Item: VMware Horizon
Rating: 8
Author: Dan Reynolds

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Desktop virtualization has changed the way we work and even the way we think about working. VMware Horizon has been the tool we've used to accomplish that. First and foremost, it allowed us to centralize our data across offices. Then as we grew and our business climate changed, we consolidated offices, started using "co-work" spaces in other towns and now we even have employees in other states and locales. Most of the employees are only in the office a couple of days a week now.

Pros and Cons

Horizon provides a robust and mature desktop interface.
Horizon is flexible enough to configure to fit your environment - whether large or small.
Horizon has decent tools to manage the infrastructure.

The interface to the management console has depended on Flash technology for far too long.
Horizon needs much better graphics drivers, and not just to depend on outside hardware GPU vendors. Those solutions can be incredibly expensive and also incur additional licensing costs (Nvidia for example).
Horizon needs to move away from the PCoIP protocol, it's time to improve and move the display protocol forward. And get away from third party's monopolizing on the display protocol (Teradici).

Return on Investment

Positive: You can stop buying desktops and laptops. Zero clients are perfectly adequate for access to virtual desktops. Lower cost, easier to maintain, less software involved and no second level of antivirus required.
Positive: BYOD is way easier to implement. It's much easier to draw a line in the sand and separate the employee's "device" from the company's "desktop".
Negative: An order of magnitude harder to maintain over a traditional desktop infrastructure. Yes, in the end-run the work can all be done on the backside instead of standing at a desk somewhere but the level of knowledge required is harder. Experience is not cheap and inexperience is very expensive.

Alternatives Considered

Hyper-V and XenDesktop

I suppose I'm prejudiced but I don't think either of those products is in the same league. I know XenDesktop has made some strides I just think VMware has the superior product.

Support Rating

I have always gotten good support from VMware. Most all of their support is overseas, but almost always you can get someone to understand you and I've had pretty good luck with the support that not only understood but empathized with my situations and troubles too. That's important in smaller organizations because you have to depend on that support. You can't afford to go and try to get that support from the local IT shop.

Key Insights

Do you think VMware Horizon delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with VMware Horizon's feature set?

Yes

Did VMware Horizon live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of VMware Horizon go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy VMware Horizon again?

Yes

Likelihood to Recommend

You have to look at your user base - what kind of users are they and what do they do? From a very practical standpoint - can you buy PC's and keep these users up to date - does it make any financial sense to remove the hardware? What kind of work do they do? If everybody is editing video then maybe desktop virtualization is not for you. Another consideration - do you need or want your employees to work from home? Will this give you an advantage in attracting talent? Can you reduce your overhead by having a "distributed" workforce? Can your employees work out of rented "co-work" spaces with no dedicated physical presence?

Users and Roles

Support Headcount Required

1 - Requires a knowledge of Active Directory, DNS, networking, building servers, maintaining servers and a good organizational mindset to architect your infrastructure (tailored to your needs). You also have to intimately know and understand storage. You have to have a unique ability to think about different usage scenarios, disaster recovery, backup, and security. It's much more complicated than a regular desktop world and adds to that all the knowledge and intricacies of the VMware product itself. You have to work around the strengths and weaknesses.

Business Processes Supported

Centralizing the data - The users can be where they need to be and the desktops and data can be all together in once place, safe & secure. For us, this was the big one.
Being able to have a "work from home" workforce - Gave the company the ability to attract new talent. Improved company morale and competitive advantage.
Being able to work from many different devices and still have a familiar desktop experience.
Ability to manage all this with fewer people and maintain a high level of consistency, security and reliability.

Innovative Uses

Go to a clients office and open the 3D model of their project.
Work from almost anywhere.

Future Planned Uses

Improving technology and 3D visualization is going to give our employees the ability to demonstrate the spaces we design to the clients and potential clients and it not be in our office and not require a truck load of technology that we have to haul around.

Likelihood to Renew

We are committed to VMware Horizon and we plan to stick with it for the future unless something drastically changes.

A real business gamechanger

Overall Satisfaction with VMware Horizon (formerly VMware View)