By Tina de Benedictis, Senior Technical Marketing Manager, End-User Computing, VMware
You are not alone if you are wondering whether to choose named-user licensing or concurrent-user licensing for the Horizon Suite. In June of 2013, VMware added concurrent-user licensing for the Horizon Suite to the mix, due to popular demand. Why would you choose one type of licensing over the other?
A benefit of concurrent-user licensing is that you can rotate in users and not have to pay for licenses for users not on the system. Concurrent-user licensing is especially suited to call center environments with shift workers and to educational environments where not every individual is using the system at one time.
The benefit of named-user licensing for the Horizon Suite is that one named user can use as many devices as they wish at once, on any or all of the products in the Horizon Suite (Horizon View, Horizon Mirage, and Horizon Workspace).
How do you count licenses for Horizon Mirage? Each Mirage-enabled endpoint is considered always on because the endpoint has a backup in the datacenter, and incremental backups happen regularly. This means that licenses for Horizon Mirage users are continuously active, and, therefore, concurrent-user Horizon Suite licensing may not be the right solution. The more economical solution if you have Horizon Mirage users is to choose named-user licensing for the Horizon Suite.
For more details, see the VMware Knowledge Base article VMware Horizon Suite 1.0 licensing.
