The latest release of Horizon 8, 2306, is available and it adds a host of new features. Each of these has been designed based on the feedback and requirements of our valuable customers. Let’s dive right in and see what’s new for servers and clients.

Host: Andy Whiteside
Co-host: Philip Sellers

VMware is excited to announce that Horizon Cloud Service is now Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) Impact Level 5 (IL5) authorized. This allows the Department of Defense and its branches to deliver virtual desktops and apps faster, more reliably, and more securely on premises and in Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure GovCloud. The announcement comes on the heels of our recent FedRAMP and StateRAMP High authorizations for Horizon Cloud Service, along with our NIAP compliance certification for Horizon 8.  

Host: Andy Whiteside
Co-host: Philip Sellers

Anddd that’s a wrap! This year at VMware Explore, our VDI track was full of great breakout sessions, tutorials, meet-the-expert sessions, and more. If you weren’t able to attend VMware Explore or the VDI sessions, you can watch them on demand from our VMware Explore video library. With all the news, announcements, and updates, you may need a quick recap. Here are the top five takeaways for all things VMware Horizon:  

Host: Andy Whiteside
Co-host: Philip Sellers
Co-host: Rizwan Shaikh

VMware Digital Employee Experience (DEX) is a VMware solution that measures workplace experience, analyzes data, helps deliver a high-level employee experience, and helps remediate issues that may arise. For example, you can use DEX to increase efficiency and productivity by eliminating time searching for corporate resources, handling passwords via single sign-on, nipping issues in the bud, and running remote screensharing sessions when IT support is needed. If you want to ensure that your employees are satisfied with their work environment and technology experience, DEX is the solution for you.

https://techzone.vmware.com/resource/what-digital-employee-experience-dex

Host: Andy Whiteside
Co-Host: Philip Sellers

Shipping a device to the end user is a pretty easy process, however, provisioning a device in a ready-to-work state can still be a challenge for a lot of organizations today. The experience for users can be severely impacted. Users might need to log in multiple times just to land on the desktop.

VMware Workspace ONE® Drop Ship Provisioning™ (Online) Self Registration allows Windows desktop device OEMs and Workspace ONE administrators to provide a virtually zero IT touch onboarding experience with virtually zero user downtime. This means that users are productive as soon as they receive their Windows desktop device—whether working from home or the office!

https://techzone.vmware.com/blog/create-ready-work-experience-first-boot-workspace-one-drop-ship-provisioning-online

Host: Andy Whiteside
Co-Host: Rizwan Shaihk
Co-Host: Philip Sellers

The newest release of VMware Horizon® 8 version 2303 is now available. It includes features that enhance the end-user experience and improve admin efficiency.  We discuss the new features and enhancements and what these mean for users and administrators.  

Enhanced graphics and video with AV1 codec
New GPUs
Blast Codec for Mac Silicon
Notifications for bad connections
Restful APIs
Pinpointing login issues
Search in DEM
Support for hybrid Azure AD
Horizon Cloud next-gen Android and iOS support
Azure AD with Horizon Cloud next-gen
Horizon Cloud next-gen hybrid deployments

Host: Philip Sellers
Co-host: Barry Browne
Co-host: Rizwan Shaikh

Apps are proliferating and they are everywhere. Admins are tasked with packaging, delivering, managing, and securing those apps, whether they’re locally installed on laptops or mobile devices, delivered through the web or SaaS, or accessed through VDI, DaaS, or published apps environments. Multiple versions of enterprise apps may be deployed in the data center, while more modern apps may be delivered across multiple clouds. 

Many organizations utilize VDI, DaaS, and published app environments to securely host and deliver virtual apps, including legacy apps tied to the data center. While VDI, DaaS, and published app deployments have aided the way IT admins can securely deliver apps to end users at scale, there are common challenges in published app environments like Citrix Virtual Apps (formerly XenApp). For example, IT typically deploys groups of servers into farms, silos, or delivery groups to host their published apps for users. These servers are architected to scale to the peak usage of the apps being hosted. And when users don’t use apps, these server resources sit idle and are wasted. Server optimization is the whole point of virtualization. These farms are expensive and require IT time to be managed. 

Also, IT admins must manage the copies of apps on each farm and independently manage OS updates on each host, leading to inefficiencies as app and server counts increase. Running antiquated and inefficient app environments can lead to inflated costs, app-lifecycle management challenges, and incompatibility of apps.  

Host: Andy Whiteside
Co-host: Philip Sellers

Since the launch of VMware Horizon 8 in 2020, we have released several updates, including two extended service branch (ESB) releases with Horizon 8 2111 and Horizon 8 2212.  

With general support ending for Horizon 7 on April 30, 2023, now is the time to upgrade to Horizon 8. Upgrading will ensure uninterrupted support for your Horizon environment beyond April, plus you’ll also be able to take advantage of some great new features only available on Horizon 8. Let’s look at more reasons to upgrade to Horizon 8.  

Host: Andy Whiteside
Co-host: Philip Sellers

VMware is attempting to disrupt the app publishing market with the introduction of its new "Apps On Demand" technology in App Volumes.  Apps On Demand enables just in time delivery of applications to users without the typical delays during login and with ease of administration.  With many choices for packing, App Volumes enables Apps On Demand to leverage your existing application packages and deliver them seamlessly to your users.  Boasting 99% success rate in packaging, VMware's App Volumes is succeeding where other solutions struggle.   

Host: Philip Sellers
Co-host: Rizwan Shaikh

VMware Horizon is a virtualization software product for delivering desktops and apps on Windows, Linux, and MacOS systems. It is especially relevant today because so many of us are working remotely. Whether you’re a system administrator or a pizza deliverer, you need easy access to the apps and desktops that help you do your job. And you need that access to be secure.

Host: Andy Whiteside
Co-host: Philip Sellers

VMware Horizon is a virtualization software product for delivering desktops and apps on Windows, Linux, and MacOS systems. It is especially relevant today because so many of us are working remotely. Whether you’re a system administrator or a pizza deliverer, you need easy access to the apps and desktops that help you do your job. And you need that access to be secure.

Host: Andy Whiteside
Co-host: Philip Sellers

VMware Horizon is a virtualization software product for delivering desktops and apps on Windows, Linux, and MacOS systems. It is especially relevant today because so many of us are working remotely. Whether you’re a system administrator or a pizza deliverer, you need easy access to the apps and desktops that help you do your job. And you need that access to be secure.

Host: Andy Whiteside
Co-host: Philip Sellers
Co-host: Moin Khan

Last year at VMworld, we announced the VMware Horizon next-generation hybrid DaaS architecture. For us, “next-gen” represents a complete rewrite of the Horizon architecture that allows us to modernize every corner of the desktop and app virtualization infrastructure so many customers rely on, built entirely from the ground up. For customers, it means unprecedented scalability and cost optimization along with a dramatic simplification of the infrastructure required to deliver enterprise-class desktop and app virtualization. 

Earlier this year we launched a Limited Availability program for Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure customers, and today we’re pleased to announce that Horizon Cloud next-gen is now Generally Available to all Horizon Cloud environments on Microsoft Azure! 

Host: Andy Whiteside
Co-host: Rizwan Shaikh

Just a few weeks ago at VMware Explore, I presented a session called “What’s New in Anywhere Workspace.” In that session, I showcased many new innovations in our VMware Horizon solution, including enhancements to our VMware Blast protocol, next-generation hybrid cloud support, and improvements in scalability. Another key announcement was our collaboration with Amazon Web Services for Horizon on Amazon WorkSpaces. I encourage you to watch the recording to see how our Horizon 8 platform can bring the power of our Blast protocol to Amazon WorkSpaces. We’re partnering to provide an optimized user experience for Amazon WorkSpaces end users across devices, locations, media, and network connections. Customers can also benefit from the hybrid cloud virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) management capabilities of Horizon 8, from on-premises to Amazon WorkSpaces.  

Today, we are excited to build on our collaboration with Amazon to provide even more flexibility and choice for desktop and app virtualization infrastructure with Horizon and Amazon WorkSpaces Core integration. In addition to deploying Horizon virtual desktops on-premises and VMware Cloud on AWS, when available, customers will be able to also deploy Horizon virtual desktops on Amazon WorkSpaces and on Amazon WorkSpaces Core. Amazon WorkSpaces Core extends Amazon WorkSpaces services by providing a set of new APIs that can be used for integrations by partners like VMware to seamlessly provision and manage Amazon WorkSpaces Core capacity.  

Host: Andy Whiteside
Co-Host: Shawn Bass

VMware Horizon 2206 is now available, and this release includes new features that further enhance the end-user experience and improve the overall security and performance of virtual desktops and apps. This blog highlights some of the new key features. For a complete list, view the 2206 release notes.

Host: Moin Kahn
Co-Host: Rizwan Shaikh

Since the launch of our Horizon Subscription Upgrade Program in 2019, many VMware Horizon customers have upgraded to our Horizon Universal Subscription offering, taking advantage of several benefits including:

• Flexible multi-cloud deployment options – deploy and host Horizon anywhere and in multiple clouds at the same time, including on-premises, Microsoft Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud, and IBM Cloud. IT can continue to deploy virtual desktops and apps on-premises, leverage the speed and scalability of hyperscaler capacity, or use a combination of both to help their employees quickly get secure access to corporate resources. 
• Simplified cross-pod and cross-cloud management – use the cloud-hosted, VMware-managed Horizon Control Plane, which includes multi-cloud SaaS services that allow IT to monitor and manage images, desktops, and apps across Horizon deployments, including both on-premises and in the cloud. For example, IT can use the Universal Broker service to enable a global entitlement layer across a multi-pod or multi-cloud deployment, providing a great user experience to access any desktop from anywhere with a single URL, and reducing TCO by removing the need for a global server load balancer. 
• Hybrid and multi-cloud use cases – add new cloud capacity to existing on-premises deployments to enable High Availability, Disaster Recovery, and burst capacity for temporary and seasonal workers without the CapEx requirements for additional data center hardware. Additionally, customers can move desktop and app workloads strategically to the cloud to be closer to cloud-hosted applications to reduce latency and optimize performance and user experience.

Host: Andy Whiteside
Co-host: Rizwan Shaikh

At VMworld, we announced the next-generation hybrid DaaS architecture of VMware Horizon, which will eventually become the single platform on which all Horizon environments are built, regardless of whether they run natively in the cloud or on VMware SDDC. This next-gen platform leverages a new concept called the Horizon Edge that moves most of the Horizon infrastructure components that traditionally run in a customer environment to the Horizon Control Plane, resulting in significantly lower infrastructure costs for customers and increasing our ability to deliver a comprehensive cloud service.

Today we’re excited to say that we’ve reached the next milestone in our process of delivering the lowest-cost, most scalable version of Horizon that we’ve ever made: Limited Availability.

Host: Andy Whiteside
Guest: Gabe Knuth

Since it’s early January, it’s the season where everyone makes predictions about the upcoming year. At VMware EUC, we decided to share some of our predictions too, but not in a “pie in the sky” non-relevant way. More like, “If you’re an EUC professional, here are 11 trends we think are going to increase in relevance in 2022, and things you should think about if you want to stay on top of your EUC game.” For example, AR/VR is not on our list, because while we’re doing some cool things like XR Hub, AR/VR still won’t be a significant part of the job of most EUC pros out there in 2022.

By the way, I’m Brian Madden, the guy actually typing this blog post into my laptop, but these 11 predictions are based on collaborative thoughts from Shawn Bass (VMware’s EUC CTO) and the entire Office of the CTO team.

Host: Andy Whiteside
Co-Host: Moin Kahn

With the recent release of Workspace ONE version 2111, VMware brings you Freestyle Orchestrator, our game-changing workflow automation engine set to revolutionize the way you manage your organization’s Windows and macOS endpoints. The result of countless man hours of legendary VMware innovation, Freestyle Orchestrator enables admins to automate specific tasks by applying designated resources to devices based on granular criteria.

That’s an accurate description of the technology, and it’s all well and good to say, but how exactly can a Mac administrator apply this revolutionary technology to make everyday life easier? How, in other words, does the rubber meet the road? We’ve created this blog to specifically call out a couple of ways – just starting examples – that admins can use Freestyle Orchestrator to better manage their Mac fleets. Again, this is simply a starting point to help you ideate scenarios within your own organization where this is a fit.

Host: Andy Whiteside
Co-host: Erik Collett

Everyone reading this has probably heard that old rule of thumb that security and convenience are inversely proportional. In other words, increasing security comes with the cost of less convenience, while making things easier to use also means less security. This isn’t just in the context of computing, by the way. An unlocked door is easier to use (more convenient) than one that is locked (more secure). A door that you can unlock with a key is easier to use (but less secure) than a door that requires both a key and a keypad code, etc.

In the context of end-user computing, we all see this trade-off daily. Longer passwords are seen as more secure than shorter ones, but they’re also harder to remember and type. Six-digit phone PINs are more secure but less convenient than four-digit ones. Multifactor authentication leveraging both a password and one-time code is more secure than just a password but annoying every time we have to switch over to the authenticator app to get that code. Requiring a PIN to unlock the authenticator app is more secure than not, but with the expense of additional steps and user annoyance.

There’s never really been any kind of standard for how this should all work and what should be used where. Different companies, policies, regulations, governance, organizational cultures, and sales rep effectiveness drive most of it, and things are different everywhere. What’s been historically consistent is that more security has correlated to more hassle for the users.

Finding the balance between security and convenience has always been about tradeoffs. I’ve always thought of the “security versus convenience” model as a sliding scale, like the one below. You can draw a vertical line anywhere you want in the diagram below to get a certain level of security for a certain level of convenience, and increasing one decreases the other, and vice versa.

Host: Andy Whiteside
Co-host: Erik Collett

Our Horizon SaaS services have been a huge hit with customers, and it’s not just because of the overall increase in demand for remote work. Day after day, organizations are realizing how the unique benefits of VMware Horizon can help them lower costs, increase scale and visibility, reduce management headaches and provide a seamless hybrid experience for both users and IT admins. 

As we begin VMworld 2021, we’re extremely excited to unveil for the first time our plans for the next-generation of virtual desktop and app delivery based on a hybrid DaaS architecture – the future of VMware Horizon!  

Today, VMware has two platforms for delivering virtual desktops and apps: one for environments running on vSphere (Horizon 8), and one for environments running natively on Microsoft Azure (Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure). While each of these platforms leverages the same Horizon Control Plane and can take advantage of the same valuable features like App Volumes, Image Management, Cloud Monitoring Service and Universal Broker, we want to do even more to evolve our architecture.  

Host: Andy Whiteside
Co-Host: Erik Collett
Guest: Gabe Knuth

Workspace ONE Intelligence delivers insights, analytics and automation for the Workspace ONE platform, and empowers our customers to improve employee experience, streamline IT operations and enhance security.

Today we are excited to announce that Workspace ONE Intelligence will soon support VMware Horizon, bringing the advanced Workspace ONE Intelligence capabilities to Horizon customers and delivering insights and analytics for both physical devices and virtual desktops through a single pane of glass.

By integrating Horizon data into Workspace ONE Intelligence, IT admins will be able to get visibility into mobile devices, physical and virtual desktops and applications in a single, centralized location. This end-to-end visibility will enable admins to streamline management and get a holistic view of user experience in their organization.

Host: Andy Whiteside
Co-host: Erik Collett

When designing a hybrid and multi-cloud desktop virtualization platform like VMware Horizon, one of the main challenges is building a single platform that can be deployed in multiple locations without making it feel like you’re managing multiple different environments. After all, organizations don’t want to be in the business of managing multiple desktop virtualization silos. They want one desktop virtualization platform that can deliver desktops in multiple ways.

Threading that needle is something VMware has put a huge amount of effort into, and with the Horizon Control Plane Services like Cloud Monitoring, Image Management and Simplified Application Management, we’ve shown we’re up to the task. But to truly achieve that one-platform-for-all-uses vision, you must be able to simplify and unify assigning and accessing virtual desktops and applications. That is where VMware Horizon Universal Broker comes in, and it’s what today’s blog is about.

This week, we’re also announcing the expansion of several Horizon Control Plane services to additional cloud providers. I’m excited to note that Horizon Universal Broker is now available for VMware Horizon on Azure VMware Solution (AVS) environments. You can head to our overview blog and press release for more information.

Host: Andy Whiteside
Co-Host: Erik Collett

The last year has changed a lot about the end-user computing landscape. We transitioned from workplaces that were very well-known (mostly on-premises with a few established remote users) to a distributed workforce that inhabits a less well-defined workplace that could be, frankly, anywhere. Organizations that already made extensive use of a desktop virtualization solution and prioritized remote access were well-positioned to weather the storm, but others didn’t fare so well for one reason or another. Even today, some are struggling to keep their legacy environments running.

We routinely hear from customers that their existing environment, for whatever reason, isn’t able to keep up with demand. Sometimes it’s as simple as an aging infrastructure in need of replacement, but other times the situation is more complex. Many say their legacy platform hasn’t kept up with the times with modern features of desktop virtualization technology or that support is hard to come by. Others have to deal with security issues that are amplified by increased demand for remote work. And some are simply having to deal with increased costs without an increase in capabilities.

It’s with these situations in mind that I wanted to take some time to explain the unique capabilities of VMware Anywhere Workspace – and specifically VMware Horizon – that so many customers have come to depend on for a more robust desktop virtualization strategy.

Host: Andy Whiteside
Co-Host: Eric Collet
Co-Host: Gabe Knuth

By Wendy Leung

Virtual phone screening, virtual interviews, virtual offer? Check. Starting a brand-new job in the middle of COVID-19? Totally unchecked. Nervous? You bet.

I’ve started new jobs before, but they’ve all been in person. My hiring manager would be a familiar face on day one, walking me to get a badge, handing me a laptop, and introducing me to everyone in the office.

Joining a new company during COVID-19, I had no idea what to expect. Some of my teammates have also onboarded remotely, but this experience was especially important to me as I’m joining the VMware Workspace ONE employee experience team. I’m actually my own use case! Today, I’m going to share my onboarding experience with Workspace ONE.