I’m really excited, because VMware recently made a number of acquisitions to boost its end-user computing portfolio – from cloud-based virtual desktops to AirWatch for managing your devices to App Volumes™ for simplifying desktop management by managing the apps. These are all great new offerings that will empower IT to quickly and easily deliver a desktop to the end user and help drive the cost and complexity from your data center. Let me explain how.
What’s on the Horizon for Desktop and App Virtualization?
- App Volumes – Some of things I hear when talking to customers is how can I simplify management of my applications? And how can I optimize the delivery of these apps to many different devices, environments, and users? An app volume is a real time application delivery system with lifecycle management.
- Horizon Air delivers a simple-to-deploy cloud-hosted virtual desktop. This is for folks that don’t have complex needs for desktops, and getting their desktops from the cloud makes sense for them. Managing virtual desktops is simplified through a single, web-based, intuitive interface. IT administrators can easily assign desktops to a user and the user logs into their desktop with a simple URL. And they can quickly add, remove, or modify desktops as needed, from any location with a browser too. It is very simple for administrators – and more importantly – very simple for users.
- Horizon Workspace provides end users access to all of their virtual desktops, applications, content and online services through a single workspace with a few simple clicks. And with EMM (enterprise mobility management), Horizon 6 can manage mobile devices both corporate and BYOD. Users can now easily access their workspace portal of app, desktops, and content without affecting their personal device.
What’s Best for Your Organization?
Horizon 6 includes three platforms to deliver, protect, and manage desktops and applications: View, Mirage, and the Workspace Portal. View is for desktop users who are well connected to the network; Mirage is for users who need offline capabilities, and Workspace Portal lets users access their applications, desktops, and content on any device for better workspace management. The challenge is figuring out which delivery option – or combination of options – works best for your environment.
Horizon View lets you deliver and manage applications to support truly stateless desktops with a new product called App Volumes. Now, every time a user logs in, their applications are delivered to their virtual desktops with an appropriate app stack. Something I’ve personally seen as an issue for a long time is the difficulty with managing user-installed applications. Not anymore. App Volumes now allows me to give a user a writable app stack to store their user installed apps in, and that is delivered each time they log into a desktop. App Volumes really drives IT’s ability to deliver apps without compromising the end-user experience. Horizon View has also added great new tech to address user profiles with UEM, 3D graphics with vGPU and recent release to support Linux desktop OS in a virtual desktop.
Mirage gives you the ability to manage those users that need to operate even when they are not on the network, still needing a full windows OS on their device. Need a backup solution for laptops? Well, VMware Mirage can do that. It takes snapshots of an entire PC – including OS, user applications, user files, and profiles – and can restore their image on a replacement laptop even it’s a different model and brand. But most of all, it allows a layered approach to managing and updating the user’s window’s device.
Workspace Portal provides a central, unified portal that users can access through a modern HTML browser. Workspace provides a single pane of glass that gives users convenient access to all of their applications, desktops, and content regardless of type of device you log in with. The great thing about a customized Workspace portal is the ability to deliver all things needed, including Citrix XenApps, RDSH (remote desktop service apps), Office 365, and even full virtual desktops.
Are You Ready for the VDI Journey?
Creating a modern data center is a journey. You need to understand that your data center will continue to evolve – just like VMware. At Connection, we offer a number of services to get you started on that journey – from assessments to health checks to test the overall efficiency of your infrastructure to a Proof of Concept Application to prove that this tech works in your environment with your apps to installation services when you’re ready to implement or upgrade. Laying out your EUC journey is exciting and our experts can help you every step of the way.
