Guest blog by Lori Mac Vittie, Senior Product Manager, Emerging Technologies
#F5, #VMwareCloud and #Horizon6 are forcing us to think about access to what matters: applications.
The industry often talks about how the data center perimeter is expanding, necessarily, due to technological shifts such as cloud and mobility and BYOD. But that isn’t really the case. If you look closely, you’ll see that the perimeter is actually shrinking, getting tighter and tighter around the data center. With just about everything web-enabled these days, the need for access to network to enable access to applications is, well, nearly gone. I can share a file via a web-enabled application today as easily as I could by copying it onto a network share using a VPN last year. With mobile devices inside the corporate walls as well as out, it’s no longer effective to just implicitly trust what’s on the local network.
And that’s indicative of a shift that’s been occurring for years, but has really taken off with the introduction of mobile devices – and which will accelerate as more “things” connect to the Internet both inside the corporate walls and beyond.
What that means is that organizations are shrinking their network access perimeter to encircle just the data center and moving toward adopting an application-centered access paradigm. That means applications are how you send e-mail, share files, and collaborate – no matter where you are and what device you might be using.
That’s a paradigm shift VMware is supporting with new capabilities introduced with Horizon 6, such as application publishing that complements its traditional VDI, desktop and application management. This new capability is supportive of a delivery model that focuses on application – not network – access as the means to deliver the applications necessary to improve productivity and engagement for consumers and employees alike.
Whether it’s native applications or traditional VDI, the applications published with Horizon 6 will still need support from the infrastructure to ensure the performance and availability required to maintain quality of experience. Quality of experience is a critical factor that can improve productivity and engagement when it exceeds expectations – and destroy both when it falls short. Whether it’s legacy Windows apps, Web or SaaS based apps delivered via Horizon 6, their quality of experience requires an integrated, collaborative and software-defined approach to managing performance, availability and access.
F5 provides the architectural foundation necessary to ensure quality of experience regardless of application type, device, or location with F5 Synthesis. With programmable L4-7 services and APIs to integrate with software-defined data center (SDDC) systems, F5 can share with data center orchestration systems the actionable, timely metrics critical to maintaining the availability and performance of all Horizon 6 delivered applications.
F5 believes applications are transforming business, and that means transforming the data center to focus on what matters: applications. VMware Horizon 6 and its new capabilities is a great example of technology that does exactly that.
