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