VMware Horizon Integration – How the Pieces Fit Together, Part 3

By Anthony Rizzo, Staff End-User-Computing Technologist, VMware

This series discusses the concept of VMware Horizon 6.2 and VMware Horizon Air Desktops and Horizon Air Apps as a flexible end-user-computing tooling system.

Part 1 of VMware Horizon Integration – How the Pieces Fit Together reviewed the main ideas behind this concept.

Part 2 of VMware Horizon Integration – How the Pieces Fit Together covered key characteristics of end-user-computing centralization with secure and remote access.

This part explains the mapping of business requirements to Horizon features for tooling end-user-computing solutions.

I am broadly covering integrated VMware End-User-Computing solutions here. The rest of this blog series (this third blog, and Part 4) will refer to Horizon and the VMware components it integrates with as VMware End-User Computing.

Mapping Business Requirements to VMware End-User-Computing Components

Technology serves the business, and tooling begins with business requirements.

End-user-computing solutions should meet the needs of the business and overcome the limitations of the operation. Requirements are combined with constraints, then mapped to VMware Horizon product sets (tool sets). This gives you a more useful and effective tooling solution.

• Business requirements are defined by industry demand, consumers, leadership, financial conditions, or market conditions, and other factors that are not easily controlled.
• Constraints are defined by real-life working conditions. These are more controllable. Constraints add more detail to requirements.

Imagine that you have clearly defined your business requirements. Here is a simple example of how typical constraints refine business requirements for a more meaningful Horizon solution.

Horizon product sets can be tailored, or tooled, to meet the specific needs of both the administrator and the user. You might still be asking, “Will I know how to do this?”

Simply put—the ability to design an end-user-computing environment comes with experience. There are many possible tooling combinations a skilled engineer can choose.

Very important points:

• Educate yourself on VMware End-User-Computing product offerings. Understanding product sets and individual product features is essential even for high-level planning.
• Advanced end-user-computing integration is not for novice engineers. It requires in-depth VMware and IT technology skills, especially when integrating in a production environment.
• If you are integrating end-user-computing products into a production environment, first make sure the production environment is healthy, properly designed, and in good working order.
• Smaller, less complicated solutions are sometimes built and deployed without advanced product knowledge. This often introduces some risks.
• You do not have to—nor should you—face this challenge alone. VMware has teams of advanced planners and engineers to help you. VMware also partners with highly skilled solutions integrators across the globe, all trained to help you.

A Summary of Part 3

• You learned that in order to have the best outcome with designing an end-user-computing environment, you must start with business requirements.
• Real-life limitations of the organization, called constraints, help to refine your requirements so they map better to VMware End-User-Computing capabilities.
• It is best to use skilled engineers in tooling end-user-computing solutions, especially when integrating them into production environments.
• VMware and VMware partners are here to help.

See the end of this blog for links and references that will help you plan your end-user-computing architecture.

Part 4 will explain how VMware End-User-Computing products can be combined to meet the needs of business, and adapted as those needs change.

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