Rapidly Build and Scale Horizon 7 Desktops and Applications with VMware Cloud on AWS

By Cynthia Gallant, Global Segment Leader for End User Computing Partners at AWS
By Rima Olinger, Global Alliance Lead – VMware Cloud on AWS

Organizations of all sizes and in all industries are increasingly relying on desktop and application virtualization to deliver their business-critical applications to any device, anywhere, especially with increased security and compliance requirements and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trends.

Wouldn’t it be great to extend your on-premises Horizon 7 virtual desktop and application platform to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud, or build a new Horizon 7 platform on AWS in order to gain cost-effective scalability and increased business ability for changing end-user requirements?

We are excited to announce the Horizon 7 virtual desktop and application platform is now supported on VMware Cloud on AWS. VMware is an AWS Partner Network (APN) Advanced Technology Partner.

Architecturally, the Horizon 7 platform is the same on-premises as it is on VMware Cloud on AWS, so the deployment and management experience stays consistent across environments. Best of all, customers no longer have to purchase new hardware to launch or scale Horizon 7, and instead have the option of pay-as-you-go by leveraging VMware Cloud on AWS hourly billing.

Learn more about what’s new with Horizon 7 on the VMware EUC Blog.

Benefits of Running Horizon 7 on VMware Cloud on AWS

Enterprises have experienced accelerated business innovation and agility by deploying AWS cloud for their mission critical applications and data, and now Horizon 7 users can gain these same benefits for their virtual desktops and application platform.

Traditional on-premises virtual desktop infrastructure deployments are often limited in how quickly and cost effectively they can respond to changing business needs from emerging workforce trends—like the growing population of contingent employees (contractors) which are estimated to comprise almost 40% of the global workforce.

Organizations are looking for a secure and scalable way to engage and support on-demand, specialized talent—known as “agile talent”—that is critical to enabling innovation in their respective markets. Combined with imminent deadlines for data privacy compliance, as well as end-of-life or upgrades for desktop operating systems and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) technology, Horizon customers now have access to cloud scale, security, and compliance with Horizon 7 on VMware Cloud on AWS.

How it Works

Horizon 7 is a well-established enterprise desktop and application platform previously supporting a deployment model in on-premises data centers. With cloud as the new normal, and many organizations taking a cloud-first IT strategy, Horizon customers have approached AWS and VMware for simple deployment options for their Horizon 7 environments on AWS.

This is made possible by the Horizon 7 capability known as Cloud Pod Architecture (CPA) that enables scaling across multiple pods and sites, allowing federated management in on-premises data centers. With this new Horizon release, stretching a CPA across on-premises data centers and VMware Cloud on AWS instances enables Horizon 7 to easily run in a hybrid cloud environment, with the same deployment and management experience.

By using the VMware Cloud on AWS platform as a backend to Horizon 7, customers can outsource the management of the Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) infrastructure to VMware. With the elastic capacity and hourly billing provided with VMware Cloud on AWS, it is no longer required to purchase new hardware to support growing or changing virtual desktop infrastructure needs. In addition to the cost savings and simple expansion options, organizations can more readily engage and support agile talent with the increased flexibility from Horizon 7 on VMware Cloud on AWS.

How Customers Can Use Horizon on VMware Cloud on AWS

To rapidly accelerate innovation and business agility, organizations must change the way they work. Horizon 7 on VMware Cloud on AWS facilitates agile talent engagement and provides an agile cloud foundation that supports a dynamic, yet secure, end user desktop and application platform.

Expanding Horizon Capacity for Scaling Existing Workloads

For customers who have existing on-premises Horizon 7 infrastructure and need to expand capacity for existing workloads, this is a compelling way to add capacity without procuring additional hardware. Extending Horizon 7 on VMware Cloud on AWS allows customers to leverage AWS capacity, while still being able to manage on-premises and VMware Cloud on AWS deployments in a single federated space.

Deploying New and Variable Workloads

Horizon 7 on VMware Cloud on AWS pay-as-you go capacity allows organizations to address new categories of users that were previously too costly or complex to address with on-premises virtual desktop infrastructure due to the variability of workloads. This includes addressing the needs of contractors, offshore and mobile workers, students, seasonal workers, and new employees onboarding from mergers and acquisitions.

With Horizon 7 on VMware Cloud on AWS easily scaling up and down in a pay-as-you-go model, this opens up new and innovative opportunities to employ agile talent that is so critical to staying ahead of changing business and market conditions.

Addressing Application Locality for Horizon 7 Workloads

Many customers want to move latency-sensitive applications to AWS and need desktops and Remote Desktop Services Hosts (RDSH) to be co-located with their applications. They may also have other applications that are still on-premises. Extending Horizon 7 to VMware Cloud on AWS allows end users to connect to the nearest desktop or RDSH to the application, regardless of whether this application is on-premises or on VMware Cloud on AWS.

Deploying or Migrating Horizon 7 Workloads Exclusively on VMware Cloud on AWS

Some customers want to build or migrate Horizon 7 deployments to run only on VMware Cloud on AWS due to the cost, scale, and security benefits from the AWS cloud that directly impact business agility. Since the same deployment and management capabilities are available to Horizon 7 on VMware Cloud on AWS deployments as on-premises, this is a new option available to customers.

Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity of Horizon Deployments

Every customer wants disaster recovery (DR) for primary on-premises infrastructure, especially for virtual desktop and application deployments. However, the cost of building out an on-premises DR site can be expensive and difficult to scale. With VMware Cloud on AWS, customers only pay for the DR infrastructure they use during the times when their primary infrastructure is down, plus a small “pilot light” during normal operations if they desire a quick Recovery Time Objective (RTO) during a disaster event.

A single unified Horizon architecture across the primary site and DR site on VMware Cloud on AWS makes the failover process very simple. In addition, Horizon CPA can also be deployed across two or more VMware Cloud on AWS instances, thus providing high availability across multiple cloud nodes.

Is Horizon 7 on VMware Cloud on AWS a Desktop-as-Service Solution?

Even though Horizon 7 on VMware Cloud on AWS is leveraging cloud infrastructure, this is not a pure desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) solution. Instead, with this newest release, customers have the ability to deploy Horizon 7 as a software stack on VMware Cloud on AWS where VMware manages the hardware and SDDC. Customers must still deploy and manage their own Horizon infrastructure, such as connection brokers and other Horizon server components.

Next Steps

For more information or to begin working with this new Horizon 7 on VMware Cloud on AWS offering, please contact aws-vmware-cloud@amazon.com.

Representatives from AWS and VMware will engage with you to review your business use cases and how Horizon 7 on VMware Cloud on AWS can be deployed in your environment.