[HN Gopher] Microsoft pauses free Windows 365 cloud PC trials af...
___________________________________________________________________
Microsoft pauses free Windows 365 cloud PC trials after
'significant demand'
Author : arunsivadasan
Score : 104 points
Date : 2021-08-04 16:15 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| burnt_toast wrote:
| It's like we've gone full circle and returned back to timesharing
| / terminals. Except now we don't have to pay for the mainframe up
| front lol
| donmcronald wrote:
| > including one at the top end that includes eight vCPUs, 32GB of
| RAM, and 512GB of storage for $158 per month
|
| Why is it so popular? I can't understand the economics of it. Can
| someone explain? Why would I pay ~$10k over 5 years for something
| that's similar to the laptop I'm typing on which costed me $700
| used?
|
| I know it's for businesses, but even then, does it come with
| tooling or something that makes management easier? What justifies
| an annual cost that is close to the lifetime cost of a physical
| machine?
|
| You still need a physical machine to access "the cloud", so don't
| you still have all the expensive problems related to managing a
| fleet of PCs, but now you have to do it x2?
|
| Is data security so important that some companies are willing to
| pay 5x hardware costs and 2x maintenance costs for it?
|
| I really don't get it. When I looked at the cost of using Azure
| for failover on a single server, the conclusion I came to is that
| it only made sense to run something short term while new hardware
| was shipped in. Who the heck is buying these VMs that cost 5x
| real hardware?
| tw04 wrote:
| You're assuming that a physical desktop or laptop is the
| alternative. Likely this is an alternative for people using
| vmware horizon or citrix for virtual desktops. In which case
| you'll be spending almost half that on just the software, not
| including any hardware at all.
|
| I'd need more info on the service, but I'd imagine this is very
| cost competitive. As to "why?" - because for things like HIPPA
| data, I'd _MUCH_ rather have my doctors /IT staff logging into
| a remote desktop session that I can lock down so if their
| laptop gets stolen from their car I don't have to worry about
| whether or not some day someone will be able to crack drive
| level encryption. Or worry that an employee didn't have drive
| level encryption for some reason. Same for financial
| institutions/etc.
|
| Furthermore a doctor or _insert staff_ can connect from home,
| and I don 't have to worry about whether or not they properly
| secured their home desktop. Yes there is still some attack
| surface there, but far, far less than them storing files
| locally on their home PC.
| donmcronald wrote:
| The VDI angle makes the most sense out of all the answers
| I've seen. However, I can't imagine anyone concerned about
| security would do BYOD for laptops or desktops.
|
| Every person I've ever seen using VDI has a company PC _plus_
| a virtual desktop, so there 's no cost savings there. The
| main advantages I can see are easier backups and not having
| to worry about network bandwidth too much (just enough for
| RDP is good), but there are drawbacks too like dealing with
| remote printing, a lack of support for hardware security
| tokens, etc..
|
| For example, try to get a YubiKey working [1] with WebAuthN
| or FIDO when using RDP / VDI. It's basically impossible and
| you're stuck with crappy 2FA like TOTP.
|
| 1. https://demo.yubico.com/webauthn-technical/registration
| api wrote:
| Nearly all irrational pricing like this can be explained by
| corporate bureaucracy and dysfunction.
|
| If you need to provision someone you can buy them a laptop, but
| that's CapEx and has to go through some equipment purchasing
| bureaucracy that's hell on wheels to deal with.
|
| Cloud services are OpEx though and might be something you as an
| IT person or department head can just approve as long as the
| _monthly_ cost is low enough. The cumulative cost difference
| over many months or years doesn 't factor into it.
|
| A whole lot of the cloud trend can be explained this way.
|
| Of course other use cases include temporary employees, testing,
| external contractors, etc.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| CapEx vs OpEx
|
| On the books this can be a boon for the bean counters.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Is data security so important that some companies are
| willing to pay 5x hardware costs and 2x maintenance costs for
| it?_
|
| Yes. Also, maintaining a fleet of hardware is a resource suck.
| Being able to provision everyone with something like this lets
| them use their personal hardware without much compromised in
| the way of security. (It should also make onboarding much
| smoother.)
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| > lets them use their personal hardware without much
| compromised in the way of security
|
| How do they protect against an attacker compromising this
| client, waiting until the employee is asleep or away for a
| few minutes, then using the employee's session to compromise
| the remote machine?
|
| Even if session establishment requires 2FA, the attacker
| could keep the session alive after the user attempts to close
| it.
| digitallyfree wrote:
| For a targeted attack with a hacker remotely or physically
| controlling the client, I agree.
|
| However I think an automated attack would be difficult,
| especially if the VD sent its data to the client as a video
| stream, and only recieved keyboard and mouse inputs. Now
| maybe there's some fancy computer vision that could handle
| this (and all without the employee noticing)...
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| You don't need computer vision to send Win+R, cmd<enter>,
| and whatever the Windows equivalent of "curl | bash" is.
|
| It's definitely going to keep a lot of the commodity
| malware out, but it's only going to stay secure until
| attackers start targeting it. And the risks from "inside"
| the machine (user downloads and runs something bad) don't
| go away, although the company gets a bit more control
| over the network (could also be done with an always-on
| VPN).
| [deleted]
| iso1210 wrote:
| I work for a large corporation. I can spend 50k a month in AWS
| and it will barely register a flag.
|
| Try to buy a keyboard though and forget it.
| 4r4r4r wrote:
| We should band together and start laundering AWS resources
| for physical goods. Similar to how mining Bitcoin can lead to
| eventually obtaining physical goods.
| suresk wrote:
| This sort of dynamic happens in smaller companies, too. And
| it isn't entirely on the company. I've been through similar
| sort of situations, for example consider some sort of SaaS
| service that costs $5k/year. I have to:
|
| - Fill out some form to get one of their salespeople to
| contact me.
|
| - Find a time to meet with them that works for both of us -
| may be a week or more out.
|
| - Talk to the salesperson for half an hour.
|
| - Get a quote emailed to me a day or two later.
|
| - Talk it over with my boss. This is fairly low overhead, but
| he's a busy guy so it may take a few days. He'll want to know
| the basics, if I've considered any alternatives, what we'll
| use it for, etc.
|
| - Sign the document - hopefully my boss/finance don't request
| any significant changes.
|
| - Start using the service once they get the contract and
| provision stuff for us.
|
| Usually we are looking at a few weeks lag time, and maybe
| half a day of my time taking care of all of this. If it is
| something available on AWS, here is what I have to do:
|
| - Click a button, maybe fill out a form to configure it.
|
| - Start using the service a few minutes later.
|
| Even if it costs 2x the other service, it is unlikely that
| anyone is going to notice or care about the small increase in
| our AWS bill, and if they do saying "oh yeah, I added xyz
| service" is not going to raise any objections.
|
| It is kind of funny to think about the difference, but it
| comes down to the fact that it is genuinely less friction in
| the AWS case, coupled with a bit of psychology on our end I
| guess.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| At my last shop, we had similar problems. We got around it by
| including extra equipment we wanted in our server orders.
| Accounting never bothered asking why we needed nice keyboards
| and big monitors for rackmount servers. But god forbid you
| try to buy those directly. At one point management started to
| get wise, so we just had the vendor include the extra
| equipment in the same line item as the servers instead of
| broken out, just increasing the per-server cost to account
| for it.
|
| Shenanigans like that shouldn't be necessary just to get the
| stuff you need, but big corporations are so dysfunctional
| sometimes.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Just expense them on the corporate card. They should have a
| budget for office stuff anyways.
| hallway_monitor wrote:
| This does not surprise me; culture and processes in large
| corporations are usually entirely dysfunctional.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| I purchased a large desktop monitor and had it shipped to my
| contract company address delivery dock -- wow, you should
| have seen the number of alarmed accountant types I had to
| talk to .. but six-figure Ora licenses ? many in operation
| NullPrefix wrote:
| Did you print out the invoice to show for dramatic effect?
| morpheuskafka wrote:
| And as far as security goes, the now unmanaged BYOD client can
| still have keyloggers or screen recording malware that can
| extract company data. If your users can't be trusted with any
| sort of onboarding/MDM enrollment, it would still be cheaper to
| just send them a working laptop. If you don't want to do VPNs,
| you could still do Zero Trust style applications and have a
| cloud MDM for management.
| jensensbutton wrote:
| This sounds a lot like, "why pay for <public cloud> when it's
| cheaper to provision your own hardware?"
| Animats wrote:
| _Who the heck is buying these VMs that cost 5x real hardware?_
|
| Right. This has already been tried in the "game streaming"
| business. There have been multiple services where you rent a PC
| in "the cloud" by the hour, or for some number of hours per
| month. Either they cost too much, and fail for lack of
| customers, or they are underpriced as a loss leader, and get
| shut down after losing money. Google Stadia and NVidia Cloud
| Gaming are currently live, but Stadia is likely to join
| Google's list of discontinued products, and NVidia's offering
| involves being kicked off if you stay connected too long.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| selling dekstop pcs to businesses is totally different than
| selling gaming to consumers.
| hogFeast wrote:
| It isn't. Some of the companies that do the latter are also
| doing the former.
| Closi wrote:
| You are talking about Microsoft and Google - two of the
| largest computing companies on the planet.
|
| By the same logic, you could say that game streaming is
| like a search engine, because some of the companies that
| do the latter are also doing the former.
|
| The idea of provisioning remote cloud VMs is far older
| than Stadia or Xbox Cloud anyway.
| hogFeast wrote:
| I am not talking Microsoft or Google. There are lots of
| smaller companies that provide this service.
|
| Your point about game streaming being like a search
| engine is nonsensical.
| sofixa wrote:
| > NVidia's offering involves being kicked off if you stay
| connected too long.
|
| 8 hours, which is a pretty decent gaming session. You can
| reconnect just afterwards anyways.
|
| > but Stadia is likely to join Google's list of discontinued
| products
|
| Highly unlikely, they're spending tens of millions to get EA
| and Ubisoft's catalogues on Stadia.
|
| In any case, cloud gaming works, sells, and is very useful
| for some subset of users, even more so with the ongoing
| global chip shortage. I have both Geforce Now and Stadia and
| I'm very happy with them. Playing on my laptop and TV ( with
| a Chromecast) is great. Playing from my phone in a hotel room
| is a fun experience. Stadia even makes financial sense,
| because there's a free version ( at 1080p/30fps), you only
| need to buy the games ( which you would anyways regardless of
| the platform), saving you hundreds of (insert currency) in
| the process. The paid one is 10 eur/usd/month for better
| quality and some free games. And if you're the type of person
| that wants 4K 120Hz 60fps, this isn't for you and isn't the
| point.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| >Highly unlikely, they're spending tens of millions to get
| EA and Ubisoft's catalogues on Stadia.
|
| Loon also cost tens of millions, made no sense, and was
| eventually canceled.
| KMnO4 wrote:
| I play video games about 8 hours per month. At 40c per hour,
| it would cost me less than $40/year to rent a gaming computer
| in the cloud. Even $400/year seems pretty reasonable. It's
| only not cost effective if you use it a lot (which is the
| case for most pay-per-use commodities).
| jordache wrote:
| Perhaps business value the tax benefits of to moving computer
| hardware costs from capex to opex.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "Who the heck is buying these Vms that cost 5x real hardware."
|
| Those with the ability to pay. The Microsoft sales force knows
| who they are and goes after them aggressively. There really
| isn't anyone like you in these targetted organisations who can
| question these decisions. Palms have been well-greased. Try to
| have an intelligent converstation with a Microsoft sales
| person. It is like you are talking to someone in a cult.
| [deleted]
| mnkypete wrote:
| You have an 8core laptop with 32gig RAM for $700? That's not
| super common though, I think usually you'd spend more like
| $2500-$3000k for it. Count in the reduced maintenance and
| hardware support + having your whole stuff in one place.. Might
| make sense if you are not super low on money
| aksss wrote:
| I think you can get the Dell XPS 13 , 32GB RAM, 11th gen i7
| for about $2100 or sometimes less, but yeah. Definitely not
| seen these specs for $700.
| pb82 wrote:
| Not quite 700$ but I recently bought a Laptop with a Ryzen
| 5700u (8 cores, 16 threads) and upgraded the RAM to 40Gb.
| Easily under 1000$ brand new.
| mike3498234 wrote:
| That Azure VM only has 4 cores, not 8 cores. 1 vCPU = 1
| hyper-thread (not a physical core). 4 cores * 2 threads = 8
| vCPU. Yes it's easy to get a used quad core laptop with 32G
| for $700
| donmcronald wrote:
| > You have an 8core laptop with 32gig RAM for $700?
|
| Like I said, it's used, so yes. I think the new cost is right
| in your $2500-$3000 range for a new version.
| betaby wrote:
| You still have access that cloud Windows from ... laptop. So
| one have to pay for laptop + that cloud instance.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| The idea is probably that employees / contractors use their
| own hardware to access this. Someone likely already figured
| out how to fill out the Excel spreadsheets to make this
| secure.
| cptskippy wrote:
| When you use a lot of contractor developers, being able to
| provision out devices for temporary work is powerful. A lot of
| time is spent provisioning machines, white listing ips, setting
| up VPNs, and getting the contractor to the point where they can
| work. In some cases I've seen it take 2 or 3 weeks to get a
| contractor up and running on a 6 month contract.
|
| Being able to give them credentials to a machine that's ready
| to go is pretty huge.
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Exactly correct. So I guess this is just Microsoft's big
| splash into VDI?
| CountDrewku wrote:
| That doesn't hold up. Unless your org is completely inept at
| device setup they should be able to do the same with a
| physical PC as well. You don't gain much from provisioning a
| completely virtual device.
| mongol wrote:
| Yes the answer must be something like this. You can implement
| BYOD throughout the organization.
| josefx wrote:
| > A lot of time is spent provisioning machines, white listing
| ips, setting up VPNs
|
| That sounds as if the person dealing with it would be
| completely incapable of replacing a failing dev. system in a
| timely manner. Keep a few replacement systems ready and your
| IT has all the time in the world to deal with those issues
| without blocking anything important.
|
| I can just imagine the people responsible for that mess
| dealing with cloud services: I am sorry but we used up all
| the cloud licenses management signed of on, we will push for
| more licenses on the next quarterly budget meeting until then
| have these leftover sheets of paper and this dried out pen
| from our office supplies.
| betaby wrote:
| I still didn't get how bare Windows VM can speed up a new
| developer on-boarding. In all my jobs slowest part was always
| familiarization with a new build/deploy environment.
| OS/Laptop setup was always trivial and took 1-2 day max, even
| in orgs with 20k employees.
| znpy wrote:
| Lol not everyone is a developer.
|
| This offering makes perfect sense to replace those dumb
| dell machines equipped with 4gb ram and a core i3 with even
| dumber machine and slash the local it team.
|
| Think of thin clients, all over again.
|
| Think of call centers.
|
| Think of receptionists, or bank clerks that all they do is
| use internal web-based software, and print a pdf file.
|
| No more hardware maintenance, just throw away the whole
| thing (the dumb terminal) and replace it with a new one,
| we'll send it in for repair later.
| ehutch79 wrote:
| "No one told us about a new hire... when do they start...
| what do you mean a week ago?" is a big delay in new
| employee onboarding
| edoceo wrote:
| That seems really far along the process to recognize the
| mistakes.
| ed_elliott_asc wrote:
| "We don't give admin right to install software" (except
| they do, you just need to ask the right person - there is
| always someone who will)
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| If you don't have admin on your workstation, that's a
| huge red flag.
| JTbane wrote:
| I absolutely hate using VMs over VPNs, any slight
| interruption in my fragile home Wi-Fi (or whatever the hell
| the VPN is doing) causes my whole dev environment to freeze.
|
| It's a security/usability trade off for me.
| antaviana wrote:
| I had Ethernet installed in all rooms at home. For some 800
| euros (5 Ethernet outlets including the router) you get sub
| millisecond latencies to your router and your computer
| works wonders again.
|
| Installing an Ethernet LAN network is the best investment
| for anyone who works from home.
|
| Wi-fi really sucks in urban areas and soon even in rural
| areas because of the IoT crap.
| bserge wrote:
| You get Ethernet for Gigabit speed, not latency. 5x 30
| Euro routers in Wireless Bridge mode would've delivered
| the same latency.
|
| And I could've done the wiring for 2/3 of the price, btw.
| znpy wrote:
| Ethernet will almost never have noisy neighbors problems
| though.
|
| Also, if GP had laid cat-6 cables maybe they might
| upgrade switch and clients to 10gbit/sec Ethernet.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Okay, now I'm just laughing out loud. My org has an
| internal/external reputation for not exactly being fast
| moving and having convoluted IT processes, yet we can onboard
| people within a few days.
|
| If it takes you 2-3 weeks to onboard ANYONE please realize
| that your IT processes are complete, unmitigated garbage.
| Paying Microsoft for some Windows VMs through the nose isn't
| going to change anything about that.
| dboreham wrote:
| Perhaps if there's a significant chance of never seeing the
| expensive laptop again?
| exhilaration wrote:
| I've got a friend who got a contracting position at the US
| Dept of Veterans Affairs and he said they hadn't given him
| the right access after 2+ months into a 6-month contract.
| raesene9 wrote:
| This it true but I've seen orgs in the past where a
| business unit would happily pay quite a lot of money to
| avoid going anywhere near central IT.
|
| I think the most extreme example of slow process I saw was
| an organization where central IT wanted to charge $20k and
| take two months to _quote_ for a project.
|
| In that kind of environment things like this with opex
| pricing that can be assigned to a project's budget and fast
| spin up are a much better option :)
| MattGaiser wrote:
| At my current company, my department would be able to
| find more experienced contractors for well below what
| another department here rents them out for.
|
| So I can see internal pricing being an issue as well.
| Internal IT charges for quotes. MSFT just quotes.
|
| This happened at a prior company as well. IBM was
| routinely hired over our internal team as they were
| cheaper.
| temp8964 wrote:
| Don't you have security policies to make you must go
| through IT?
| MattGaiser wrote:
| When it comes to policies from frustrating departments,
| people tend to find workarounds, especially if there is
| no easy way to enforce the rules.
|
| At a prior company, one of the only reasons we adopted
| anything SaaS was that IT didn't have to know it existed.
| SCHiM wrote:
| Ohhh man/woman.
|
| I'm a security person. I often work with my customers'
| central IT. I'm not going to have an opinion or judge
| you, but consider:
|
| You're giving people nightmares. I've seen it go very
| wrong (front-page news wrong). And then the threads
| commenting on "how incompetent can they be, blabla". I've
| worked with the people stressed, sad and disappointed
| that they got pwned because of shadow IT. It's a ticking
| time bomb.
|
| The cloud wont save you from shadow IT's insecurities. In
| two years, when you switch to another SAAS provider, or
| the domain changes, and the enterprise app is left in
| your azure subscription, and the baddies notice... Then
| you'll call me or someone like me, and I can earn my
| paycheck :)
| [deleted]
| bachmeier wrote:
| It usually goes something like this:
|
| We need software to do X.
|
| Call IT, they give you software that sort of does part of
| X, but it's some enterprise garbage where you quit your
| job if you have to use it.
|
| Call IT and tell them that's not a good solution. We have
| this other realistic solution instead.
|
| IT, not wanting to be bothered, laughs and hangs up the
| phone. Sometimes they'll throw in an excuse that everyone
| knows doesn't make any sense.
|
| The workers that need to do their job pay for an actually
| working solution out of other funds (or use their
| personal software).
|
| Things go wrong and they call you. It's the
| ineffectiveness of IT to help people get their work done
| that's the source of the problem.
| acdha wrote:
| I've also see shadow IT be the only part of the IT
| operation which is safe because it was run by people with
| security expertise, the cloud provider has a stronger
| security foundation than on-premise (not uncommon), and
| central IT's security group was primarily a compliance
| shop which had lots of Word documents and not much in the
| way of technical skills.
|
| The way I read shadow IT is as the requirements analysis
| central IT hasn't done. People aren't taking on all of
| that extra expense because they want two jobs, they're
| doing it because central IT is making it hard to do their
| jobs. When security policies conflict with productivity,
| it has a direct cost from inefficiency but often a
| greater one by training people to think of central IT as
| an obstacle to be bypassed rather than an ally. That
| inevitably causes other problems and takes a considerable
| amount of work to improve.
| jcelerier wrote:
| > You're giving people nightmares. I've seen it go very
| wrong (front-page news wrong). And then the threads
| commenting on "how incompetent can they be, blabla". I've
| worked with the people stressed, sad and disappointed
| that they got pwned because of shadow IT. It's a ticking
| time bomb.
|
| Who cares about front-page news wrong lol. Equifax was
| front-page news wrong, and there were 0 actual
| consequences for people in it.
| znpy wrote:
| I like your thinking.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I'm too junior to make decisions, but a lot of it
| basically came down to the organizations I have worked
| with all either being government or running things on
| quarters.
|
| In the former case there was high turnover (replace the
| team in 1.5 years) and in the latter cases there was high
| turnover coupled with a problem more than a month away
| not being considered a problem. So in the former
| knowledge poured out the door and in the latter knowledge
| poured out the door and nobody had an interest in
| anything beyond the quarter, so you do what gets you to
| the next review cycle.
|
| Basically in both cases the bomb does not matter as you
| either probably won't be there when it goes off or it
| doesn't matter as you miss your quarterly goal instead.
| Macha wrote:
| I worked at one place where the running joke was if
| central IT pushed for a solution, it was time to
| seriously consider the competitors to that solution.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Yes it does, because then you don't need to deal with IT
| but can just deal with accounting and your budget.
|
| At a former workplace, we got our own internet connection
| to not have to deal with IT. We got our own computers for
| that connection. We hired outside contractors instead of
| using internal people because IT was a hassle to deal with.
|
| We spent tons and tons of money to only have to deal with
| accounting and not coordinate with IT.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > At a former workplace, we got our own internet
| connection to not have to deal with IT. We got our own
| computers for that connection. We hired outside
| contractors instead of using internal people because IT
| was a hassle to deal with.
|
| You built a better IT. Shouldn't they replace your
| existing legacy IT dept?
|
| Seriously, IT shouldn't impede dev teams.
| slownews45 wrote:
| Yeah - the reality is that actually getting good IT is
| not so simple these days. The setups are complicated -
| you are doing WFH, so you have network, login (domain vs
| local), federated AD etc etc.
|
| Now if they can simplify this a bit into the cloud, the
| key for business is to DOWNSKILL this so basically an
| office manager can do it, then you are golden. If they
| can even save ONE it salary - amazing. And if users can
| self service a bit more - also amazing.
| spicyusername wrote:
| I've consulted for large banks whose onboarding time was
| 2-3 MONTHS! Just to get a laptop and VPN credentials.
|
| The rampant dysfunction in large organizations never ceases
| to amaze me.
| ssully wrote:
| I assure you, they know their IT processes are garbage.
| dmhmr wrote:
| May I introduce you to the US Federal Government?
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Beyond the ease it also converts all of your technology
| capital expenses (typically with 3 year depreciation
| schedules) to operating expenses that can be deducted
| immediately.
| pwinnski wrote:
| Companies amortize capital expenditures, while monthly service
| costs are a separate line item (operating expenditures). I
| think there's also a _perception_ that deploying and support
| physical hardware has higher labor cost associated. If it take
| one IT staffer per every X PCs, the presumption might be that X
| is higher when the "PCs" are virtual.
|
| But mainly, companies aren't doing what you're doing: looking
| at the five-year cost. They don't care what it costs over five
| years, or often even over one year. _This quarter_ , the cost
| for that beast is $474. Can you deliver an 8-CPU PC with 32GB
| of RAM for $474? Today? Then the MS offering is better.
|
| Also, when you lay off an employee, you get to stop paying for
| their Windows license, instead of it being a sunk cost.
|
| There's definitely a reason they're targeting companies first.
| The economics make so much more sense in that world.
| donmcronald wrote:
| > But mainly, companies aren't doing what you're doing:
| looking at the five-year cost. They don't care what it costs
| over five years, or often even over one year. This quarter,
| the cost for that beast is $474. Can you deliver an 8-CPU PC
| with 32GB of RAM for $474? Today? Then the MS offering is
| better.
|
| If you're willing to pay $10k over 5 years for a $2k PC,
| wouldn't there be a ton of financing companies willing to
| convert the capital expenditure to an operating expenditure
| for that? Where else can you make 80% annual returns on a
| capital investment?
| samlevine wrote:
| > You still need a physical machine to access "the cloud", so
| don't you still have all the expensive problems related to
| managing a fleet of PCs, but now you have to do it x2?
|
| Microsoft Intune/Endpoint manager is actually pretty easy to
| setup/enroll laptops. Autopilot takes a bit of work, but it
| does get you to the point where IT doesn't have to do anything
| on a new laptop shipped to a user.
|
| Ultimately if you don't want your users doing much on their
| laptops you can make it pretty simple to manage them.
|
| > Is data security so important that some companies are willing
| to pay 5x hardware costs and 2x maintenance costs for it?
|
| It really depends on the industry. Most folks aren't doing this
| because security isn't a priority.
|
| Some firms may not survive a data breach, others might incur
| tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in costs (directly and
| indirectly) for one large breach. These folks do care and will
| spend whatever it takes because it's got a business
| justification.
| olyjohn wrote:
| I think the thing we are missing here is... What was the
| capacity to begin with? If they have capacity for 1000
| machines... that's not particularly impressive, nor does it
| show that it's really popular. The fact that they're leaving
| the numbers out makes me think this is a hype piece to make
| everybody think it's more popular than it is... but I dunno.
| notthedroids wrote:
| They are bundling the IaaS hardware with the price of the MS
| software stack subscription. You need to net out the cost of
| standalone windows and office from the monthly price. At the
| lower hardware tiers, it's a bigger percentage of the price.
|
| https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/business/compa...
| anamexis wrote:
| Where are you seeing that? Your link just goes to the
| Microsoft 365 (nee Office 365) pricing page. I couldn't find
| any mention of hardware on the Windows 365 pages.
| reacharavindh wrote:
| I don't need it, but I can understand why this gets traction.
| Enterprises can essentially give out a tightly controlled
| windows client to anybody that needs it, even if they are
| running a Mac.
|
| Severely restrict Windows without taking away liberties of the
| computer that the employee has.
|
| An employee can simply login to their Windows workspace and
| continue work regardless of their their thin client(s).
|
| Update windows without annoying your employee...
|
| Prevent employees from installing that random chat program that
| is almost definitely a spyware right alongside their work
| programs..
|
| Oh and prep a golden image Windows workspace and onboard any
| employee within seconds..
|
| I can see how this product makes its argument to enterprise IT.
| candiodari wrote:
| But I don't get it. I've helped out with security at a bank,
| and one of our big problems was persistent and very advanced
| efforts by malicious actors to compromise endpoints.
|
| I've seen Trojans that would detect keypresses that look like
| bank accounts, take a screenshot and put it on top, replace
| the bank account number and then, seriously, detect with ocr
| on the confirmation page where the replaced account was and
| replace it there too. And these were made to steal amounts
| like 2k euro, maximum. I mean I guess that's still 2k euro *
| 1000 or so victims, but still (they do it this way because of
| 2FA, the customer must confirm on a second device, the little
| irritating calculators, the transaction)
|
| _Everything_ depends critically on endpoint security. You
| cannot make this work securely. I mean a simple Trojan could
| simply fake a logout, then transmit the screen + keypress
| control to an attacker.
|
| And I would add: your enterprise security is not just
| dependent on a device you don't control, this also represents
| a "get out of jail free" card for malicious insiders. If they
| just make sure to have 4-5 viruses installed on their home
| machine, whatever they did in the company machine is excused
| ...
| Rapzid wrote:
| After a recent Windows 10(Pro) update it tries to guide you
| through setting up a bunch of stuff and pretty much signs you
| up for the 365 trial. My guess is that's what happened.
| mushufasa wrote:
| Externally managed cloud provisioning can be a win from a SOC2
| / ISO compliance perspective. You've just changed from having
| to manage controls on local environments yourself (e.g.
| antivirus, MDM, logging etc ) to offloading the risk to a
| third-party vendor. Now, you may think that is more INSECURE
| because now someone else has control over your environments,
| and that may be true for any arbitrary cloud desktop provider.
| But when it is Microsoft themselves, it will be hard for an
| auditor to take issue; they already manage the risk of the OS
| security itself.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| >Why would I pay ~$10k over 5 years for something that's
| similar to the laptop I'm typing on which costed me $700 used?
|
| My guess is that this kind of financial inanity is being driven
| by accounting rules: CapX vs OpX, revenue recognition rules,
| etc...
| zanderz wrote:
| I worked at a company built on hardware products that was
| compelled to add some SaaS offerings because many large
| enterprise accounts have much simpler processes for
| subscriptions and AWS spend vs. capital expenditures. Sometimes
| a $500 machine is more expensive than $2,500 worth of services,
| it seems.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > Why is it so popular? I can't understand the economics of it.
| Can someone explain?
|
| CapEx vs OpEx.
|
| Also, your iPad is now a Windows machine with eight vCPUs, 32GB
| of RAM, and 512GB of storage for $158 per month.
| mdoms wrote:
| > Also, your iPad is now a Windows machine
|
| Until Apple decides they're not comfortable with that and
| bans it.
| NullPrefix wrote:
| There are HTML5 VNC clients. Although I'm not sure if they
| work on Ipads
| znpy wrote:
| > Why would I pay ~$10k over 5 years for something that's
| similar to the laptop I'm typing on which costed me $700 used?
|
| For the same reasons people pay for the was clouf offerings or
| the Google cloud equivalent.
|
| Less hassle, less stuff to manage, faster provisioning, hassle-
| free decommissioning.
| sigstoat wrote:
| no surprise. the amount of hardware available in azure is tiny.
| this project probably couldn't get azure to approve them for more
| VMs.
| iddan wrote:
| With fibber internet increasingly becoming standard around the
| world and 5G it makes perfect sense people will use their
| computer as a terminal for a more powerful computer in the cloud
| than buying powerful computers
| imwillofficial wrote:
| > fibber internet increasingly becoming standard around the
| world and 5G it makes perfect sense
|
| Absolutely not, the average connection speeds for 99% of the
| globe are nowhere near offering a solid desktop experience.
|
| Plus, chips are plenty fast days. Rarely do typical uses need
| to upgrade because of new software.
| vlan0 wrote:
| I wouldn't hold my breath on that one. Last mile ISPs are not
| optimizing for those traffic patterns. And there really is no
| incentive for them to do so.
|
| For exampe, there's 70ms between my Verizon phone and the PC
| sitting in front of me on a very well connected network. The
| traffic goes from WNY > NYC > DC > NYC > CNY > WNY. Very much
| not optimal.
|
| At the same time, AWS us-east1 is 9ms away from my desktop.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| That would make sense indeed, if the prices for 365 weren't so
| damm high.
|
| And if we had a computer that could be a dumb terminal - it
| would cost 10-20 dollars, have wifi, ethernet, an HDMI
| connection and support a mouse and a keyboard.
| [deleted]
| babypuncher wrote:
| The economics still don't work out. Buying a more powerful
| computer is still probably cheaper after just a year or two.
| [deleted]
| wereHamster wrote:
| m a i n f r a m e :)
| dotcommand wrote:
| "significant demand", "sold out", etc.
|
| Considering this is microsoft and theverge, this "news" story is
| just paid PR/ad like so much of these type of stories are.
| nix23 wrote:
| One could see i that way, i would see it as:
|
| Microsoft has still problems with scaling ;)
| Shadonototro wrote:
| Azure can't scale?
|
| I can't imagine this happening with AWS, what a horrible PR
| tester756 wrote:
| If AWS started offering resources for free, then they'd have to
| pause it within 4h since announcement and I'm pretty optimistic
| I think
| orf wrote:
| Their free tier is well supported and pretty generous.
| count wrote:
| ...they offer a ton of stuff for free.
| tester756 wrote:
| within boundaries
| tambourine_man wrote:
| Any ideia how the prices will be?
|
| Windows as a service, if decently priced, would be pretty sweet.
| timdorr wrote:
| https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-365/all-pricing
| mongol wrote:
| seems quite expensive?
| atatatat wrote:
| /me can barely contain shock.
| shadilay wrote:
| MS B2B pricing has always been high.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Looks like they tried to match Amazon Workspaces prices.
| That doesn't mean it isn't expensive though.
|
| I'd call them both niche products that I'd be more
| interested in developing on if it wasn't so expensive to do
| so (at 16 GB of RAM). I'm not entirely sure I can describe
| what the normal deployment scenario looks like (e.g.
| traveling salesman doesn't work because you'd need too high
| of internet quality on the road, developer doesn't work as
| RAM pricing, and in a lot of scenarios you need on-prem
| hardware to connect to it anyway).
| samspenc wrote:
| I was going to say that if they priced it per minute or
| hour, like some other IaaS offerings, this would have
| been competitive. I can imagine a developer or occasional
| user using this for 1-5 hours a day, and then putting it
| to sleep...
|
| But nope, just checked, it's a flat rate per month,
| irrespective of use, so definitely looks cheaper to just
| buy a high-end machine and install Windows on it (or Mac
| + Parallels + Windows like others have noted.)
| easton wrote:
| Not compared to Citrix/VMWare/Amazon Workspaces, which is
| that + Windows licensing. Those prices include licenses
| (and license management, their portal keeps track of who
| has Windows licenses and therefore can have a cloud
| desktop). It's competitive, especially if you can leave the
| VM turned on all the time.
| watertom wrote:
| Not designed for individuals or families, this is strictly a
| business offering.
| notthedroids wrote:
| Anyone else developing on a Mac/Linux desktop, and looking at
| Windows 365 to run/test/prototype windows applications?
| greenbush wrote:
| For this use case, you might be better off using Windows VPS
| providers. For about $6/mo, you'll get a VM pre-installed with
| Windows 2019 server. Just google "Windows VPS" and you'll find
| tons of providers.
| indigodaddy wrote:
| You're not going to find that price at any reputable provider
| for 2019. There is BuyVM.net (very reputable), but they offer
| only up to 2012 I believe unfortunately.
| racl101 wrote:
| I was ... until I saw the pricing then realized, ya know,
| VMWare is not as expensive.
| glennvtx wrote:
| Just use a vm, what is so hard about that? It would cost
| nothing.
| handrous wrote:
| Especially since MS provides a variety of testing-oriented
| virtual machine images.
|
| I could see this if you needed better performance than that,
| I guess, or were developing on a machine that has trouble
| running x86 Windows very well under any circumstances (ARM).
| cowsup wrote:
| Windows 365's lowest tier, with only 2GB of RAM, works out to
| $288/year. If you're on a Mac, you can grab the Pro version of
| Parallels for $99USD/year and run it locally, and spin up an
| instance of any version of Windows you need, along with
| guaranteed uptime and availability.
|
| I really don't see Windows 365 as a viable option for most
| developers, when there are so many better -- and cheaper --
| alternatives readily available.
| Marsymars wrote:
| Does Parallels still show ads to paying customers?
|
| I'd pay extra for Windows 365 to avoid ads.
| orev wrote:
| Or you could use VirtualBox for free.
| octopoc wrote:
| VirtualBox on the Mac is extremely slow. Also Parallels
| has much better integration with the Mac host (automatic
| shared folders, syncing program shortcuts between the
| host and the guest, etc.).
| ace2358 wrote:
| Can confirm that it's slow. I tried so many different
| things, different GFX cards while trying to run Windows
| (xp, 7, 10) on my Mac Pro (2012, 2 x 6 core 3.4ghz, 128gb
| ram).
|
| The only one that runs well in virtual box was XP.
| Everything else had extremely slow disk acces, graphics
| performance and cpu. It took like an hour to boot windows
| 10.
|
| Parallels was what I would consider native speed with
| better features. That was really disappointing as I
| wanted to use OSS.
|
| Running links in Vbox seems fine though and I run a few
| vms 24/7.
| Anunayj wrote:
| How does Parallels work? Why is it faster?
| chungy wrote:
| Is Windows usable with _anything_ on 2GB of RAM? I recall
| even back on Windows 7, that 2GB machines could barely manage
| a web browser and no multitasking with anything else.
| smoldesu wrote:
| If you're on Linux, you can use QEMU for free, which will
| yield better performance and compatibility than Parallels.
| notthedroids wrote:
| If I would have to pay $100-$200 for the software
| subscriptions for my Windows VM (windows license, office) it
| gets close? Especially if Microsoft is also throwing in some
| hardware so my local computer is taxed less? Of course
| streaming a cloud desktop introduces its own problems
| (latency, unreliability, etc) but also advantages
| (portability, reproducibility, etc)
| CountDrewku wrote:
| You don't really need to pay to license windows if you're
| just using it for testing.
| notthedroids wrote:
| Because Microsoft permits testing without a license? Or
| because you believe, in practice, Microsoft will not
| assert its intellectual property rights against someone
| who is only testing? (I am personally OK with the first,
| not the second.)
| CountDrewku wrote:
| Functionally you can use it indefinitely without
| licensing and only have cosmetic issues in the form of a
| watermark and some inability to change appearance.
|
| Whether this breaks their tos is a bit gray....
| greggyb wrote:
| Not sure on Windows licensing, but their major enterprise
| software such as SQL Server and SharePoint are free for
| dev use cases. When installing you have to provide a
| license. You can select a "Dev license" option, which
| gives you access to all the Enterprise Edition (or
| whatever name they're calling the full-featured edition)
| features for free for dev.
| Saris wrote:
| MS does offer W10 VM images that are good for 60 days (or
| 90, can't remember), to be used for development and
| testing.
| quaffapint wrote:
| Not disagreeing with you, but just a note that with the M1's
| being ARM based, the Windows 10 will also be ARM based and
| may not run the necessary software for you to test with. For
| example, I know currently Visual Studio will not run on that.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| Or you can just use windows iso as is without activation on a
| VM and call it a day. Then, if you are adventurous, fire up
| that kms38 and you are off to the races
| e12e wrote:
| Are you advocating saving a few hundred dollars by avoiding
| license compliance in a professional setting?
| Someone1234 wrote:
| You could, but with how inexpensive/frictionless a local
| hypervisor is, it seems like an expensive way to test.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| If you are on a desktop, you might as well get a second desktop
| and gigabit ethernet between your machines.
| neural_thing wrote:
| Free trials are paused, not the project.
| tpmx wrote:
| People love free stuff, news at 11.
| tester756 wrote:
| >includes eight vCPUs, 32GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage for $158
| per month
|
| >for something that's similar to the laptop I'm typing on which
| costed me $700 used?
|
| lol? I'd want to see benchmark difference because I don't believe
| it
| adamcik wrote:
| I wonder how much of this is free trial abuse like
| https://therecord.media/crypto-mining-gangs-are-running-amok...
| and how much was real trials?
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