Application flexibility, regardless of device
Being tethered to a device is soon to be a burden of the future and strategies such as those incorporated into VMware App Manager start to unlock users from devices and enable device-independent access to applications. One of the drivers of this user centric model is the ongoing adoption of SaaS. Out of the various cloud computing models available today, SaaS has been around the longest and, as such, is the most established option: more than one-third (34%) of organizations are already using software-as-a-service in some capacity. Additionally, 42% of respondents indicated that their organizations either have plans for or interest in SaaS-based applications. Further detail can be found in ESG’s Cloud Computing Trends Research Report.
VMware Horizon App Manager is best thought of as a broker of applications and initially a way for IT to broker SaaS applications through a common identity and authentication model. But the potential of Horizon App Manager is much more interesting. Brokering SaaS applications has some great benefits and may be all that is required for business that truly adopt a 100% SaaS model (there are few), but what about the other applications that enterprises consume? Desktop images? New applications? VMware Horizon App Manager can potentially mature and help here as well. I’d even go as far to think Microsoft RDS (terminal services), VDI images (VMware, Citrix, Microsoft, Quest, and others), applications (ThinApp, XenApp, App-V) and let’s not forget about the applications VMware themselves are beginning to stockpile (Zimbra, Mozy, Sliderocket … there are more coming). So although VMware Horizon App Manger may be focused on SaaS brokering, identity, and authentication today, I suspect we will see it extend its breadth of capabilities to capture multiple application delivery models in order to truly deliver user centric computing. It will have to.
