If you’re keeping track, it’s been a year since VMware End User Computing released the VMware Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure solution with much fanfare and with great customer demand. We initially offered RDS-based desktops and applications with graphics support. In the last year, given the tremendous customer interest and a large number of requests, we added support for VDI, Azure Government, power management, and most recently additional VM types. And this isn’t even the full list of all the powerful features we’ve delivered to customers. As a service, the VMware team continues to build more capabilities that make it even easier to deploy, manage, and utilize virtual desktops in the cloud.
The Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure solution is made possible by our close collaboration with the Microsoft team. Since we started development of this offering, our product team has been working with Microsoft to ensure that customers can easily pair their Microsoft Azure capacity with the Horizon Cloud control plane. As a testament to this collaboration, we had joint sessions with the Microsoft team at VMworld US in Las Vegas, and Microsoft was an exhibitor on the show floor for the first time in a number of years.
We have been working with Microsoft for a number of years in VMware End-User Computing. We previously teamed up with Microsoft to deliver an optimized experience for Skype for Business on VMware Horizon. Horizon application and desktop virtualization solutions ease IT’s pain of migrating to Windows 10 by simplifying image management. Solutions such as VMware Workspace ONE, powered by VMware AirWatch, help organizations simplify Windows 10 device management.
Microsoft’s announcement today validates what we have been saying for some time now – DaaS is more prevalent and more sought after than ever before. Cloud virtual desktops offer a number of key benefits, including faster time to market – with organizations able to spin up virtual desktops in a matter of hours, software is always up to date, support for multiple clouds, simplified management, and consumption-based pricing. With growth in cloud desktops is nearly 4x that of virtual desktops on-premises, their announcement validates the market’s desire to host virtual desktops in the cloud.
VMware has been a leader in desktop and application virtualization for many years. Customers leverage our desktop and application virtualization solutions to centrally provision, manage, and secure desktops, give contractors, shift workers and remote workers secure access to corporate resources across devices, and extend the life of end-points. With our immense experience delivering world-class VDI solutions, VMware has the knowledge, experience and market validation to extend virtual desktops and apps to the cloud.
VMware plans to continue to drive innovation across the Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure solution. Features such hybrid cloud and multi-cloud support, and an intuitive UI were announced at VMworld. And hopefully, you just saw the announcement of our latest release of Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure which was released on Sept 20.
Today, we continue to work ever-closely with Microsoft to support their Windows Virtual Desktop offering. Customers can look forward to leveraging value added features on Microsoft Virtual Desktop from VMware such as application layering, user profile management, network micro-segmentation, and an intuitive cloud management console that are our customers love. This is just the beginning.
To stay up to date on Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure, as well as trends, and product innovations visit the EUC blog.
