By Cindy Heyer, Technical Writer, Technical Marketing, End-User Computing at VMware
When it comes to application delivery, VMware Horizon 6.0 has something for everyone. VMware just published Application-Delivery Options in VMware Horizon 6.0, a white paper that describes the unique combination of application-delivery options supported in VMware Horizon 6.0.
Today’s workforce is extremely fluid. Employees expect to be able to work when they want, where they want, using the devices they want. End users are bringing their own equipment to the job, contributing from remote corners of the world, and utilizing every kind of electronic device to get the job done. They expect IT to support this plethora of devices and to provide easy access to the resources they need. The challenge for system administrators is to provide the support end users expect while maintaining security and control over vital company assets.
VMware has long been in the game with solutions to meet this challenge, providing virtualized applications through VMware ThinApp, centralized application and desktop management through VMware Horizon with View, integrated SaaS and cloud-based application through VMware Workspace, and more recently, Citrix XenApp published applications integrated to display through Workspace. VMware Horizon 6 now combines these capabilities, and to them adds application remoting, based on Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Services (RDS).
Do You Need to Support Remote or Distributed End Users with Hosted Applications?
If you need to support BYOD programs or contractors who bring unmanaged devices to work, you can use RDS hosting to deliver applications to unmanaged machines. There is no need to install the application on an unmanaged device because you install the application on the RDS host. Multiple users can share access to a single hosted application, reducing costs. And you can revoke entitlement for a specific user to the hosted application quickly if necessary, without disrupting access for other users.
Horizon 6 provides a fundamental app-remoting option through View. You can publish and manage RDS-hosted applications, as well as set policies and entitlement. You can also integrate Workspace with View to present RDS-hosted applications to your users in Workspace, alongside applications from ThinApp repositories, Citrix XenApp farms, and SaaS and Web application providers.
Does Your Enterprise Use ThinApp Virtualized Applications?
VMware ThinApp has provided the flexibility to deploy virtualized applications both locally and remotely for a long time now. All editions of Horizon 6 support the ability to deliver ThinApp virtual applications to physical and virtual desktops. You can create and manage ThinApp packages through View, including policy and entitlement settings. You can also present ThinApp packages through Workspace, or through Workspace integrated with View. The ThinApp packages are displayed in Workspace, alongside applications from RDS farms, Citrix XenApp farms, and SaaS and Web application providers.
For environments or applications that are prone to application conflicts or crashes, ThinApp applications are often the best option. You can deploy ThinApp packages in two ways: remotely on a file share or locally on the desktop. If a ThinApp package is stored on a file share, users access this one stored executable, and bits are streamed to each local device for execution. Alternatively, you can place an executable file on each desktop to give users their own copy of the application. In either the remotely or locally deployed scenario, upgrading and patching can be done on a base ThinApp package and then delivered to end users so that the next time they log in, they receive the new version.
Is Your Enterprise Maintaining a Legacy Citrix XenApp Infrastructure?
You can use the Workspace-XenApp integration option to consolidate your XenApp and Horizon 6 systems. You can deliver XenApp published applications through Workspace, while benefiting from the functionality of the Horizon family of products.
Using Horizon 6 in combination with Citrix XenApp, you can avoid major migration and disruption of your user workflow, and provide all of your applications to your end users from the central location provided by Workspace. The option to deliver Citrix XenApp published applications, along with the other app-delivery options available in Horizon, provides you with the ability to utilize the best combination of technologies for each user or use case.
Does Your Enterprise Rely On Cloud-Based Applications from Third-Party Providers?
A growing trend is to use both subscribed and unsubscribed applications and services that are hosted in the cloud, instead of installing the applications on premises. In Horizon 6, Workspace includes a default set of SaaS and cloud-based applications that are already integrated for you in the application catalog. These applications include Office 365, Salesforce, Dropbox, Axiom, WebEx, SharePoint, Outlook 365, and more. This default integration simplifies end-user experience by providing single sign-on from Workspace.
You subscribe to the service or application, entitle your users to access it, and it is displayed alongside other types of applications to your entitled users. You can leave the updating and maintenance of the application to the third-party providers.
Are You Ready to Learn More?
When you see how effective VMware Horizon 6 can be for making applications of all shapes and sizes available to your end users, you will want to know more. See the Application-Delivery Options in VMware Horizon 6.0 white paper for details about the new combination of app-delivery tools, and for additional use cases where these tools are applicable.
You can also find out more about VMware Horizon 6 by
To comment on this paper, contact the VMware End-User Computing Solutions Management and Technical Marketing team at twitter.com/vmwarehorizon.
