Events that cut off secure access to corporate resources — the pandemic, unexpected snowstorms in Texas or simply lost or stolen laptops — are prompting organizations to evaluate how they best enable their workforce. Many organizations are turning to virtual desktops and apps to help end-used stay productive and support business continuity, and the extra-prepared are leveraging the cloud for its scale and flexibility, knowing that more capacity can be added when needed.
While virtual apps and desktops help enabling people anywhere they work, they can potentially create a more complex environment to manage, especially when compounded by growing numbers of users as well as the need to manage across on-premises and cloud deployments.
At VMware, we recognize these challenges and have been working to bring to you a solution that not only meets these needs today, but also enables you to keep your solution up to date with timely feature releases. Of course, I am talking about VMware Horizon.
On the that note, today VMware announced new capabilities to make it easier for IT to manage Horizon environments wherever they may be, whether on-premises or in the cloud. You can read the press release to learn more about the Horizon Control Plane services are that now available on additional cloud providers. In addition, you can learn more from our follow-up blogs:
- Announcing Image Management for Horizon Cloud on Azure
- How Cloud Monitoring Services addresses Top Challenges of a Multi-cloud Horizon Deployment
- Horizon Universal Broker and Multi-Cloud Assignments: Keys to success with VMware Horizon
It’s time to learn about the Horizon Control Plane
Many that have long been familiar with Horizon may still not be aware of the all the improved cloud services we offer via the Horizon Control Plane, available through a SaaS subscription.
Delivered from a single cloud control plane, the Horizon Control Plane services efficiently deploy, manage, and scale desktops and apps across Horizon pods and cloud environments, including private, hybrid and multi-cloud deployments. These services use a multi-tenant, cloud-scale architecture that enables administrators to choose where virtual desktops and applications reside (including more than one location!) as well as automate traditional management and routine administrative tasks.
Horizon provides you with the choice of where and how you manage your deployment. You can keep it on-premises and create a hybrid cloud, with cloud-native management services that help optimize on-premises environments. The added benefit here is that you can easily expand to the public cloud when more capacity or infrastructure might be needed, without the capex investment. This way, you can leverage the cloud at your own pace and have peace of mind knowing you can expand to the public cloud as needed. Horizon can be deployed on any VMware vSphere® or VMware Cloud™ certified partner, such as Microsoft Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, Dell EMC and Oracle Cloud.
Another benefit of leveraging hybrid cloud and SaaS capabilities with Horizon is that the Horizon Control Plane services provide easy accessibility to the latest technology with the benefit of consistent updates, keeping you current on the latest Horizon innovations. As updates to Horizon Control Plane services become available, they will automatically be pushed to you on our cloud control plane. You will always have the latest and greatest features available.
Lastly, with Horizon’s flexible on premises, hybrid cloud and multi-cloud deployment options, you can enable several key use cases that make it easier to respond to change. As we have seen this past year, disruptions can occur at any time, and you need the agility to meet those changes head on. Leveraging the public cloud when needed, you can scale access up or down for use cases such as remote and distributed work, disaster recovery, data center expansion and cloud bursting. Now you can respond quickly and provide the same levels of service the organization needs and give end-users access to their desktops and applications anytime, anywhere.
Let’s take a closer look at each one of the services.
The Universal Broker optimizes end-user access and productivity by intelligently connecting users to their virtual desktops and apps, through a single URL, to any connected pod or cloud based on available capacity, user location, preference and more – regardless of the Horizon deployment type whether on-premises or in the cloud. It reduces IT management burden and costs by allocating virtual resources, eliminating the need for a Global Load Balancing solution and ensuring employees have a seamless connection.
Image Management Service (IMS): The Horizon Image Management Service (IMS) simplifies, centralizes and automates the management of images used by desktop assignments, such as desktop pools and farms, across cloud-connected Horizon pods. IMS provides an image catalog that can reduce image sprawl with standardizing image versions and decreases image maintenance time by centrally managing and distributing desktop images.
Application Management, powered by VMware App Volumes: This service improves application delivery by packaging applications once and deploying them across Horizon environments, on-premises and in the cloud. By using App Volumes to package, assign and deploy applications, IT managers can reduce operational expenses (OpEx) while increasing visibility and control over their VDI environments.
The Cloud Monitoring Service reduces downtime with real-time health monitoring, capacity and usage across Horizon environments, on-premises and in the cloud, with a single user interface. Admins can leverage the integrated help desk service to quickly open tickets and troubleshoot user sessions with detailed metrics.
Next steps for Horizon Control Plane
As mentioned, this week we announced new features and services offerings for the Horizon Control Plane.
Through the rest of this week, we’re taking the opportunity to highlight these new features, along with the overall benefits, through a series of blogs. Come back to the VMware EUC Blog every day, or check out our Horizon Control Plane tag to learn more.
For even more information, visit our VMware Horizon Control Plane Services site.
