By Shankar Iyer, VP of Product Management, Desktop Solutions, End-User Computing, VMware
It’s not yet summer but we’re already serving up some hot updates to several EUC products.
We introduced VMware Horizon 6.1 last quarter and we’re back on our regular quarterly cadence of updates with innovations in several areas of our product portfolio.
VMware Horizon 6 – Improving an already great experience with enhancements to VMware Horizon clients
Client Drive Redirection
Customers using remote desktops or published applications can quickly access and edit files using a local Horizon View Client for Windows. With Client Drive Redirection, users can map their local, external or network drives on the client for use with their desktops and published applications. Client drive redirection for the Horizon View Client for Windows is available today.
HTML Access for Published Applications
Using a standard HTML5 browser, customers can quickly access their published applications. A newly designed user interface provides a brand new look and feel, including a sidebar and application and desktop launcher. Other new features include the ability to copy and paste to and from your applications, making it easier to perform edits.
Serial Port Redirection
Windows users now have the ability to use serial devices with their remote desktops. Serial port redirection allows customers to map a physical COM port on their Windows client back to the remote desktop. Once the physical COM port is mapped to the remote desktop, the serial device communicates back to the remote desktop as if it were locally connected. With this feature, a “USB-to-serial” adapter is no longer required to connect serial devices back to the remote desktop. This feature not only makes it easier to use serial devices, it also improves the performance of serial devices over the Wide-Area-Network (WAN).
Windows Media Redirection with RDSH Desktops
The latest enhancement to Windows Media Redirection allows customers to use multimedia redirection (MMR) with their RDSH session based desktops. MMR provides customers a smoother playback experience while reducing bandwidth on the network and load on the host server.
Smartcard Redirection for RDSH Desktops and Applications
This latest update for smartcard redirection extends support to additional clients including Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android. This makes it easier for customers to use their client of choice with smartcard authentication for RDSH desktops and applications.
VMware Horizon Client for Chrome OS
Leveraging the Google App Runtime for Chrome, the new VMware Horizon Client for Chrome OS provides easy access to virtual desktops and published applications from your Chromebook or Chromebox. The client can be easily downloaded from the Google Chrome App Store. .
VMware Horizon Client for iOS
The VMware Horizon client for iOS has been updated to provide support for 64-bit iOS and smartcard support for published applications. The latest client can be downloaded from the Apple App Store.
All the updates above are available today.
Workspace Environment Management (WEM) – VMware vRealize Operations for Published Applications now available for VMware Horizon and Citrix environments
With VMware vRealize Operations for Published Applications, Citrix XenApp customers can easily monitor not only the performance of their XenApp server farm, but also their VMware vSphere/ESX hypervisor that their XenApp servers run on. Citrix XenApp administrators will be able to monitor and report on critical XenApp application and session metrics commonly used for troubleshooting and reporting, including application launch time, application usage, log-on time, session duration and ICA protocol bandwidth consumption. Beyond the application and session performance, the XenApp administrators will be able use the same dashboard to pinpoint hypervisor or storage inefficiencies that may be impacting user experience.
When we demonstrated this feature at Citrix Synergy last month, we received positive feedback and support from Citrix XenApp customers. If you missed the demo at Synergy, don’t worry – we will have more information and demo videos on this feature in the coming weeks so stay tuned!
VMware vRealize Operations for Published Applications 6.1 is designed for Citrix XenApp 6.5 for Windows Server 2008R2 and will be available this quarter as part of the Horizon Application Management bundle.
VMware Mirage 5.4 and VMware Horizon Flex 1.5 – Richer policies and greater scale for managing physical systems (corporate-owned and BYO/contractor PCs and Macs)
VMware Horizon FLEX 1.5
Updates to the solution include support for enhanced password policies, VM wipe off from end-points and restricted use of VMs, among other minor enhancements and improvements. In addition, policies for USB peripheries based on device class or device whitelist, shared folders and, editing CPU and memory will also be available. These updates are expected this quarter.
VMware Mirage 5.4
With VMware Mirage 5.4, customers can provision POSReady 2009 operating systems to existing Windows Server 2003 operating systems, giving you the ability to re-use old hardware for POS purposes. The updated solution can now also run on VMware vCloud Air. VMware Mirage 5.4 will be available later this quarter.
VMware Horizon 6 for Linux – Support for Linux desktops is here
We are excited to introduce VMware Horizon 6 for Linux that supports the most popular Linux distributions – Ubuntu, Red Hat and CentOS.
VMware Horizon 6 for Linux is available as part of VMware Horizon Enterprise and VMware Workspace Suite for customers who want to run Linux desktops as well as Windows desktops and applications. If you already own VMware Horizon Enterprise or Workspace Suite, you can download VMware Horizon for Linux and the latest VMware Horizon clients today.
If you only want to run Linux desktops, VMware Horizon for Linux is also available as a standalone product. Visit the product page for more information. For more details, read the blog post by Pat Lee, senior director of product management for End-User Computing at VMware.
As you can see, we’ve been busy leading up to summer and you can expect even more from us in the coming months and quarters. After taking it all in, let me know what you think in the comment section below.
