Simplifying the licensing model, we can distinguish two different types of Windows 365 licenses: Business and Enterprise.

Introduction to Windows 365 Licenses

In general terms, the Business license is aimed at small and medium-sized companies, while the Enterprise license is designed for large corporations. The Business license has more limited management and maintenance options and does not allow the Cloud PC to connect directly to the corporate network. In contrast, the Enterprise license is fully integrated with Microsoft solutions such as Intune, Azure, and Universal Print. Therefore, this license is more complex to configure and maintain, requiring more advanced technical knowledge.

Differences in Licensing

The main differences to highlight are as follows:

• Business: Limited to 300 licenses per tenant.
• Business: You do not need any prior license, only a functioning Entra ID environment.
• Enterprise: You need licenses for Windows 10/11 E3, Microsoft Intune, and Microsoft Entra ID P1.
• The Business license does not allow our Cloud PCs to connect to our corporate network. In contrast, the Enterprise license allows hosting Cloud PCs in our Azure subscription and from there connecting them with the rest of the organization through ExpressRoute or a Site-to-Site VPN.
• Traffic costs are included in the license if the Cloud PC is hosted in the Microsoft datacenter (within reasonable limits). In contrast, if they are hosted in our Azure VNet, we will pay for the outbound traffic just like with any other service hosted in Azure.

Differences in Functionality

While The Enterprise license allows you to customize the provisioning profile, user default settings, and the use of custom images. In the Business license, the initial Cloud PC configuration is based on default settings that cannot be modified.

Once the endpoint is provisioned and available for use, the Enterprise license integrates both with Group Policies, with any type of configuration from ConfigMgr, and with Intune configuration profiles, from where applications can also be deployed. In contrast, with the Business license it is not possible to manage these configurations, and it is only possible to manage the deployment of Windows updates or applications if an additional Intune license is available. With the Enterprise license, we also have monitoring and troubleshooting tools that are not available in the Business license.

At the user level, the experience is equally good with either license, and users have the same capabilities when using both options.

Differences in Security

The main security measures are available for both licenses, including data encryption, traffic encryption, and cloud data protection.

In the case of the Business license, an Azure AD P1 license is mandatory in order to use Conditional Access. Windows 365 security baselines are available only for the Enterprise license.

If the user has an E5 license, Windows 365 Business is compatible with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. In contrast, Windows 365 Enterprise is fully integrated, and the Cloud PC will automatically apply Defender for Endpoint policies and appear in the console if the user has an E5 license.

Pricing

Prices are very similar and start at €28.30 per user per month (2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM and 64 GB storage) up to €159.70 per user per month in the most advanced plan (8 vCPU, 32 GB RAM and 512 GB storage).

Windows 365 Frontline

Windows 365 Frontline is a special license that with the cost of one license, allows provisioning 3 Cloud PCs. The limitation is that only one of them can be used at a time. Since this license is quite unique, we will address it in a dedicated article within this guide.