Remember Windows 365? A truckload of updates are on the way

Windows 365 Cloud PC
(Image credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft is working on a whole host of updates for virtualization service Windows 365.

As revealed in a series of new entries in the Microsoft product roadmap, Windows 365 customers will soon benefit from a range of new options, from additional recovery and provisioning tools to support for single sign-on (SSO) and more.

The release timelines vary from feature to feature, with some due to land in preview as early as March 2022, and others not set to roll out until the end of the year.

Windows 365 gets a refresh

Launched in July 2021, Windows 365 is a PC-as-a-service offering that allows users to stream a Windows desktop to any of their devices, including those running on macOS, Linux and Android.

Instead of equipping employees with new Windows 11-compatible hardware, businesses can provision a series of so-called Cloud PCs, available in various configurations depending on the level of performance and amount of storage required.

Although Windows 365 created something of a stir at launch, there has been little in the way of feature rollouts since, which is pretty uncharacteristic of Microsoft. However, with the latest round of roadmap entries, the company has made clear its commitment to augmenting its new virtualization service.

The new Windows 365 features can be grouped into a handful of themes. For example, Microsoft is set to roll out a selection of new facilities relating to data recovery, including the ability to recover Cloud PCs to a “known point-in-time backup”, restore deployments from a different data center in the event of an outage and create manual restore points.

When it comes to new provisioning options, Microsoft will soon allow administrators to set up Cloud PCs to run in a specific language from launch, as well as configuring alerts and notifications on a per-user basis.

Lastly, Windows 365 will soon gain new identity management facilities that allow users to utilize Azure AD Single Sign-On to log into their Cloud PCs with greater ease.

Joel Khalili
News and Features Editor

Joel Khalili is the News and Features Editor at TechRadar Pro, covering cybersecurity, data privacy, cloud, AI, blockchain, internet infrastructure, 5G, data storage and computing. He's responsible for curating our news content, as well as commissioning and producing features on the technologies that are transforming the way the world does business.