VMware Horizon Announcements Horizon Control Plane Modernizing VDI and DaaS

VMware positioned in the Leaders Quadrant in inaugural 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Desktop as a Service (DaaS) 

We are pleased to announce that VMware has been recognized as a Leader in the inaugural 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Desktop as a Service (DaaS). We, at VMware, believe that its placement in the Magic Quadrant reinforces our commitment to delivering the best virtual desktops and app solutions for businesses globally.  

Horizon Cloud Service: All you need to enable a hybrid workforce 

The contemporary business landscape has been reshaped by the rise of hybrid work, with remote and distributed workers becoming an integral part of the workforce. VMware Horizon Cloud is facilitating this shift, providing businesses with the ability to deliver consistent and secure access to end users, with virtual desktops and apps, anywhere they work and on any device. VMware Horizon Cloud is a Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) offering that enables organizations to self-assemble their DaaS solution, providing the flexibility and agility needed to respond to this ever-changing business landscape. Horizon Cloud pairs the virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), which is managed by VMware, with managed cloud infrastructure services from Microsoft, delivering a complete DaaS solution. The service can integrate with your existing on-premises and cloud-based systems, enabling you to focus on managing desktops and applications rather than the underlying infrastructure. 

VMware named a Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader 

Figure 1 Magic Quadrant for Desktop as a Service

Gartner named VMware Horizon Cloud as a Leader, for our Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision. The following are key attributes of Horizon Cloud.  

  • Horizon Cloud offers deployments across clouds from on-premises to a choice of public clouds, supporting hybrid and multi-cloud deployments that can be managed from a single pane of glass. Customers can leverage the Horizon Control Plane services to simplify image and app management, easily connect end users, and monitor the environment.  
  • Horizon Cloud offers advanced automation via published APIs that allow you to integrate Horizon into your IT environment, giving you the freedom to build your own automation workflows that align with your business operations. With an API-first approach, all the functionality is available to automate your environment. Additionally, integration with third-party apps and services can deliver Day 2 management services. 
  • Blast Extreme, the Horizon Cloud network delivery protocol, enhances the employee experience with optimized delivery of virtual desktops, even for high-def graphics, that makes it feel like you are working off a local device. In addition to fast and pristine desktop rendering, with Blast, call and video quality see significant improvements because it captures voice and video traffic and routes it across endpoints. The solution provides better connectivity, less echoing, fewer dropped calls, and improved video, matching the performance of calls started from the endpoint 

Horizon Cloud’s continued innovation brings value to customers 

VMware continues to innovate Horizon Cloud to bring the best value to customers. The recently introduced Horizon Cloud next-gen hybrid DaaS architecture helps you further control costs while providing unmatched scalability. 

The biggest change is the introduction of our “thin-edge” architecture that reduces the Horizon infrastructure footprint by moving to a pod-less architecture that is managed through the Horizon Control Plane. The architecture moves the infrastructure, pod managers, Azure PostgreSQL service, and multiple Unified Access Gateways (UAGs) per subscription, into the VMware service hosted in the cloud control plane. This architecture delivers unprecedented scalability, increasing the number of VMs supported per subscription from 2,000 to 5,000. These changes result in the need for less infrastructure, which leads to less cost. 

VMware continues to add more functionality to our Horizon Control Plane services, including cutting-edge app management through the Apps on Demand feature from App Volumes. Apps on Demand is revolutionizing how apps are delivered and managed, and VMware is the only vendor to offer this functionality across all major cloud platforms.  

I invite you to download the Gartner Magic Quadrant for DaaS report and learn how VMware can help you deliver virtual desktops and apps across hybrid or multi-cloud deployments and enable your hybrid workforce. We feel that VMware’s positioning in the Gartner Magic Quadrant underscores our dedication to delivering top-tier solutions that allow our customers to evolve and adapt to meet their business requirements.  

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Desktop as a Service, Stuart Downes, Craig Fisler, Sunil Kumar, Eri Hariu, Mark Margevicius, Tony Harvey, September 5, 2023. 

GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally, and MAGIC QUADRANT is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved. 

This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from VMWare.  

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product, or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.