By Ben Goodman, lead evangelist, VMware Horizon, VMware
One of VMware’s primary goals for VMware Horizon Application Manager is to provide users the best possible quality of experience when running all their applications regardless of device, operating system or network. As part of our journey to provide this, we are taking our application management capacity to a new territory, Microsoft Windows applications.
Today we are excited to announce that we have integrated VMware Horizon Application Manager with VMware ThinApp (more information on this can be found on the ThinApp blog) to provide the most comprehensive solution for managing virtualized applications on Windows.
Fast, Easy and Secure Windows applications
Mobile “app stores” are a favorite of end users because of their ease of use. Users browse an app catalog to find the apps they desire and with a single click, download, entitle and install the app to their device. Later, a few clicks can cleanly remove the app from the device.
VMware Horizon Application Manager and ThinApp work together to bring the same type of user experience to the Windows Platform. Horizon Application Manager provides users with an administrator configured, single application catalog combining the SaaS and Windows apps they need. A single click can allow apps of a both types to be available within the Horizon Workspace instantly.
How does it work?
The first step was to extend the capabilities of Horizon Application Manager. Horizon utilizes an on-premise connector, which integrates with Active Directory. This allows Horizon Application Manager to leverage your existing logins and credentials. This Connector now has a service that will query ThinApp repositories. The connector will read ThinApp metadata into Horizon Application Manager, making these apps available as part of an organization’s Horizon application catalog alongside existing SaaS app.
Next, we added a Horizon agent to Windows. Horizon Application Manager aims to provide a native device experience to end users in addition to the option of leveraging the horizon browser-based workspace. Windows will be the first platform to receive a native operating system experience through Horizon. Now, via our windows agent, Horizon Application Manager can display icons for either ThinApp based applications or for web based SaaS applications on the desktop or the “Start Bar”. Providing end-user the experience they have come to expect when interacting with Windows applications. A double click of any of the icons will launch the appropriate application through Horizon Application Manager.
Apps are entitled in real-time to a user within Horizon Application Manager via Active Directory groups or attributes and show up in the appropriate location on the Windows desktop. Removing an application entitlement for a user in Horizon Application Manager will result in them losing their icon and the ability to launch the application immediately. This eliminates time the consuming discovery process and provides assurance to IT management.
By integrating VMware ThinApp and VMware Horizon Application Manager our customers get unique capabilities. Administrators can now configure associated application licensing and cost within Horizon, creating a centralized place to track application usage and expense. Administrator can monitor usage of windows applications and not only understand who is entitled to an application, but monitor ongoing usage of those applications.
The solution
VMware Horizon Application Manager is your turnkey application-management solution providing cloud-identity control, to secure and manage access to all your applications regardless of the platform. By adding virtualized Windows application support via VMware ThinApp, Horizon has taken a significant step to achieve this.
The result is a simple, fast and secure way for end users to access all their applications. Learn more or request a trial by going to: http://www.horizonmanager.com/
Ben Goodman is the Lead Evangelist for VMware Horizon. You can follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/benontech.
