Five Years, Five Awards: My Journey as a Microsoft MVP in Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365

On July 15th, 2026, I received my 5th Microsoft MVP award — and once again, it’s a dual award, recognizing my contributions in both Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) and Windows 365.

This one feels different. Not because the process changed, but because of what it represents: five consecutive years of being recognized in Azure Virtual Desktop, and the third consecutive year of holding the dual AVD + Windows 365 title.

The Numbers Behind the Milestone

• 5th MVP award overall
• 5 years of continuous recognition in Azure Virtual Desktop
• 3 years of dual recognition across AVD and Windows 365

Five years is long enough to have watched AVD and Windows 365 evolve from niche enterprise tools into core pillars of how organizations think about end-user computing. It’s also long enough to have made plenty of mistakes, learned from them in public, and kept showing up.

What This Award Actually Recognizes?

The MVP award isn’t given for job title or employer — it’s given for community contribution. For me, that has meant:

• Writing and publishing technical content on whyazure.in, covering real-world AVD scenarios — FSLogix, identity, autoscale, Session Host Configuration, and more
• Speaking at global Azure community events, including sessions in Bangladesh and Ghana
• Organizing the AVD Hackathon to give the community hands-on, practical exposure
• Hosting a podcast focused on Windows 365
• Working hands-on at L3 level on enterprise AVD/EUC platforms, which keeps the content grounded in what actually happens in production, not just what’s in the docs

Why the Dual Recognition Matters?

AVD and Windows 365 are often talked about as if they’re competing products, but in practice, they’re converging. Customers are asking “AVD or Windows 365?” less and “how do these fit together in our EUC strategy?” more. Being recognized across both gives me a broader lens — and honestly, better conversations with the community and with customers, because I’m not forced to pick a side.

What’s Next?

Five years in, the plan doesn’t change: keep building, keep breaking things in test environments before anyone else has to, keep writing about what actually works, and keep showing up for the community that made this recognition possible.

Thank you to everyone who reads whyazure.in, attends the sessions, listens to the podcast, and shows up to the hackathon. This award has your fingerprints on it as much as mine.

Here’s to year six.