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VMWARE LEADS INDUSTRY IN SUPPORT FOR THE MOBILE WORKFORCE WITH NEW CAPABILITIES ACROSS ITS END-USER COMPUTING PORTFOLIO

logo_vmwareAt VMworld® 2013 Europe, VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, introduced new product offerings and capabilities across its end-user computing product portfolio to broaden support for the mobile workforce. With a focus on lowering cost, simplifying management and enhancing performance to help organizations and the industry advance workforce mobility, VMware is the only company that offers customers an end-to-end virtualization solution for the mobile and social cloud era. “The innovations we are introducing around cost, management and performance of our products make a compelling case to companies searching for a modern approach to supporting their mobile workforces,” said Sanjay Poonen, executive vice president and general manager, End-User Computing, VMware. “We believe customers get the best technology, practical innovations, superior customer support and the most value from VMware compared to our competitors.”

Building Upon the Industry’s Most Comprehensive Platform for the Mobile Workforce
VMware Horizon™ Suite is an integrated platform that supports the mobile workforce by connecting end-users to their data, applications and desktops using any device without sacrificing IT security and control. It brings together Horizon View™, Horizon Mirage™and Horizon Workspace™ to create a single, unified solution designed to transform technology silos into centralized IT services that can be easily provisioned, managed and delivered to end-users.

Updates to VMware Horizon Suite include:
VMware Horizon View 5.3 — will offer an improved user experience, streamlined management, reduced total cost of ownership (TCO), and a new route to market for virtual desktops.

  • Improved user experience – Horizon View virtual desktops will offer a true workstation replacement option with workstation class 3D graphics using Virtual Dedicated Graphics Acceleration (vDGA) enabled by NVIDIA® GRID™ technology to support high-performance graphics and compute workloads, such as those required by the design, manufacturing, and oil and gas industries. Bandwidth consumption will be lowered through the use of multimedia redirection of H.264 advanced video coding for high-definition content, and efficiency improvements to the Horizon View client for Linux offers users an enhanced experience. Improvements to remote desktops delivered through HTML5 capable web browsers will offer higher quality video playback, faster typing response, and higher scalability, with support for up to 250 concurrent connections. Additionally, support will be available for the latest end-user technologies, including Windows 8.1, Apple iOS 7 and Google Chromebooks.
  • Streamlined management and cost – New VMware Virtual SAN™ for Horizon View beta will deliver significantly lower upfront capital expense (CAPEX) and total cost of ownership (TCO) for virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). The bundling of VMware vCenter™ Operations Manager™ for View in Horizon Suite, available at no additional cost, offers advanced VDI performance and operations management for large-scale virtual desktop production monitoring, advanced problem warning, faster time to resolution and complete infrastructure coverage.
  • Support for new delivery models – New Horizon View Agent Direct-Connect™ is an optional plugin that will allow for secure remote connections to a virtual desktop even if the Horizon View connection server is unavailable, offering more flexibility for remote offices, branch offices and desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) deployments. In addition, support for Windows Server 2008 R2 as a desktop operating system in Horizon View for public and private cloud deployments will reduce the costs and complexities related to Microsoft Virtual Desktop Access (VDA) subscription fees and will enable DaaS service providers to share server hardware between tenants and directly offer Windows licensing choices.

VMware Horizon Mirage 4.3 — Integrates with Horizon View to enable IT to use image layering to manage both physical and virtual desktops at scale, while also offering enhanced Windows 7 migration and web management capabilities.

  • Integrated approach for physical and virtual desktops – Horizon Mirage combines with Horizon View to give IT administrators greater flexibility and performance in managing mobile and distributed desktops for different user groups within an organization. The integrated solution will enable IT to install and update base and application layers to full clone virtual machines in persistent desktop pools similar to physical PCs. IT can update base and application layers on virtual machines without affecting user-installed applications and data.
  • Enhanced Windows 7 migration – Horizon Mirage will support the two most common approaches to Windows 7 migrations: in-place operating system migration and hardware refresh. The ability to stage multiple application layers with the base layer will enable IT to reduce user downtime and costs, and deploy applications to endpoints faster.
  •  Improved management using Web management console – More IT operations will be able to be conducted through the Web management console with the addition of the new protection manager role that helps IT manage mobile and distributed PCs from a single pane of glass, providing information such as endpoint centralization status, trends, and errors in a dashboard view. The Protection Manager can edit and upload policies, build collections, and restore endpoints, in addition to other administrative capabilities.

VMware Horizon Workspace — Sony smartphones will join the growing list of VMware Ready™ devices that help IT administrators improve their enterprise mobile management strategy and support bring your own device (BYOD) policies.

  • New VMware Ready devices – The recently released Xperia™ Z1 and Xperia™ Z Ultra smartphones will be the latest additions to the growing list of Android-based devices that support the dual persona capability offered by Horizon Workspace. This will bring the total number of VMware Ready devices worldwide to 12 of the most popular consumer smartphones on the market. Horizon Workspace in combination with a VMware Ready device will enable IT administrators to securely extend corporate data, applications and desktops to employee-owned devices.

“We recently modernized our traditional desktops with VMware Horizon Mirage™ and have benefited from significant operational cost savings since deploying it in our organization,” said Oren Latz, Technical Implementation Specialist, Nice Systems. “Upgrading remote and office-based employee operating systems with Horizon Mirage demonstrated costs savings of hard disk drive shipments, ensuring minimum user downtime. Additionally, Horizon Mirage demonstrated enhanced levels of backup and recovery with minimum impact on user machines. “

Improving Enterprise Collaboration

Social collaboration continues to gain ground among enterprises as companies leverage social components made popular by consumer applications and use them to enhance collaboration among teams and large communities. According to a June 2013 forecast by industry research firm, IDC, the worldwide enterprise social software applications market revenue is expected to grow from $1.0 billion in 2012 to $2.7 billion by 2017 which represents an aggressive compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22.3 percenti. New capabilities in Socialcast will offer additional ways for companies to improve collaboration and communication to collectively achieve organizational goals.

VMware Socialcast® — New integrated feature will introduce a better approach to the collection and management of ideas in large organizations, helping troubleshoot problems and improve organizational performance.

  • ·         Socialcast Challenges – Offers an ideation workspace that will provide organizations with a simple and social way to turn ideas into action. Unlike specialized or add-on ideation tools, Socialcast Challenges is designed as an integral part of an organization’s Socialcast community, giving employees a powerful way to brainstorm, prioritize actions, and solve problems collaboratively. By providing a structured way to tap into an organization’s collective wisdom, Socialcast Challenges will help improve business outcomes.

“For enterprises to truly become mobile-first organizations and support the fast pace that the new world of mobile working requires, they need a new level of flexibility and agility in the back-end infrastructure,” said Brett Waldman, research manager, IDC. “VMware is painting an attractive picture of this new ‘everything is virtualized and cloud-enabled’ infrastructure.”

Availability

Updates to VMware Horizon Suite, Socialcast, ThinApp® and VMware Ready smartphones are expected to be available in Q4 2013. The public beta of VMware Virtual SAN for Horizon View is available immediately through the VMware website.

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