VMware has always been an open-arms sort of IT vendor, working in partnership or as a customer with a large number of companies—even competitors like Oracle or Docker—in efforts to satisfy the needs of customers worldwide. Because its virtualization software touches about everything inside an IT system, the company is pretty much required to play nicely with others.
Even though VMware is now controlled by the Dell EMC conglomerate that also owns the Virtustream enterprise cloud, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based cloud infrastructure and business mobility giant announced May 16 that it will make available its VMware Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure.
That’s right: The VMware Cloud will run on the Azure cloud in addition to the Virtustream cloud. Choice for users is always a good thing, never mind that VMware and Microsoft compete in a number of other areas—hypervisors being only one of them.
Aimed to Help Users Move to Windows 10 Virtual Desktops
The integration ostensibly will help users accelerate the move to Windows 10 and brings VMware virtual desktops and applications to the increasing presence of Azure in the enterprise. Azure is now available in 38 regions globally, is being used in 90 percent of the Fortune 500 and averages 120,000 new customers per month, Microsoft said.
“The addition of VMware Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure puts VMware in a unique position to offer customers several infrastructure options for virtual desktops and applications with the flexibility to move between different platforms,” VMware Senior Vice-President and General Manager of End-User Computing Sumit Dhawan said. “This is an example of VMware executing against its cross-cloud strategy and bringing innovation to the desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) category it pioneered in 2009.”
Horizon Cloud uses a single cloud control plane to give users flexibility to select their preferred infrastructure for delivering and managing virtual desktops and applications. Users can choose from several deployment options and can switch options anytime if use cases change, employees move or economics shift, VMware said.
Features include:
- Fully managed VMware public cloud infrastructure: Designed for organizations looking to outsource management of infrastructure to the cloud for a desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) experience and great for quick scaling and predictable economics.
- Public cloud infrastructure from Microsoft: Users can connect Azure Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) to Horizon Cloud to deliver and manage Horizon virtual desktops and applications, ideal for organizations with an Azure subscription.
- Build your own on-premises infrastructure with hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) appliances: This option is for organizations that desire greater control over their virtual desktop infrastructure and ideal for those with tight security or performance requirements.
VMware Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure is expected to be available in the second half of 2017.