VMware, the provider of multi-cloud services for all apps, is announcing enhancements to the VMware Anywhere Workspace platform, as well as the introduction of the unified orchestration framework, the Workspace ONE Marketplace, and the Apps on Demand for published apps. These releases work to close the gap between hybrid workforces, disparate and legacy tooling, and mitigating overall operational complexities.
The shift to the hybrid workplace environment has propagated the necessity of availability—across applications, devices, and locations—despite lacking the solutions and technologies to do so effectively.
VMware’s Workspace ONE has enabled both mobile and desktop endpoint securing, alleviating the technological tension facing many IT teams.
To further address this challenge, VMware is announcing a containerized Workspace ONE SaaS architecture that improves performance and scalability by a factor of 10, according to the company. VMware customers can scale deployments to millions of devices without experiencing reductions in performance, ultimately enhancing console load times.
“Workspace ONE UEM (unified endpoint management) has allowed us to extend the ease of use for both remote workers that work for the company and workers that don’t,” said Keith Bradley, vice president of IT and security, Nature Fresh Farms. “We can quickly deploy Workspace ONE to any device and allow a secure method for anyone to connect to our applications.”
Workspace ONE’s new architecture is now modular in nature, enabling development processes to be more responsive and reliable.
“With this modular architecture, you can scale these microservices independently and get those cost advantages in addition to the reliability of faster feature development and faster debug capability,” said Bharath Rangarajan, general manager and VP of product at VMware.
Along with the architecture transformation comes new platform services, such as Workspace ONE Freestyle Orchestrator and Desired State Management; these features provide a low-code, automated toolkit for IT teams operating throughout a myriad of endpoint locations.
“The freestyle orchestrator is a broad platform, in terms of what’s possible. The simplest non-technology equivalent is a set of Lego blocks. We provide out-of-the-box Lego blocks for end-user computing that you can now stitch,” explained Rangarajan. “In the past, these workflows would be complex scripts and a fairly evolved set of logic that multiple teams would have to coordinate and now, this has become as simple as Scratch programming. You drag and drop and get this workflow.”
The unified orchestration framework comes to fruition for Workspace ONE Intelligence customers in this release, where legacy automation will be replaced by the Freestyle Orchestrator canvas, bringing a modern, low-code canvas UI to users building policy-based workflows.
Additionally, the Workspace ONE Marketplace, which enables enterprises to connect to third-party cloud applications and equip pre-packaged solutions, such as actions, templates, and scripts, will now be available. These features will invite more productivity and simplicity for IT teams struggling to manage onboarding/offboarding, license optimization, and security workflows, according to the company.
Innovating upon VMware’s previously released Apps on Demand function, VMware has created Apps on Demand for published apps, aiding to increase the efficacy of IT management and optimize infrastructure costs. By eliminating the necessity of a dedicated app farm infrastructure armed with a modern app delivery model via generic RDSH servers, users experience reduced management overhead while reaping the benefits of a separated application layer from the OS. VMware enables users to capture applications, including legacy variants, with 99% app compatibility and publish them across on-prem, cloud, or hybrid environments.
“With Apps on Demand, or published Apps on Demand, it allows you to deliver Windows apps with the ease of SaaS app delivery, so users can consume it from any device without additional software, also the system auto scales, being able to get the latest version—everything you take for granted in a SaaS app,” said Rangarajan.
“From a CIO perspective, all of them are grappling with this notion of dealing with a distributed workforce and how to keep them engaged and secure,” continued Rangarajan. “All of these items that are being released are driving toward that vision, giving you the flexibility and the other things that CIOs care about, having to balance the old with the new and being unable to go with a big bang approach. So, this also gives you a practical approach to adopt these things in a phased manner—and you can see tangible ROI throughout it all.”
To learn more about VMware’s recent releases driving hybrid efficiency, please visit https://www.vmware.com/.