VMware Blends Data Center Management With VDI and Mobile

VMware is starting to pull together its investments in the data center and the desktop in a way that simplifies IT administration. The company announced it has integrated VMware NSX network virtualization software with AirWatch and VMware Horizon administration software to make it simpler to not overprovision resources in the data center.

Horizon is the company’s virtual desktop management platform, and AirWatch is for enterprise mobility management and security.

Noah Wasmer, vice president of end-user computing strategy for VMware, says IT organizations using VMware NSX network virtualization software can establish isolated sets of micro-services for specific end users and their virtual desktops. Set up by the administration tools for AirWatch and VMware Horizon, those “micro-services” mean an end user is openly exposed to specific sets of backend services allocated to them.

Wasmer says at a time when there is a lot of volatility both inside and out of the data center, dynamically provisioning resources has become a major challenge in data center management. On the data center side, tools such as vMotion make it possible to move virtual machines around the data center. At the same time, end users now have access to multiple devices, some of which may be owned by them or the company.

“There are a lot of dimensions these days,” says Wasmer. “We’re trying to provide a lot stronger visibility into the data center.”

At a time when regulatory compliance has become a pressing issue in data center management, Wasmer notes that isolating the services that end users can navigate inside the data center reduces the opportunity for those end users to access data or files that they won’t see in the first place.

Wasmer says the ability to integrate AirWatch and VMware Horizon will VMware NSX represents one of the first tangible returns on VMware’s decision to both acquire AirWatch and push into desktop virtualization.

While the number of virtual desktops being served up from the data center remains relatively small, Wasmer says there is an opportunity to converge data center and desktop management in a way that results in more control over the overall IT environment using micro-services.

Naturally, it remains to be seen to what degree server and desktop management will converge inside a virtual data center. Many IT organizations may, for example, continue to have separate administrators. At the same time, there are just as many organizations where IT administrators already perform both roles.