Partner POV | Modernize your VDI and apps with Omnissa Horizon

Article written and provided by, Omnissa. 

Delight end users and ease the burden on IT staff 

Compared to legacy VDI and app vendors, Omnissa Horizon® is the better solution to help organizations modernize their desktop and app delivery. Horizon delivers flexible and scalable virtual desktops and applications across both on-premises and multiple public clouds, simplifying Day 2 operations for IT. Omnissa App Volumes is the only solution enabling IT teams to package applications once and deploy them everywhere with 99-percent app compatibility. With flexible plans and pricing and the operational ease of a single purchase from a market-leading vendor, Horizon is the solution chosen by tens of thousands of customers across the globe, providing unmatched IT efficiency, employee productivity, cost savings, and demonstrated commitment to customers' ongoing success through investments in product innovation and support programs.

Some examples of what Horizon can help you do 

• Simplify app management without having to alter established image management procedures. 
• Provision thousands of desktops at lightning speed with Instant Clones. 
• Centrally manage user environments at scale with Omnissa Dynamic Environment Manager. 
• Reduce risk and lower costs by consolidating around a single, trusted partner.

Four key features of Horizon 

Here are the key features that put Horizon head and shoulders above the competition:

1. Hybrid deployment models 
   1. Purpose-built for hybridity, Horizon enables you to manage all your workloads, whether on-premises or in the cloud, through a single pane of glass with cloud-based management services. DaaS offerings that take care of managing the Horizon infrastructure allow your IT teams to manage just the virtual desktops and apps. What's more, it's all available via a single Horizon subscription license.
2. Unique capabilities that simplify management 
   1. Horizon includes Instant Clone Technology, App Volumes with Apps on Demand, and Dynamic Environment Manager to provide a faster way to provision fully personalized and customized virtual desktops or Remote Desktop Session Host (RDSH) environments and dramatically improve app delivery and management at scale.
      1. Instant Clone Technology for fast desktop and RDSH provisioning – By deploying Horizon on VMware vSphere, Instant Clones dramatically simplifies image management and reduces the amount of time to deploy virtual machines to just seconds per VM.
      2. App Volumes and Apps on Demand for real-time application delivery – With App Volumes, IT admins can capture the full install of an app once and deliver it to users when they log into their virtual desktops. Apps on Demand, an innovative feature of App Volumes, enables admins to deliver captured apps to any virtual desktop or published app host as users access their apps. Specifically for published apps, this on-demand "farm-less" model can reduce the number of published app hosts needed to support users and their apps, associated infrastructure costs, and management time.
      3. Dynamic Environment Manager for contextual real-time policy and user profile management – This advanced user environment management solution offers centralized computer, desktop, and app policy controls, along with powerful capabilities such as printer and drive mappings and privilege elevation. With no infrastructure required, it can easily be deployed at massive scale.
3. Flexible, robust security 
   1. With intrinsic security at every level, including the network, endpoint, cloud, identity, and workload, Horizon can significantly reduce the attack surface of critical systems and apps. Virtual desktops and apps have out-of-the-box security from the client to the workload, while a virtual networking portfolio and cloud native endpoint protection provide additional layers of security. 
   2. The Omnissa Unified Access Gateway protects user sessions and devices by using least-privilege capabilities to enable users to access only what they need to be productive. Integration with Horizon optimizes the security, control, and validation of connections, all through a single platform. In addition, Unified Access Gateway can leverage VMware NSX micro-segmentation to help deliver end-to-end Zero Trust security with the SASE platform.
   3.  Horizon also includes forensics to improve security of virtual sessions. For those who use nonpersistent VMs, the session information is deleted upon log-out and a new desktop is presented at the next log-in. Forensics enables IT admins to indicate which virtual machines need to be saved, making them persistent VMs that can be reviewed later. This is instrumental for organizations that suspect employee misconduct or need to troubleshoot issues that end users are experiencing in their virtual session.
4. Best-in-class end-user experience
   1. Horizon leverages the Omnissa Horizon® Blast Protocol to provide high-quality user experiences under varying network conditions, including high latency, enabling seamless access from any device. This protocol adeptly handles demanding graphical workloads, optimizing the delivery of virtual desktops and apps.
   2. Further enhancing user experiences, Omnissa Workspace ONE® integrates DEX capabilities into Horizon deployments. Experience Management, powered by Workspace ONE Intelligence, allows IT to proactively monitor, analyze, and manage device and app performance and user sentiment. Through data science, this setup aids in incident prediction and resolution, supporting both automated and manual remediation methods like real-time support and self-service options to maintain consistent high-quality experiences.

How Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops maps to Horizon

While the components within desktop and app virtualization platforms are fairly similar, providers often describe them in different ways. The following chart explains how Citrix components map to the equivalent Horizon components.

Remote Desktop services

With Horizon, Blast Extreme and PColP are tightly integrated into Remote Desktop Services using Microsoft APls.

User portal

The Horizon user portal is an identity-driven app and desktop catalog provided by Workspace ONE that supports Horizon virtual desktops, Horizon published apps and shared desktops, and SaaS apps.

License server

Unlike Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, Horizon does not require use of a license server.

Session handling and load management

In Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, the Citrix Delivery Controllers perform session handling and load management. In Horizon, the Omnissa Horizon® Connection Servers perform session handling and load management, while Horizon provides a flexible and granular method to load-balance RDSH servers.

Database server

As with the license server, Horizon does not require a database server to support published apps and shared desktops. Citrix requires administrators to deploy and maintain database servers to support published applications and shared desktops.

Automated provisioning

While Citrix and Horizon have automated deployment systems, Instant Clone Technology provides additional benefits such as rapid deployment of desktops in fewer steps. Because Instant Clone Technology is built into VMware vSphere, no extra components are required, which reduces deployment complexity.

Dynamic environment management

Dynamic Environment Manager offers complete user personalization, including drive mappings, shortcuts, printer mappings, and customization across sessions and devices. Dynamic Environment Manager can be used for virtual and physical desktops as well as RDSH environments. Citrix Workspace Environment Management Service applies users' personal settings to virtual desktops and applications, regardless of location and endpoint device complexity.

Real-time app delivery

In Horizon and Omnissa Horizon® Apps, App Volumes provides real-time app delivery with app lifecycle management in virtual desktop and published app environments. App Volumes can be assigned per user and per machine.

Single sign-on and app catalog

In Horizon, Workspace ONE Access provides contextual access and a unified enterprise app store with single sign-on across Windows, web, and native mobile applications. The Unified Access Gateway component is used to deliver secure connectivity to apps and desktops. Citrix Secure Private Access provides contextual access and single sign-on to web, VDI, and mobile applications.

It's never been easier to upgrade to Horizon

The Citrix Safe Passage program is designed to make upgrading to Horizon as easy and risk-free as possible. Citrix customers are eligible for price incentives, financing options, and funded proof-of-concepts (POCs), pilots and deployments with leading reseller and services partners.