3225: Inside Microsoft's Vision for Cloud PCs and Hybrid Work

[00:00:03] What happens when one of the world's biggest tech giants partners with a company laser-focused on secure, efficient endpoints? Well, in this episode recorded at IGEL's Now and Next Summit in Miami, I'm going to be joined by Scott Manchester. He's the Vice President of Windows 365 and Azure Virtual Desktop at Microsoft.

[00:00:26] And he describes himself as a leader with his head in the clouds and his feet firmly planted in the realities of enterprise IT. So, in our conversation today, Scott's going to share his view of how Microsoft and IGEL are teaming up to solve real-world business challenges. And I also want to unpack the practices behind the push to Windows 365 Cloud PC and the strategic advantage of moving early as part of a Windows 11 migration.

[00:00:56] And why endpoint security and performance are so much more than buzzwords. They're core enablers of business continuity. And Scott will also reflect on the types of organizations that are currently embracing cloud workspace as the fastest. From healthcare to federal agencies, there's a few surprises in there. And with Scott coming back for his seventh IGEL event, I want to find out what keeps Microsoft coming back.

[00:01:25] You're going to want to hear more about this as we explore this relationship. So, what does the future of work look like when Microsoft and IGEL join forces to deliver a better digital workspace? Let's find out by getting Scott onto the podcast now. So, thank you for joining me here at Now and Next with IGEL in Miami. But for everyone listening hearing about you for the first time, could you tell everyone listening a little about who you are and what you do?

[00:01:54] Yeah, thanks. I'm Scott Manchester. I'm a 24-year veteran at Microsoft and I've spent the last half of my career working in the virtualization space. I'm currently the vice president of our Windows cloud business, which includes Azure Virtual Desktop, Windows 365 and remote desktop services. And obviously, we're here. We're talking to so many big announcements from IGEL at the moment. We have trouble keeping up with the pace of them this morning.

[00:02:18] But how are IGEL and Microsoft working together and helping solve some of the real-world challenges for their mutual customers? And what has IGEL been doing as a technology development partner that maybe sets them apart and makes them a little bit different from everything else out there at the moment? Yeah, so IGEL was our first Linux partner. So we started developing the Linux SDK, working really closely with them.

[00:02:41] Obviously, that exercise, we got to know each other really well and gave them a lot of insight into the various capabilities of our platform. Since then, they've been on the cutting edge of adding additional capabilities to that platform. I think one of the exciting things in the announcements here today is our entrance into the healthcare with our combined solutions between IGEL, Microsoft and Provada and Epic. In fact, one of those customers is here today at the show. In fact, Baptist Medical, Jacksonville, I believe. So they're a local company as well.

[00:03:11] So I think that's a really great example where we're able to fill some of the gaps and to deliver scenarios that can be applied to different verticals. Healthcare in particular has some very unique needs. And the IGEL team was there to help ensure we had a really great solution between our products. Yeah. And I'm curious, from your perspective, what would you say are some of the most significant challenges that businesses are facing today? And especially when deploying cloud workspaces, you must hear a lot of the same kind of conversations.

[00:03:39] Any trends in the kind of problems that they're having? Yeah, certainly, you know, the world changed immensely. In fact, it was just shortly after the IGEL event in Germany. I took the trip home from there and that was around the same time that COVID came to the States. But that was the same time we were starting to develop Windows 365. And it was an interesting time for us to build this because we were literally building it while we were living the experience that many of our organizations were facing at that same time and continue to face, which is trying to support a hybrid work environment.

[00:04:10] I think, you know, with COVID, obviously, you know, things have changed and many organizations have moved back into the office. But it doesn't change the dynamic of how important it is to ensure that your organization can hire the best and brightest no matter where they are and that people can collaborate. You know, multinational corporations might have employees all over the world and have a high fidelity conversation and high fidelity exchange of information and collaborating on large files and all the things that the cloud powers. But it's hard to navigate through all the options.

[00:04:39] I think that's one of the challenges organizations face both with AI and cloud. It seems like this huge nebulous thing that's hard to understand and understand the real value. So I think as a community, all of us need to help organizations navigate all the various options and find the right solutions that meets their needs. A lot of great representations here, you know, from the industry with a lot of different solutions. So I think the biggest thing that challenges organizations find is finding the right technology that meets their needs.

[00:05:06] And I think as AI matures and we've kind of moved away from that distraction piece and the hype and there's been a lot of question marks over the ROI of every tech project now.

[00:05:17] So if we get back to solving real world problems, how does partnering with iGel help businesses enhance real IT issues like enhancing endpoint security, optimized performance and improve that entire end user experiences for the businesses leveraging AVD and a Windows 365 cloud PC, for example?

[00:05:37] Yeah, it's always been our position with our Windows cloud products, both Azure virtual desktop and Windows 365 that we embrace this concept of any device, anytime, anywhere. And so obviously, you know, iGel and other, you know, providers that build these thin clients provide some really unique opportunities to, you know, leverage old hardware or have dedicated boxes that are locked down. I think iGel does it very well.

[00:06:29] And so, you know, in some of the circumstances, it can fail over and do other tasks. We saw some really great demos here at the show of being able to, you know, boot from an iGel OS and use it as a way to recover from some kind of an outage or, you know, some sort of a security incident or something. So I think those are some very innovative ideas and things they've done. We also saw today the iGel hypervisor management, I believe it's called.

[00:06:51] Also seems like another very innovative concept to enable them to run different operating systems on top of their platform and enabling legacy applications and legacy scenarios to run on top of their platform. And for everybody listening, to give them an actionable takeaway, and particularly if they're a business leader, for example, why would you say it's important that their business considers moving to a Windows 365 Cloud PC as part of that maybe Windows 11 migration strategy?

[00:07:19] And what challenges does that approach solve for them? What problems are we solving here? And how does iGel fit into all this? Just maybe we can bring it all to life, everything we're talking about. Yeah, I think, you know, one of the concepts that we had with Windows 365 was to sort of reimagine traditional virtualization. You know, traditional virtualization has been around for 30 plus years, and it's been a very powerful tool for certain use cases. But unfortunately, traditional virtualization often strips away that personal part of computing.

[00:07:49] So when we had an opportunity to step back and rethink what would, if you were designing a virtualization solution today, what would it look like? Well, first and foremost, it was, well, what's something that end users would love? Something that an end user would feel comfortable behind, feel that they could remediate situations that they find themselves into, like they know how to do on a physical laptop. And then to think about what organizations do to support physical devices and virtual devices.

[00:08:14] And prior to Windows 365, most organizations had a team that just managed their VDI environment, and they had a special set of workflows, tools, and process to maintain that. And then an entirely different environment to manage endpoint devices, physical Windows devices, Android, iOS, Macs, all those devices. And that's a lot of overhead involved in that. And it's not just overhead. It's lots of room for human error and lots of room for outside attack. So your security posture, you know, is very broad. So you're open to a lot of attacks.

[00:08:42] So what if we could streamline the admin experiences and lean into the end user experiences and bring that personal aspect of computing to VDI? And hence was born this concept of a cloud PC that is managed in the exact same way as a physical PC inside of the same portal where you manage your physical endpoints, Intune.

[00:09:02] And then that computing experience gave back that personal computing capabilities to end users, the ability to restart their machine when they get in a bad state, to either be an admin or a standard user on it. And to know it's just them on that PC at that moment in time, they're not sharing those resources with other individuals. So they've always got, you know, a very, you know, specific set of capabilities and features.

[00:09:23] And if that machine ever gets in a bad state, they're comfortable rebooting it and restarting it because it's not going to affect, you know, a bunch of other users that might be sharing that box in a traditional VDI type of environment. And everything you're saying there makes so much sense. And also you can, the assets there, the laptops can last longer and there's so many big cases for this. I'm curious, when we're talking about rethinking, reimagining virtualization for the modern age, do you get any resistance?

[00:09:51] Because it is a big change and older tech teams, maybe we used to do it this way. Do you face any of that resistance? I think people might enter into, you know, an analysis of it with a little bit of trepidation. But I think once they put their hands on it and realize just how consistent the experience is, and you said a word there, flex, right? I think it's a really good way of defining the difference between a physical device and a virtual device. Because organizations need to flex. They need to flex in multiple dimensions.

[00:10:21] In one dimension, an individual user might need more computing power. And in the traditional, you know, physical device world, that's a pretty big exercise. And in today's modern devices, like the one in front of you, it's likely, you know, selling that one or giving it to somebody else and getting a brand new one. And the overhead in that process, get all my data off of it, you know, how much time and energy did that take to do that? With Windows 365, it's literally a click of a button and the user logs off and logs back on. They got twice the compute, twice the storage, twice the RAM. Nothing changes.

[00:10:51] It's their exact same computing environment. It's simply a log off and log back on, bigger machine. That kind of flex is super important for organizations because they don't always have to buy the biggest machine you ever might need. You can start off small and you can flex as you need. So that's the one dimension. The other dimension is flexing in the other direction, teams number of instances of a cloud PC. And many organizations, their number of employees are seasonal, right? You have a bunch of people that come in in the summer or you have interns that come in the summer.

[00:11:18] You have contractors that come in in the winter, all these types of cases where you need to be able to flex in another dimension. I need to spin up 500 new machines for these contractors or spin them down at the end of that cycle. That, again, is just a click of a button, you know, inside of our portal experience to allow organizations to do that. So I think once they get a chance to see some of those things, feel like, okay, the traditional things that I'm familiar with, the things I've loved about Windows, I flip the lid up and it's right there where I left it. If I get in a bad state, I can reset it back to a good state.

[00:11:47] You give all those things back to the users plus all the value of the cloud. And I think then people really come around to the concept. And we're seeing many organizations that tried out cloud PC when we first launched it a few years ago. And now they're rolling it out wholesale. Like every employee gets a cloud PC. So I think it just kind of get your hands on it and try it because things have changed dramatically from the traditional VDI technologies had been in market for many years. Yeah, I would urge anybody listening, if they're interested, just to get some hands on time.

[00:12:15] And it really does deliver that game changer moment. I know it's a phrase that's overused, but it really does. And I'm curious, looking further ahead, what do you see as some of the biggest opportunities for yourselves and iGEL working together this year and next year, especially on top of some of the announcements we've heard today? Yeah. Yeah, so a lot of exciting things, you know, some things that I knew was coming, but some things I didn't expect also.

[00:12:40] So it's always exciting to be here at this event and see all the innovation and to even, you know, walk along the show floor here and visit the booths of all the other technology partners out here and see all the innovation that have been driving. So I'd have to say that, you know, one of the things about this industry is the community of it, right? So many people, sometimes they have a different badge when they show up to these events, but they stick with the industry. And I think it's great because you've got a lot of people that have lots of history, right? And then a lot of fresh people entering this industry that bring a lot of innovative and creative ideas.

[00:13:10] So I've been just amazed at what we've done in the last few years. But I think as we get more and more, you know, interest in this technology space, our innovation just gets faster and faster. So we have a number of upcoming announcements just on April 2nd. This year, we'll be publishing a blog that'll introduce a whole bunch of new capabilities of our Windows Cloud offerings. And then later this year, we'll obviously have Microsoft Ignite. We had a really big year at Ignite last year. We announced Windows 365 Link.

[00:13:38] We announced mobile application management support for non-Windows clients. So there's a lot more of that type of innovation still to come and a lot of exciting announcements that will roll out over this year. And a few weeks ago, I was in Austin and there were Waymo cars driving everywhere. It kind of delivered that moment where I thought, man, the future is actually here. It's not further on down the road. And if we look at what we're talking about today, again, it's not the future. It is right now.

[00:14:04] So what type of organizations or industries are you seeing with the most rapid adoption of AVD, Windows 365, cloud PCs, etc.? Are you seeing federal governments looking to implement Microsoft Cloud solutions as well, an area that is often stretched with resources and don't have big budgets, etc.? Yeah, and definitely we see a lot of the most critical workloads in the world are moving to virtualization solutions.

[00:14:30] And obviously, the federal government in the U.S., governments across the world, large healthcare industries, financial service industries, insurance, manufacturing. These are the verticals that have been traditionally leveraging virtualization because of just the innate security that virtualization provides, separating all the data and access from the physical device to the corporate environment.

[00:14:56] That's kind of the baseline capability that you get just by working in a VDI or virtualization type of environment. But I think you're going to see a lot more innovation in unique offerings around this concept of a cloud PC. We've announced recently our Windows 365 frontline. And now we just announced recently frontline shared. There are two new modalities for leveraging certain use cases where organizations have shift workers, for instance.

[00:15:22] So, again, getting back to healthcare, you know, where, you know, a nurse or doctor might work in shifts, but the hospital is open 24 hours a day. Well, you can buy a license, one license and apply it across those three users that work in shifts and things like call centers and things like that. So, that's the frontline model. And then this new frontline shared model is a really exciting opportunity to say, look, we have a virtualization offering here, but primarily people work from their personal desktops. But there are certain applications and things that require another layer of security.

[00:15:51] So, when they need access to that, I want them to run out of a virtualization environment. But it's more of an ad hoc scenario. And so, there's a new licensing type with Windows 365 called frontline shared. Provides exactly that scenario. You buy the number of licenses you need for concurrent use, but you can assign your entire organization to it. So, you know, 20 accountants that occasionally have to run reports and they do it out of an app that's a virtualized app or what we call a cloud app. And if your concurrent need is only five, then you only need five licenses and you can assign all 20 people to it.

[00:16:20] So, there's a lot of that type of innovation that's leaning into specific scenarios, specific personas within organizations. And then as you called out specific verticals like federal agencies, healthcare, finance, the ones that typically require high uptime and resilience. That's fantastic. And Kuis, on a personal level, if we look at these Steve Jobs queries, you can't look at the dots looking forward. It's only when you look back that you see how they formed.

[00:16:47] If you were to look back at your career, how's your background and experience in cloud computing, virtualization and networking? How has all that influenced your current role at Microsoft and indeed your partnership with iJump? Yeah, it was never my intention to land where I did after all these years at Microsoft. And when I look back, in fact, I was just talking to somebody else about this. It asked me what my career history was at Microsoft. I started my first two, two and a half years there as a partner manager.

[00:17:15] They called it tech evangelist. It was the title, but basically working with partners to innovate on technology shared by Microsoft and the partners. And then I moved into networking and I led the networking team at Microsoft for about four or five years. And then I moved into graphics and I led the multimedia and graphics teams at Microsoft for a couple of years. And then I worked on Xbox and created second screen remoting technologies from Xbox. So here, networking, graphics, media encoding and decoding, and now second screen remoting, like all the building blocks of building virtualization.

[00:17:45] And then my next job was virtualization. And it was like all the investments I'd made, all the technology I'd worked on in my entire career came together into one piece. And I think if I hadn't done the work on partnerships, we wouldn't have all the great partnerships like we have at the IGEL. If I hadn't worked in networking, we wouldn't have this amazing networking stack inside of our platform. I hadn't worked in graphics. We wouldn't have the latest encoders and decoders and all the optimizations in our protocol. So I think it was just circumstances that guided me down that path that led to the perfect job for me at Microsoft. Wow, what an incredible story. Absolutely love that.

[00:18:14] And before you joined me today, I did a little research on you as well, a little bit of Googling. And I noticed that you're a big supporter of IGEL. And this is actually your seventh IGEL conference. So obviously, you're going to be keynoting here as well. So what makes this such an important partnership for you? Yeah, like I mentioned earlier, it is just coming here and seeing all the people in the industry. For one, this event is one of the few remaining events that's really, you know, open to all partners.

[00:18:42] And I love that about IGEL, really starting a community event because our industry really needed something like this, right? And, you know, events just hosted by one platform provider just talking about their technologies doesn't really meet the needs of the industry. To see customers more and more come into these types of events and learning about all these technologies, to see the number of booths of all the partners out here continuing to grow. It's a real special event and one I really look forward to.

[00:19:05] So I usually try to save some of my best announcements and polish in my speaking skills because I'm talking to not just, you know, competitors and friends, but the entire community, you know. So I think it's just an exciting place to be. I think a lot of us just view it as a bit of a family reunion sometimes, you know, where you get to see all the people that you've worked with sometime in your career.

[00:19:28] And if we look at all those conversations that you've had and enjoyed here on that plane ride home, anything in particular you're going to be thinking about on the way home or reflecting on? Oh, for sure. Yeah. I think, you know, again, the innovation that this whole industry does is just amazing. And I love, you know, hearing from all the other technologists here about what they're building. And I think generally my mind goes to how can we partner with each of these different companies? What are the things we can do where we can build something together?

[00:19:56] And again, it kind of goes back to that first role I had at Microsoft where, you know, all I did was work with partners. And it really shaped my thinking about just how we can amplify everything we do through partnerships. So I'll spend my time thinking through all the discussions I had as I walked through and met everybody at the booths and looked at their technologies and listened to Matthias and all the other great speakers here at this event. But it does really get your brain churning on what are your opportunities and how you can collaborate with all these great tech partners here.

[00:20:25] And you mentioned a few moments ago there's a big blog post coming out soon explaining some of the things that you're doing. For anyone listening that wants to keep up to speed with the kind of work that you're doing, any way you'd like to point people listening? Well, for me in particular, you can follow me on LinkedIn, Scott Manchester on LinkedIn. We have a number of sites that we kind of keep updated with all the latest innovation and technologies that we're doing in the Windows Cloud area.

[00:20:49] I believe it's aka.ms slash AVDnext and aka.ms slash W365next. A couple of short links where you can find some latest and greatest insights on what we're doing. Awesome. Well, I'll have links to both of those so people can find you nice and easily. But I know you've got to dash again back onto the show floor in a moment. But just thank you for stopping by and speaking with me today. My pleasure.

[00:21:12] I think we got a fast-paced masterclass there in cloud strategy from Scott Manchester today live on the event show floor. But he was offering not just technical roadmaps, but a practical one for organisations navigating their way to Windows 11, hybrid work, next-gen endpoint security. But I think one of the key takeaways is that the endpoint still matters. Matters more than ever.

[00:21:38] And whether it's about delivering seamless experiences to employees or reducing IT complexity. Both Microsoft and iGel are proving that a unified approach, a cloud-first, security-forward and experience-driven approach, that's the path to a sustainable transformation. And I think it was Scott's enthusiasm for this iGel partnership was there for all to see in his seventh appearance at the event.

[00:22:07] That tells its own story, I think, of how these two companies are not just innovating together. They're listening to what customers need and acting together to solve it across sectors, across geographies and use cases. So if you're exploring Windows 365, cloud PCs or Azure's virtual desktop, or just thinking through your own Windows 11 migration,

[00:22:31] I honestly think it's worth you taking a closer look at how Microsoft and iGel are shaping this journey together. And I would strongly advise anyone listening just to get some hands-on time with it. I think it will set off a few lightbulb moments. But what are your thoughts? Are cloud workspace as part of your 2025 strategy? Let me know as always, and stay tuned for more conversations direct from the show floor here.

[00:23:02] So email me, techblogwriteroutlook.com. Connect with me on LinkedIn, Instagram, just at Neil C. Hughes. Let me know your thoughts. Other than that, it's time for me to hunt down another guest. So meet me here, same time, same place tomorrow, and we'll do it all again. Bye for now. Bye for now. Bye for now.