By Tina de Benedictis, Technical Marketing Manager, Enterprise Desktop
All of the hoopla about the cloud—does it apply to your organization? Can you trust your data and applications to the cloud? How can you take the first step and give the cloud a try?
VMware has announced its End User Computing journey to the cloud, and VMware View™ and ThinApp™ are the first steps on the path. You can keep the rest of your organization as is and begin by placing your user desktops in the cloud. On those VMware View desktops, you can place applications that have been virtualized with ThinApp. Both of these solutions save your IT department a bundle of time, and what organization doesn’t have a backlog of other projects for IT? To delve into technical details on saving time with desktop virtualization, see The Business Case for Desktop Virtualization.
The VMware End User Computing Journey to the Cloud
At VMworld 2011, VMware announced products for each of the steps on the VMware End User Computing journey to the cloud. Some of these products are part of the VMware product set already, and others are coming to fruition in 2012. Here is the overall product mapping for the journey to the cloud:
In this journey, Horizon™ Application Manager is the secure, policy-driven broker for desktops, applications, and data in the cloud. Horizon Application Manager delivers these cloud services to end users on a variety of stationary and mobile platforms, including those that users choose as part of the bring-your-own-device trend. In this post-PC vision, VMware embraces the need to deliver legacy Windows and enterprise client/server applications alongside newer application technologies.
These are the VMware products for the End User Computing journey to the cloud:
- VMware View: Virtual desktops as a managed service
- VMware ThinApp: Virtual applications as a managed service
- Project AppBlast™: HTML5-based delivery of legacy applications via a web browser
- Project Octopus: Secure data share and sync
- Horizon Application Manager: Now, policy-based management of applications (SaaS, web applications, ThinApp virtualized Windows applications, and enterprise applications). Soon, policy-based management of all public and private cloud services (desktops, applications, and data).
- Horizon Mobile: A secure, managed, and policy-driven virtual smartphone for work, isolated and protected inside a personal smartphone
Cloud-based social/collaborative applications, designed for mobility:
- Zimbra™: Open-source email and collaboration
- Strides™: Social task management
- Socialcast™: Enterprise social networking
- SlideRocket™: Online presentation software
Watch this video about the VMware End User Computing vision:
Building the Platform for the Post-PC Era
The First Step in the Journey
Your first step in the journey to the cloud is to try View and ThinApp. In this initial setup, View is the broker between end users and the cloud of virtual desktops, applications, and data.
If you are ready to refresh physical desktop computers, now is the time to consider the virtual desktop solution. The budget planned for the desktop refresh can be diverted to virtual desktops.
View and vSphere
Built on the industry-leading virtualization platform, VMware vSphere™, VMware View enables you to deliver virtual desktops to any device with all of the benefits of centralized enterprise desktop management. You can deploy desktop instances rapidly from secure datacenters to facilitate high availability and disaster recovery, protect the integrity of enterprise information, and remove data from local devices that are susceptible to theft or loss.
Saving Time with Desktop Virtualization
VMware View desktop virtualization not only benefits from the sophisticated features of a vSphere infrastructure, but View also frees up time for your desktop administrators. Managing physical desktop computers is something that every IT director wants to make more efficient, but it is difficult to save time with an old model and with tools made for the old model. The model of individual physical computers with Windows applications and a web browser is being replaced. The new paradigm is a user “view” into the cloud to access a personal desktop, applications, and data.
The Business Case for Desktop Virtualization white paper compares time spent on physical desktop management to time spent in virtual desktop management with View. Your IT department can save 57% of the time currently spent on desktop administration with a VMware View virtual desktop implementation. The more users you have, the more hours you save by converting to a View virtual desktop implementation.
You have a list of other projects for your IT staff to work on, right? Get the details on how you can save time in desktop administration with VMware View: The Business Case for Desktop Virtualization.
