It was a huge Marketing event April 9th, when VMware announced the next major version of its End-User Computing flagship Horizon. All Marketing activities and channels were focusing on this only live event opened by Sumit Dhawan. More than 20,000 people participated this webcast. The recording can be found here:
Some rumors about the release and its features came back through some blogs like for example BrianMadden.com via Gabe Knuth:
So why is Horizon 6 a significant milestone and timing for VMware?
- VMware now offers RDSH and full app publishing support. This is a real offensive against their competitor Citrix with their flagships XenApp & XenDesktop. RDSH and app publishing was always a thread, now VMware has an answer and a viable alternative product.
- Virtual SAN is a game changer in ways of storage, hopefully it is getting cheaper and easier to address. Duncan Epping wrote an inspiring FUD it! post in his blog about it, which is all about the customers view. Please have a look.
- VMware Horizon comes with an aggressive pricing (added 04-23: please check the official Pricing, Packaging and Licensing white paper for deeper information):
- Horizon View Standard will be $250 per CCU
- Horizon Advanced will be $250 per named user or $400 per CCU
- Horizon Enterprise which adds the plug-ins for vCenter Ops Management and vCO will be $300 per named user or $500 per CCU
- Exciting times for VMware if you think beyond End-User Computing and the acquisition of AirWatch. Last year, VMware really lacked in their End-User Computing strategy with lots of threads from different competitors. With a mobile-first, cloud-first strategy like Microsoft, VMware is now armed with a very scalable solution build for the cloud. I am pretty sure there is more to come in the future building the bridge between mobile endpoints and cloud solutions, like an AirWatch integration into Horizon.
- VMware and Google partnership will drive the way to a corporate desktop for a mobile cloud era. This partnership shows the potential path of corporate desktops and the importance of ChromeBooks in the near future.
My 2cents for this release. Different thoughts, feedback? Please let me know…
Patrick
P.S.: Also check out the additional resources from VMware officials:
- Official press announcement
- EMEA announcement
- Pat Gelsinger, CEO, video announcement
- Kit Colbert, CTO, End-User Computing, blog post
- Sumit Dhawan, VP and GM of Desktop Products, End-User Computing, blog post
- Erik Friedberg, VP, Product Marketing, End-User Computing, blog post
- Press Kit for End-User Computing
Patrick Sauerwein | @virtual_patrick 
Great post Patrick – you hit on a few of the key performance enhancements; vSAN, App delivery/remoting, and vCOPs integration. But there is another very cool Horizon plug-in for vCloud Automation Center. vCAC is the heterogeneous platform for automating data center resources, on premise or cloud based (formerly DynamicOps). The vCAC integration is unique for provisioning resources when deploying virtual desktops at scale. Think of a university with hundreds or thousands of users at the beginning of a semester needing desktops (or any such scenario; seasonal workers, office moves, OS upgrades, etc) With typical system management tools or XenDesktop it would take a week or longer to provision the resources to support the desktops, but vCAC can provision IT (private cloud or public) and deploy desktops in minutes.
Important to note is the Horizon Advanced version comes with View, Mirage, and Workstation (like Horizon Suite) but has added vSAN, AppRemoting plus XenApp support, and vCOPS for $100 LESS than Suite was; $400 vs. $500. With App-Remoting and support of XenApp now in a unified workspace (self service, single sign on app store like interface accessible across any device – open a session on an PC in the office and everything is synched to your other devices) the Horizon platform goes from the data center to device…and this is not including Horizon DaaS or Air Watch.
Hi Jim,
Thank you very much for your feedback. I will add the different versions which are included, think this will light it up. Pricing and bundling is always sensitive, I did not want to mislead the reader.
Thank you very much!
Patrick
understood – makes sense: you may be interested in the verbal demo of vCO integration with Horizon: https://www.dropbox.com/s/nxe34o2icuq1q3d/Horizon%20vCO%20plugin%20intro%20w%20voiceover%20take2.mp4
let me know if you are not able to access this dropbox video – it’s only 3 minutes….but may change your life 🙂
VMware – thank you very much for mentioning!
Was a great read, thanks Patrick, your 2 cents was worth a Dollar to me.