If you took a look at desktop and application virtualization in the past and thought, “This is just too complex and costly to make the move,” now is the time to revisit your decision.
Today, we are excited to announce new technologies and offerings that drive the cost and complexity out of getting started and allow you to address more use cases than ever before.
So, whether you are an existing VMware Horizon customer, new to desktop and application virtualization or using a competing solution, we have something here for you.
To begin, let me start with three new technology innovations in our Horizon portfolio.
1. Just-in-time Management Platform (JMP)
When it comes to JMP–we have brought together our best-of-breed application and desktop management technologies (which incidentally do not require full VM control), including:
- Instant Clones for ultra-fast desktop provisioning
- App Volumes for real-time app delivery
- User Environment Manager for contextual policy management.
In doing so—we are allowing you to dynamically scale desktops and apps to drive down costs without compromising user experience. What’s more, we are extending JMP capabilities to address not only virtual desktops, but also published apps functioning both on premises and in the cloud. This will allow you to extend the benefits of JMP across any Horizon virtual desktop or app deployment within your environment.
Here’s a quick look at JMP with Instant Clones for Horizon published apps:
2. Digital Workspace Experience with BLAST & BEAT
So, what is BEAT and how does this support a better user experience across more network conditions?
Well, BEAT stands for Blast Extreme Adaptive Transport—our new UDP-based transport as part of our Blast Extreme protocol. We designed BEAT to ensure great user experience across varying network conditions—especially those with low bandwidth, high latency and high packet loss.
With BEAT, we are seeing phenomenal improvements out of the box with Horizon 7.1 (our new release) versus Horizon 7.0. In fact, we are seeing up to 50% improved bandwidth utilization out of the box. Moreover, we are seeing six-time faster file transfers for transcontinental connections (~200 ms) with only slight packet loss.
So whether your end users are working from the coffee shop using WiFi or mobile networks or downloading video from half way across the globe–they can enjoy a great user experience. And one more thing: In addition to BEAT supporting Windows, Mac, iOS, Android and Chrome, Blast now supports over 125 Windows and Linux thin clients.
3. Skype for Business
Last quarter, VMware announced that we are working with Microsoft to support a tech preview of Skype for Business with Horizon. Well, now it’s here. We are pleased to bring all Horizon 7.1 customers a tech preview of Microsoft Skype for Business. We designed the solution to prevent hair-pinning and allow all traffic to pass from client to client to minimize bandwidth utilization and packet loss. To start with, the tech preview will support Windows clients. Stay tuned for other clients to follow shortly.
[Related Live Broadcast: VMware & VDI in Skype for Business, Feb. 10, 9-9:30 a.m. PST]
Bringing these Technologies Innovations to Horizon
We are excited to bring all of these new innovations to Horizon 7.1. But, we are equally happy to bring JMP and BEAT to two brand new offerings: Horizon Cloud and Horizon Apps.
Introducing Horizon Cloud
Horizon Cloud is our next-gen Desktop as a Service offering. Horizon Cloud allows you to manage their desktops through a cloud service and pair this service with cloud-hosted infrastructure (IBM SoftLayer) or bring your own appliances (Dell/EMC, QCT or HDS) to the table. With Horizon Cloud, we added JMP capabilities into the service to streamline desktop management and BEAT for great user experience across high latency/high packet loss network conditions. We are also simplifying how you get started.
With Horizon Cloud, you now can buy a single license for as little as $16/user or $26/concurrent connection (infrastructure not included). You can then pair this service with the infrastructure of your choice—either BYO appliances or hosted infrastructure from VMware. This makes your buying decision easier. If you have a mix of use cases that require some of your infrastructure to be on-prem and some in the cloud, you have one offering and license that covers you across both.
New Horizon Apps
Many of you asked us to come out with a stand-alone published app offering. And I’m excited to announce that it is here.
We wanted to make it easier for you than ever to deliver and manage these apps—and this is why we wove our JMP technologies into the mix.
Here is a quick look at the advantage of using JMP with published or virtualized apps over competing solutions, like PVS, based on tests and a paper conducted by Principle Technologies.
So, whether you are looking for an alternative to Citrix XenApp or simply need to deliver apps versus full virtual desktops to your end users as part of a broader application delivery strategy, we now have two great bundles to support you moving forward available at a fraction of the cost of Citrix XenApp today.
- Horizon Apps Standard: App Publishing (RDSH apps and Session-based Desktops, User Environment Manager and vSphere and vCenter.
- Horizon Apps Advanced: App Publishing (RDSH apps and/or session-based desktops), vSphere/vCenter and all of our JMP technologies (Instant Clones, App Volumes and User Environment Manager).
Special call out: If you are a Citrix customer, we also have tools and services that easily help you make the move.
Time to Take a Look
As you can see here—we have been hard at work. A big shout-out to our engineering teams here! We have focused on making virtual desktops and apps easier and more affordable than ever to set up and manage in the cloud and on premises.
So what are you waiting for? It is time to take a look, make the move and get started with Horizon.
