Organizations are now looking to the future of work and how to best enable a hybrid workforce. They are turning to virtual desktops and apps as a solution and, depending on their in-house abilities, are experiencing varying levels of success. Do-it-yourself implementations can be complex and costly, slowing the ability to roll out the solution and realize the full value of the investment, especially when organizations have limited VDI expertise.
As a leader in digital workspace solutions that have helped thousands of customers accelerate their digital transformation, VMware is excited to introduce the much-anticipated Horizon Managed Desktop (HMD), available soon. This SaaS offering will provide VMware Horizon customers with ongoing IT lifecycle services for their Horizon virtual desktop and app environment.
The service will use a cloud-hosted dashboard to provide intelligence and ongoing Day 0 to Day 2 support to deliver a managed Desktop-as-a-Service experience. Horizon Managed Desktop will be delivered through the Horizon Cloud on the Horizon next-gen DaaS architecture, and managed by VMware on customer-provided infrastructure, whether on-premises, or public or hybrid cloud. Horizon Managed Desktop will relieve IT teams from time-consuming operations, provide cost management for predictable OpEx spending, speed deployments for faster time to value, and rapidly scale to meet changing workforce demands.
Ongoing lifecycle management
Let’s go a little deeper on what Horizon Managed Desktop will bring to the table.
At the core of the offering will be a cloud-hosted dashboard that will provide visibility and intelligence to your VDI environment. This unique dashboard will offer a managed experience through a centralized view that provides important information on the status of your environment, including telemetry on capacity, environment health, performance, underlying infrastructure, and more. It will also incorporate a full range of support for the related VDI environment, including ongoing patches, optimization, dashboard bug fixes/updates, and related basic support for common Day 0-2 issues that you can consume as needed. The service will also include utilization reporting, patching and upgrading, and ongoing support. All of this will enable IT admins to focus on more vital projects and leverage VMware to optimize and scale virtual desktops and apps.
Organizations will gain value with this unique cloud solution that provides beneficial insights and telemetry for managing the entire IT lifecycle of a virtual desktop environment, combined with basic support for common Day 0-2 issues.
Cost management
Horizon Managed Desktop will help shift IT spending from CapEx to predictable OpEx for more control over spending and flexible budgeting. In addition to predictable spend, the shift to OpEx will allow for more agility by scaling up or down to meet your organization’s needs and enable you to utilize what you need, when you need it. Delivery of software updates that are immediately implemented will also help optimized solution performance.
Speeds deployment with faster time to value
Building and managing your own VDI solution is an option if you have the staff with the right skills. However, many organizations lack VDI experts with the specialized skills needed to deploy and manage a virtual desktop and app solution, which leads to slow implementation and adoption. Horizon Managed Desktop will offer a service that will allow you to leverage best practices and standards to efficiently roll out a VDI solution, as well as ongoing support services. It will provide faster value realization and improved solution success leading to a more connected and productive workforce with an exceptional experience.
Scalability
Horizon Managed Desktop is designed to rapidly scale up or down as needed to accommodate fluctuations in the workforce, providing the ability to increase or decrease capacity as needed. In periods of high growth, such as during an acquisition or when hiring seasonal workers, the solution will be able to easily scale up without new expensive infrastructure, and then scale back when less capacity is needed.
Learn more
Horizon Managed Desktop will be available soon and will be an add-on SaaS offering for the Horizon Universal License. To learn more, you can join us for the Demystifying DaaS: Enable a Hybrid Workforce [EUSB2142US] at VMware Explore this week or watch it on demand after the event.
For more VMware Explore news, see our VMware Explore 2022 Anywhere Workspace, Workspace ONE, and Horizon announcement overview and all of the articles in our VMware Explore 2022 category.
