Microsoft cloud
Cloud PC
A Cloud PC is a Windows desktop hosted by the Windows 365 service and streamed to a user on supported devices. It is provisioned and managed through Intune policy, rather than manually built and configured by an administrator the way a traditional VDI desktop typically is.
Why Cloud PC matters in a Microsoft estate
Cloud PC matters because Microsoft 365, Azure, Windows 365, Teams, and related services are usually managed as one estate. The term connects to planning, cost, configuration, security, and day-two operational decisions across that estate.
How Cloud PC shows up in practice
The defining characteristic of a Cloud PC is persistence and dedication. Unlike a pooled Azure Virtual Desktop session, where a user connects to whichever available host in a shared pool has capacity, a Cloud PC is assigned one-to-one to a single named user and behaves like a personal, always-there desktop, keeping its state, installed applications, and configuration between sessions rather than resetting. Provisioning is driven by policy rather than manual build. An administrator defines a provisioning policy specifying the image, network configuration, and region, and assigns it to a user group through Entra ID.
Windows 365 then automatically creates and configures the matching Cloud PC for every member of that group, which is what makes the model scale cleanly across a large estate without per-user manual setup. Sizing is expressed directly in vCPU, RAM, and storage, published as a fixed monthly per-user price rather than the variable consumption billing of Azure Virtual Desktop. This is the core trade-off between the two: a Cloud PC gives predictable, easy-to-forecast cost and near-zero infrastructure administration, in exchange for less granular control over the underlying compute than a self-managed Azure Virtual Desktop host pool provides.
Data residency for a Cloud PC is controlled through the same provisioning policy that sets the image, since it also determines the Azure region the Cloud PC is created in, which matters for organisations with specific regional or UK data residency requirements. Because a Cloud PC is genuinely persistent, FSLogix profile management, commonly required to make user state portable across shared or pooled AVD session hosts, is largely unnecessary. The user's state already lives with their dedicated machine. This combination of policy-driven provisioning, one-to-one persistence, and flat per-user pricing is what makes Cloud PC estates well suited to standard knowledge-worker cohorts with predictable, steady usage. Cohorts with more variable, shift-based, or specialist compute needs are usually better served by Windows 365 Flex or Azure Virtual Desktop instead.