Last year, we announced our collaboration with Amazon to provide a joint solution between VMware Horizon and Amazon WorkSpaces Core. Combining Horizon and WorkSpaces Core will allow customers to leverage the enterprise and hybrid cloud capability of Horizon VDI, all while realizing the cloud agility and cost savings of WorkSpaces Core. This partnership provides our customers with the opportunity for even more flexibility and choice for desktop and app virtualization infrastructure.
Recently, Amazon announced that WorkSpaces Core is now available in the AWS GovCloud (US-East) Region and AWS GovCloud (US-West) Region. These regions are specifically designed to host sensitive data and regulated workloads in the cloud for customers who have U.S. federal, state, or local government security and compliance requirements. AWS GovCloud now provides customers with FedRAMP High, Department of Defense Impact Level 2, 4, or 5, and ITAR regulations adherence, amongst many others.
So, what does this mean for you as a Horizon customer?
This announcement allows Horizon federal customers to access more secure, compliant, and reliable virtual desktops and applications with Amazon WorkSpaces Core hosted in the AWS GovCloud East and West regions. Thus, a Horizon federal customer can deliver a great user experience while enabling end users to choose devices and a location, all while still being able to leverage the advantages of VMware Blast Protocol, Dynamic Environment Manager (DEM), and more!
- VMware Blast Protocol enables end users with an excellent collaborative experience via Real-Time Audio-Video (RTAV) optimization capabilities. This allows end user conversations in virtual meetings and conferences — such as on Skype, WebEx, or Zoom — without any lag or audio-video sync issues.
- VMware Dynamic Environment Manager (DEM) ensures a seamless experience through application configurations, desktop settings, and a persistent experience. One DEM use case includes managing specific user environment settings, such as mapping drives and printers, applying custom file, folder, and registry settings, and running custom tasks. These settings can be applied when an application starts, to ensure compliance and provide a consistent environment.
The end-to-end management for VDI and virtual apps through a single pane of glass is now extended to federal customers using AWS GovCloud based in WorkSpaces Core resources. This proven VMware Horizon solution, when partnered with Amazon, will help enable additional use cases such as Personal Identity Verification (PIV) cards and even the most demanding graphical workloads.
For more information on our joint solution, please see the links below:
- VMware Deployment Guide: Overview of deploying VMware Horizon with Native Amazon EC2 and Amazon WorkSpaces Core
- VMware Demo Video: Demo showing how WorkSpaces Core and Horizon are deployed and how one can support users and connect with a client
- VMware Federal Secure Desktop Design Guide: Overview of the VMware Horizon Federal Secure Desktop solution
- VMware WorkSpaces Core Blog: Overview and update on the joint solution of WorkSpaces Core and Horizon
- VMware TestDrive: Sandbox environment for VMware Horizon to try out Horizon 8
