On the Front Lines with Frontline
Windows 365’s Frontline went GA a few months ago, and I’ve been curious to see what use cases organizations would pull out of it. It’s a differnet use of the phrase “Frontline” than Microsoft typically uses, which caused some minor confusion, but the point is that 3 users can effectively share licensing for their own dedicated VM without actually sharing the VM.
No, not that kind of front line…
The most obvious thought was “if I buy 1/3 of the licenses I have for my current users, I will save 2/3 on licensing!”. Well, that’s not the case - Frontline’s price point for 2 CPU, 8 GB RAM and 128 GB is half of the cost of 3 individual 2 CPU, 8 GB RAM and 128 GB Windows 365 licenses. 50% savings isn’t bad compared to 2/3, but seasoned licensing vets always knew it wasn’t going to be a 2/3 savings.
We can dream, though…
Developers already have the Dev Box solution, so I doubt this would be an appealing replacement. GPU users need lengthy access to their sessions in order for designs to render, etc., so they’re not great candidates for sharing. This could be great for shift work, where hospitals running 3 shifts only need 1/3 of their workers logged in at any point. We know that in reality it will be more than 1/3, but that’s an easy use case to point to.
Who does that leave us with, but the general office worker. Finance may only need secure access to reporting software for an hour a day or less, one week a month - making them a great fit. Random line of business app users may rely heavily on the app for two hours a day, then not at all for the rest of the day - another good fit. Call center workers - another common shift work scenario - are another example that fits.
When one of these workers goes to log in, that’s when they see the trade-off we make for multiple users having access, for a lower price point - the login time. End user login times here will start at 2 minutes and rise from there, as opposed to 3 or 4 seconds and rise from there for a typical user session on W365 or AVD.
It’s worthy of note that I am a touch biased when it comes to things involving that 2 minute wait time, which was pioneered by CloudJumper (and PM’d by yours truly) as “Wake on Demand” and later introduced by Microsoft as “Start on Connect”.
The time it takes to get a session host ready for an end user connection - when initiated by the user - is that exact 2 minute time frame. So, this feature is taking a machine that is offline and bringing it online while returning a preserved session state.
My final conclusion is that it’s worth noting that Each license provides nonconcurrent access for as many as three people. This means you need enough licenses to cover max usage, during any period of shift work. If you’re budget-constrained but need the simplicity and security provided by Windows 365, this may be a fit for general office uses. However, it truly shines for shift work and call centers.
We’ll keep up to date with Frontline and deliver more “On the Front Lines with Frontline” in the future!