.

Users need a Microsoft organisational account (in Azure Active Directory) or a Microsoft Account. This lets you deliver apps not just to managed users, but also to contractors and temporary staff. You can also deliver apps to an Azure AD group.

Finally, choose the apps that are going to be published to each user. You can let them use all the available apps on a server, or a selection. They're then sent an invitation to the RemoteApp service.

Once they've logged on to the RemoteApp portal, users will be given the option of downloading the appropriate client software for their device — Windows, Mac, Android and iOS are all supported at launch, with Windows Phone 8.1 following soon.

Log into the service from the client, and you're presented with a list of invitations. Click one to register and download the list of available apps.

Once you've registered a client, you'll be presented with a list of apps. Just click the icon to load and run the app. It'll run on the Azure virtual machine, delivering its UI to your PC or mobile device.

A RemoteApp looks just like — and behaves like — any other app. Here we're running Visio from Azure on a Windows 8.1 PC.