When VMware acquired Desktone last year, many people wrote that 2014 would be the year of DaaS. As we get closer to wrapping up the calendar year, I thought I’d look back at what we’ve accomplished and highlight our progress this year.
We’ve been moving at a rapid pace since the acquisition of Desktone in late 2013. We have innovated quickly based on what we’ve heard from our customers and unlike other vendors stuck in never-ending tech previews, we haven’t stood still since then.
In March 2014, VMware released VMware Horizon DaaS, the industry’s first hybrid cloud desktop service that enables customers to take advantage of virtual desktops and apps in the cloud. We also introduced a new collaboration with Google and NVIDIA to deliver high performance graphics to Chromebooks using DaaS. In August at VMworld U.S., we introduced a slew of new features that offered expanded use cases, with support for a broader range of enterprise customers. These included:
- High performance desktops: In addition to the Standard and Advanced DaaS options, the new Enterprise Desktop edition enables developers and engineers who want a high-performance desktop with 4 vCPU, 8GB vRAM, and 120GB HD.
- Apps as a Service: Customers now have the ability to publish applications and shared desktops using RDS infrastructure from VMware.
- Seasonal use case support with monthly terms: For those seasonal requirements across a variety of industries where customers need services for as little as 1 month, all services are now available on monthly terms. In fact, this enabled one of our customers to deploy several thousand cloud-hosted desktops to support their short term M&A activities.
- Expansion to EMEA: Customers in Europe now have the ability to take advantage of all our services from the vCloud Air UK datacenter in Slough.
All of the above updates were made generally available in September 2014.
Continued Innovation
Since August felt so long ago, we decided that the above wasn’t enough. We needed to do more. So at VMworld Europe, we announced even more value for our customers. In addition to the rebranding Horizon DaaS to VMware Horizon Air, the updates included:
- VMware Horizon Air Desktop DR: The first in the industry to finally offer an affordable workforce continuity solution that is like an insurance policy for your workforce. This service is available starting today.
- Further expansion in Europe to France and Germany: We expanded our Horizon Air locations to include France and Germany with availability in Q1 2015.
As you can see, we’ve been heavily committed to our end-user computing cloud strategy. As a result, VMware Horizon Air is the only service in the marketplace today that can deliver cloud-hosted desktops, apps, and disaster recovery to any device anywhere, with simple cloud economics.
All of these updates and services are the result of listening to and responding quickly to customer feedback. This is our philosophy and we will continue this throughout the year and into the next. We look forward to working closely with our customers and partners on the next wave of innovation so make sure to stay tuned.
