Don’t you love it when a good thing just gets even better? Like when your smartphone can double as your SLR camera or your thermostat can also water the plants. We at VMware definitely do and recently worked our magic on our VMware Horizon® Cloud Service™.
Earlier this year, we announced the Horizon Cloud service. Horizon Cloud is a software service from VMware that allows customers to easily and cost-effectively deploy cloud-hosted or on-premises virtual desktops and apps to any device, anywhere. Now, as more and more organizations adopt a multi-cloud strategy to leverage “best-fit” cloud capabilities, avoid cloud vulnerability and optimize cost, they face new challenges of moving between clouds and inefficiencies of operating multiple solutions. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a desktop virtualization service that could also easily span clouds and enable a mix and match of public and private clouds based on business needs?
The Horizon Cloud team has been working hard on this, and we are delighted to offer a solution with Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure! Each is great separately, but together they are amazing. Horizon Cloud comes from the leader in desktop and app virtualization. Microsoft Azure is the fastest growing public cloud provider today, available in 38 regions across the globe, not to mention the natural choice for organizations relying on Windows-based applications and enterprise applications like Microsoft Office 365.
Upcoming Features for Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure
Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure allows you to bring your own, existing Microsoft Azure infrastructure capacity and pair it with the Horizon Cloud service. Here are some of the exciting features you can expect:
- Application & Session Desktop Delivery
- Ability to publish and manage RDS-hosted applications and desktops on Microsoft Azure while leveraging on-premises and cloud resources
- Graphics Visualization
- Superior graphics capabilities to visualize graphic-intensive workflows on Microsoft Azure GPUs
- Cloud-Based Management Console
- Intuitive Horizon Cloud management console to manage remote desktops, apps and users in one place
- Built-in monitoring service with logs, notifications and analytics
- Hybrid Architecture
- Support for both Horizon Cloud with on-premises infrastructure and Horizon Cloud on AzureMicrosoft Azure, in a single solution
- User Experience & Access
- Identity-based end-user catalog access via VMware Workspace ONE
- Secure remote access for end users with integrated VMware Unified Access Gateway
- Support for Blast Extreme, Blast Extreme Adaptive Transport (BEAT) protocol, Skype for Business and much more
- Power Management
- Ability to track and manage Microsoft Azure capacity consumption to keep costs low
- Support
- Enterprise-grade, 24-7 support from VMware for the Horizon Cloud service
Benefits of Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure
Built from the ground up as a cloud-native, multi-tenant solution, Horizon Cloud combines organically with Microsoft Azure to provide the following benefits:
- Multi-Cloud Deployments
- Flexibility to choose between cloud capacity managed by VMware or bring-your-own infrastructure with Microsoft Azure
- Low-Cost, Hourly Billing for Microsoft Azure Capacity
- Ability to pair consumption-based pricing on public Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) with Horizon Cloud service subscription
- Global Footprint
- Single instance to manage deployments across Microsoft’s 38 data center regions over the globe
- Easy Deployment
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- Automated deployment of Horizon Cloud service components
- Integration with Microsoft Azure Marketplace to allow importing a Windows Server image on which the necessary agents get automatically applied
- Simplified Management
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- Horizon Cloud always maintained at latest versions
- Under five-minutes, self-scheduled upgrades for components on Microsoft Azure via Blue-Green upgrades
- Superior Architecture
- Multi-tenant architecture built for the cloud
- Cloud control plane separate from the data path, avoiding unnecessary latency and maintaining business continuity
- Unified Access Gateway deployed automatically in Microsoft Azure
- Simple Offer
- Remote published desktops and applications offered in one simple offer
- Unified Access Gateway included in offer
- VMware User Environment Manager included in offer
Over the last few months, we have been working with our customers and partners to shape the Horizon Cloud service and its capabilities. We also launched a private beta program to solicit feedback, and it has been great to see that our customers share our excitement.
“VMware and Microsoft Azure, a match made in the Cloud. The ability to deliver applications in the cloud will allow us to continue to stay flexible to deliver the services that our customers and partners expect.”
—Technical Architect for store and corporate user computing in a large U.S. pharmacy chain looking for desktop virtualization“I think Horizon Cloud is the way to go … Great evolution of moving in this direction.”
—Solutions Architect for a healthcare company migrating from on-premises to the cloud
Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure Demo at VMworld
Now that you’ve’ read this, you might be wondering how you can see this in action. Well, check out our session at VMworld 2017, where we will be giving a demonstration of Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure. You will learn how you can combine the benefits of remote desktops and applications as a service from VMware with the flexibility to choose a public, consumption-based IaaS like Microsoft Azure, making it easier and more cost-effective to deploy and scale your digital workspace.
Building a Multi-Cloud Strategy with Horizon Cloud Service
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We hope to see you there soon!
