VMware Enhances Enterprise Mobile Management

VMware (VMW) unveiled new capabilities and partnerships such as a new desktop-as-a service, VMware Ready smartphones, a growing community of desktop and mobile partners, and integrated device and workspace management to reinforce VMware Horizon Suite.

“VMware Horizon Suite offers a cost-effective and secure transition to the mobile-cloud era for organizations struggling to modernize their infrastructure,” said Sanjay Poonen, executive vice president and general manager, End-User Computing, VMware. “VMware is the only company that offers a comprehensive end-user computing platform with highly integrated management capabilities to make managing disparate users, devices and operating systems simple and effective.”

Desktop-as-a-Service

VMware Horizon Suite gains a desktop-as-a-service deployment option to give organizations an easy way to transition to virtual desktops. The Horizon Desktop-as-a-service option will be available via its vCloud Hybrid service by the end of the year, giving a common platform to extend desktops and the data center to the cloud. This gives organizations the choice of deploying desktop-as-a-service on vCloud Hybrid Service themselves or through a managed service provider. Deploying desktops from the cloud is being offered immediately through vCloud Partners.

Enterprise Mobility

An ABI research study shows that there will be 1.4 billion smart phones worldwide by the end of 2013, and VMware is responding with new capabilities and products to help simplify enterprise mobile management for IT administrators. In support of BYOD programs VMware announced expanded support of its VMware ready devices, with support from the LG G2, Motorola DROID family, and HTC One. Sony and HTC join the growing community of mobile partners who will introduce devices that are attractive to consumers and manageable by corporate IT using the dual persona capability found in Horizon Workspace.

Support for mobile applications to enable administrators to entitle and manage applications, a new policy management engine to consolidate, model, and rationalize policies across all components, and support for the Oracle database are among some of the enhancements found in a new Horizon Workspace 1.5 release.

“Northeast Wisconsin Technical College (NWTC) selected Horizon Workspace as a collaborative tool to help us attain our college goals of providing a fully accessible (anyplace, anytime, anywhere, any device) digital learning environment for our 40,000 students,” said Linda Hartford, chief information officer, Northeast Wisconsin Technical College. “NWTC will use Horizon Workspace as a catalyst for technology to create easy access to the learning environment.”