Managing and deploying real-life PCs in a company is an expensive affair, and it will cost you in both money and time. What's more, providing physical devices to employees comes with challenges alter on when you might need to upgrade them, which is hard to do.

An increasingly popular solution to this problem is using a cloud-based virtual desktop, sometimes called Desktop as a Service, or DaaS. This kind of offering consists of a subscription service, where you pay a monthly fee to create a virtual machine that's hosted in the cloud, and you can then access it from any of your physical devices. The idea is that you have the performance you want on any device, rather than having to depend on the capabilities of the physical hardware you have.

Usually, this kind of service is geared towards businesses, but some solutions are available for personal use, too. Either way, if you're new to virtual desktops, here are a few options you can try on your Windows PC.

Windows 365

One of the most recent solutions in the business, Windows 365 comes straight from Microsoft, and it provides you with a Windows-based computer in the cloud. It can run both Windows 11 or Windows 10, with client apps available for Windows and other platforms. One big benefit of Windows 365 when used with a Windows computer, especially Windows 11, is that it integrates seamlessly with the native experience. Your cloud desktop is treated as just another desktop on your PC, and you can configure your physical device to boot straight into the cloud desktop, rather than your local operating system.

There's a wide range of configurations available for Windows 365, with anywhere from 2 to 16 CPU cores, up to 64GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage on your cloud PC. Windows 365 runs on Azure, Microsoft's own cloud infrastructure, but you can also deploy it in Citrix and VMware, so there is some degree of flexibility in terms deployment.

Pricing starts at $28/user/month, and the service is only aimed at businesses, so it's not meant for everyone, but there are some big benefits if you already have a Windows device.

Azure Virtual Desktop

Azure Virtual Desktop is another solution by Microsoft, and because of that, it's also natural to recommend it for Windows users. This solution existed before Windows 365 and it uses similar underlying technology, but there are some key differences. Most notably, pricing. Azure Virtual Desktop exists as a pay-as-you-go solution, meaning you only pay for the time you're actually using your virtual desktop, rather than a higher flat monthly fee. It can be a great way to save money if you only occasionally need the cloud PC.

Unfortunately, Azure Virtual Desktop still only supports Windows operating systems, so if you're looking to get a Linux-based OS remotely, this still isn't the best solution for you.

Amazon WorkSpaces

Amazon is another cloud juggernaut (arguably the cloud juggernaut) and the company provides its own virtual desktop solution with Amazon WorkSpaces, which runs on AWS. Amazon WorkSpaces is a wide range of licensing options, including both a fixed monthly fee and a hybrid pay-as-you-go model where you may a much lower monthly fee and get charged for the time you actually use your cloud desktop.

Amazon WorkSpaces goes out of its way to offer plenty of solutions for different needs, so you can buy an Ubuntu, Amazon Linux, or Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) instance, as well as Windows instances with a license included or on a bring-your-own-license basis. There's plenty of options to make things work for you, so it's a very flexible solution. What's more, if you have the money for it, you can even equip some of these machines with a GPU for heavy creative workloads. You can also add bundles to include apps like Microsoft Office or Visual Studio.

There's also two interesting types of machines on Amazon WorkSpaces. The Personal model assigns a specific computer to you, so your data is always available when you sign back in, or you can go for the Pools approach, where you get a fresh new machine each time. Again, these are still aimed at businesses, but there's a lot more flexibility here compared to Microsoft's solutions.

Citrix DaaS

Citrix is a well-known provider of cloud solutions, and of course, that includes its own desktop-as-a-service offering, Citrix DaaS, previously known as Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops. Citrix is flexible in terms of where it can be deployed, since you can use XenServer (Citrix's own cloud hypervisor), but also Azure, Amazon WorkSpaces Core, or Google Cloud, among others. It also seems to support both Windows and Linux operating systems for your virtual isntances, but the focus seems to be on Windows.

As for the client devices, Citrix Workspaces (the client app for DaaS) can run on almost anything, including Windows, ChromeOS, Mac, and mobile devices. Citrix unfortunately doesn't provide a lot of clarity on pricing upfront, but you can reach out to the company to get a quote for your specific needs. That also means Citrix is still aimed at businesses, and not exactly a personal solution.

VMware/Omnissa Horizon Cloud

VMware is a titan in the virtualization industry, and the company was recently acquired by Broadcam, with the end-user computing division being sold off to an investment company and rebranded to Omnissa. You may see references to both VMware Horizon Cloud and Omnissa Horizon Cloud, but these are essentially the same thing.

Horizon Cloud mostly focuses on Windows virtual desktops, but it's usually based on a bring-your-own-license model, so the plans don't include the pricing for Windows itself. For hosting, Horizon Cloud mostly relies on Azure, though Horizon is also available as an on-premises solution. Much like Citrix, VMware/Onissa doesn't provide pricing information upfront, so you'll have to reach out for more information.

As for what you can use to access your virtual machine, Windows is compatible with the Horizon client, along with ChromeOS, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android.

Virtual desktops may be the future of work

While it won't be for everyone, virtual desktops are a very popular offering for large businesses, since they make it much easier to manage fleets of corporate devices without having to deal with actually managing physical devices. Chances are this kind of platform will only become more popular, and they could even become viable for personal use. In fact, a solution like this kind of exists with Shells, though it seems like there's no proper support behind the service, so we would advise against spending money on it.