By Ben Goodman, End-User Computing, VMware
The VMware Horizon application manager team is very excited to announce Horizon Application Manager 1.5. The product will be available this quarter as a new virtual appliance, allowing the product to be installed on a customer’s premise for the first time ever. This version will also be sold through VMware’s channel and sales force and made available internationally for the first time.
For those of you that are not familiar with VMware Horizon Application Manager, it simplifies IT by providing a unified application catalog for management and provisioning of virtualized Windows applications, enterprise web applications and SaaS applications.
Horizon was designed to directly address the consumerization of IT occurring in the enterprise. It does this by securely delivering diverse apps to end-users on the devices of their choice. This user-centric management platform enables IT to extend corporate policy and control to applications and services across the public and private cloud. We do all of this with an identity centric management layer that allows IT to regain much of the control that is so often lost by the proliferation of the three headed monsters of cloud services, public networks and smart devices.
Horizon Application Manager 1.5 is full of new features, which will enable IT to control, manage and deliver policy driven application services to end-users across every device. Enhancements include:
Horizon Application Manager Appliance – Now offered as a VMware vSphere-based virtual appliance for on-premise, private cloud configurations. This deployment model allows for a faster time to value with both reduced deployment time and costs, and we have added cloud based update service which enables non-disruptive patching and updates.
Horizon Enterprise Connector – The new Horizon Enterprise Connector supports end-user authentication and single-sign on through Horizon to existing directory services, profiles and policies without making changes or disrupting existing directory architectures.
Horizon Operator – Because Horizon was designed from the ground up to support organizations of all sizes and complexity, we made it multi-tenant capable. Horizon Operator delivers a management console for the operator across multiple organizations / tenants. Operators are able to create, manage and report across all organizations within the system while creating delegated, role based administrators within organizations.
Horizon Administrator – The Horizon Administrator console is a single integrated, web-based platform for end-user and application management, policy and reporting.
Horizon Policy Manager – With granular policy control, administrators have the ability to easily define policies and enable secure, controlled access for bring-your-own-device (BYOD) initiatives for end-user access by context like location, connectivity and device..
Horizon Workspace – By providing one workspace available across all platforms, Horizon Workspace delivers a consistent end-user experience with single sign-on across all devices to access applications. The device aware workspace takes the guesswork out of the end-user experience, while providing federated identity management across public and private cloud applications.
Horizon Application Catalog – The unified application catalog in Horizon Workspace delivers a single IT view of all entitled Windows, SaaS and Web applications across the public and private cloud. The catalog comes with an inventory of industry leading SaaS applications to streamline deployment. In addition, IT is able to add new applications to customize the catalog to support existing enterprise web and ThinApp applications. Expanded support of VMware ThinApp virtualized Windows applications enables IT to gain control of leases and patch updates to end-users.
Horizon Client for Windows – provides support for ThinApp Windows application delivery and syncing to Windows based client devices.
VMware ThinApp – now included as part of the perpetual licensed offering of Horizon Application Manager, ThinApp simplifies Windows applications management and reduces the cost and complexity of delivery. This application virtualization solution isolates applications from their underlying operating systems and from other applications to eliminate application conflicts. Through Horizon Application Manager, organizations can now streamline the delivery and management of ThinApp applications to end-users.
Expanded Authentication Support* – Support for SAML and OAuth2, with alignment to open standards ensuring the vast majority of enterprise SaaS applications are supported.
Horizon Extension Services – Delivering APIs to enable the integration of Horizon data into existing systems and processes enable Horizon to extend the value of existing investments. Easily integrate into existing wokflow or reporting systems and bring the added insight from Horizon into the organization.
As you can see with this extensive list of features, VMware Horizon Application Manager is ready to help manage the major paradigm shifts that are under way in the enterprise. Over the next few weeks we will do a series of blog posts detailing the major changes happening in end-user computing, the costs and risks associated with these changes an how IT can leverage solutions like VMware Horizon Application to manage that change.
Read more about the other products launched as part of our VMware End-User Computing portfolio announcement and register for the VMware End-User Computing Virtual Conference on May 3rd, 8:30am to hear more.
