Microsoft thinks cloud PCs might be overkill, starts streaming just apps under Windows 365
As old-school virtual desktop player Omnissa distances itself further from VMware
Microsoft thinks cloudy PCs might be overkill for some users, so has started streaming individual apps instead as part of its Windows 365 service.
The software giant on Thursday announced the public preview of what it calls “Windows 365 Cloud Apps”, a service that allows users of Frontline Cloud PCs – a virtual PC shared by a pool of users – to boot straight into an app instead of the Windows desktop.
“This is ideal for organizations that want to streamline app delivery, reduce overhead, and modernize their virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environments,” wrote Microsoft senior product manager Serena Zheng, who said the service delivers “only essential applications like Outlook or Word without loading a full desktop.”
Her post suggests Microsoft wants to open the service to more apps.
“As organizations embrace Windows 365 Cloud Apps, Microsoft is focused on simplifying app delivery even further—making it faster, easier, and more intuitive for IT admins to deploy custom line-of-business apps at scale,” she wrote.
More cloudy Macs
In other virtual desktop news, AWS last week announced new cloudy Macs powered by Apple’s M4 processors.
Two new instance types, M4 and M4 Pro Mac, run on Mac Minis that AWS racks and stacks. The M4 instance offer a 10–core CPU, 10–core GPU, 24GB unified memory, and 16–core neural engine. M4 Pro Mac instances offer 14 cores CPU, a 20–core GPU, 48GB unified memory, and a 16–core neural engine. For now, they’re only available in AWS’s US East (N. Virginia) and US West (Oregon) regions.
Those are fighting words for Microsoft’s rivals in the fields of virtual desktops and application streaming, markets led by Citrix and VMware end-user computing spin-out Omnissa.
The latter staged its annual conference this week at which it delivered a version of its App Volumes Manager – a tool to manage app deployments to endpoints – that runs on physical servers and PCs. The company also confirmed its promised move into server management.
Both of those releases reflect Omnissa’s belief that users are tired of using multiple tools to manage their fleets of physical and virtual endpoints. The company has therefore entered the security market with “Workspace ONE Vulnerability Defense”, a product that scans endpoints for security problems and informs admins which machines need attention.
It's 2025, so the company has also decided to apply agentic AI to the challenge of securing endpoint fleets, with a forthcoming tool that will automatically act on analyses produced by Vulnerability Defense.
The company also continued to distance itself from VMware, by confirming its products will work on Nutanix’s AHV hypervisor and hyperconverged stack instead of only on Virtzilla’s vSphere and Cloud Foundation, and announcing a plan to run on Platform9’s cut of OpenStack. Support for Hyper-V and OpenShift is also on Omnissa’s agenda. ®