This was already a thing 20 years ago. Students weren’t have any experience with windows, it was something companies used, and today even that has gone away.

I promise you it has not "gone away" which is why Azure is so popular.

What does Azure have to do with windows these days?

Windows is still enforced and mandated on most corporate Fortune 100/500 companies computers.

Their "cloud lift" consists of putting vms into the cloud to run at 10x the cost. (Nothing else changed from The Old Ways)

And that's still where we are today for most enterprises.

That ecosystem has had them for 30+ years and shows no signs of going away anytime soon. If it doesn't have Active Directory and Office 365 or whatever they decided to call it today, they aren't interested.

Still not seeing the connection to Azure.