The mass adoption of desktop virtualization has proven elusive for several reasons ranging from the total cost of deployment to perceived compromises in functionality.
With the launch today of VMware Horizon 6, VMware is taking another stab at resolving those issues with an update that adds support for software-defined data centers based on VMware NSX software to 3D graphics based on graphic processing units (GPUs) from NVIDIA.
In addition, VMware is making it simpler to publish applications in a desktop virtualization environment while taking advantage of Flash storage support in VMware Virtual SAN 6 to support as many as 4,000 desktops per cluster across a 20-node cluster. VMware also enhanced the VMware Horizon 6 cloud pod architecture to allow organizations to federate desktop deployments across multiple data centers and geographies.
Finally, VMware also announced an early access program for its VMware Horizon for Linux virtual desktop, which Dave Grant, vice president of marketing for end-user computing at VMware, says is an acknowledgement of the traction Linux desktops are finally starting to gain.
Although desktop virtualization has not been widely deployed, a shift toward managing desktops as a service is most notably under way in the form of Windows 10. Grant says many organizations will start rethinking how they manage Windows in general. In fact, it’s not clear how many of them will continue to manage Windows and other desktop computing environments themselves versus employing a desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) model delivered via a third-party service.
In the meantime, VMware is making it clear that one way or another it thinks the move to desktop virtualization will eventually be inevitable.