Modern management of the digital workspace

VMware has unveiled new innovations to its intelligence-driven digital workspace platform, Workspace ONE, furthering its vision to accelerate how workspace services can be secured, delivered and consumed in the modern workforce. Organizations can now take advantage of solutions that accelerate the adoption of modern management as they fully transition to Windows 10 and embrace Mac, iOS, Android, and Chromebooks. Through updates to the platform, businesses will be able to provide improved employee experiences with a new Workspace ONE Intelligent Hub app and benefit from new integrations in the platform that extend the value of modern management to virtual endpoints.

“As CIOs and IT leaders implement business transformation, they must address a variety of management challenges head-on given the influx of multiple device platforms, ever-increasing security risks and mission-critical applications that are key to enabling today’s employees,” explained Noah Wasmer, senior vice president and general manager, End-User Computing, VMware. “Built on a foundation of modern management and bolstered by our expansive ecosystem of capabilities, Workspace ONE is empowering IT organizations with the ability to provide a highly-automated, on-demand workspace platform that delivers valuable insights, greater employee experiences, dramatic cost savings, and increased security.”

End-to-End Modern Management Delivers Intelligence and Automation

Modern management is foundational to the digital workspace as companies transition from traditional management approaches, older operating systems and legacy applications. VMware is taking modern management to the next level by leveraging a broad ecosystem of partners and by enabling key advancements in automation that allow IT organizations to manage and secure workspace services on-demand.

Workspace ONE Intelligence, a cloud-based service delivering data-driven insights and automation across the entire digital workspace, is now enabling new capabilities to accelerate this transition. Predictive Windows 10 OS patching based on OS and app readiness assessments and CVE vulnerability scores ensures devices are proactively maintained and remediated. Additionally, new industry-first UEM support for 100% Group Policy Object coverage makes it easy for IT to manage GPOs with editable Center for Internet Security (CIS) and Microsoft security policy templates.  

In a new collaboration, Dell and VMware will also provide customers with access to “ready to work” solutions through Dell Provisioning for Workspace ONE. Employees will have access to pre-installed Win32 applications on Dell PCs that can be immediately used upon enrollment and instantly recovered if needed.

Now generally available is Workspace ONE AirLift connector to Microsoft System Center Configuration Management (SCCM), allowing customers to speed and de-risk the transition to Windows 10 modern management that spans the entire PC lifecycle. This unique capability automates the migration of SCCM collections and applications into Workspace ONE for either a full transition to modern management or co-management with SCCM, making it easy to bring common workloads to the cloud to reduce cost and improve security across the PC lifecycle.

To provide IT with greater visibility and policy enforcement across mobile, endpoint, and cloud-access based security threats, Workspace ONE Trust Network, which combines insights from trusted security partners and Workspace ONE Intelligence, will be introducing new preview integrations with Carbon Black, Netskope, and Lookout. As VMware continues to break down security silos and provide customers with the latitude to leverage existing security investments, an expanded ecosystem of integrated partner solutions will include: TrendMicro, CheckPoint, Palo Alto Networks, and ZScaler.

“Modern management is appealing to businesses on several fronts as IT leaders break through traditional silos and transition to consolidate mobile and PC groups to adopt a holistic platform of capabilities that fit business needs,” said Phil Hochmuth, program director, Enterprise Mobility, IDC. “VMware has been aggressive in its push of a feature set that supports the broadest set of enterprise use cases, from intelligence to automation, for organizations transitioning to digital workspace solutions and unified endpoint management.”

Unleashing Employee Productivity Begins with Access to Modern Management Experiences

In today’s ever-changing workforce, employees increasingly seek flexibility and seamless experiences at work. To give organizations and employees the services they need to take hold of business transformation, a new Workspace ONE Intelligent Hub app experience incorporates VMware’s AirWatch Agent to support BYO and corporate-owned experiences in one, streamlined app for the entire employee lifecycle. 

New Workspace ONE end-user services enable app innovations through notification-based actions, integrated contacts, simpler search and enhanced experiences for employees through new capabilities, including:

·         Beta experience of Workspace ONE Notebook app to deliver secure, containerized tasks and notes for employees using personal, BYO devices as businesses embrace secure mobility.

·         Expanded Workspace ONE SDK that accelerates enterprise app development in alignment with IT and business requirements for security, manageability, privacy, analytics, content, and experience, furthering transformation of line-of-business processes.

·         New Workspace ONE Boxer enhancements include NIAP Common Criteria compliance, enhanced interface experience, ENSv2 advancements including VIP notifications, external recipient highlight, calendar attachments, and view availability for secure mobile email across iOS and Android platforms.

Benefits of Modern Management Extended to Virtual Apps and Desktops

Desktop and app transformation are a necessary part of the journey to the modern digital workspace. Leveraging the benefits of Workspace ONE modern management from VMware allows IT to drive down costs and accelerate the transformation of legacy Windows applications so they can be presented and accessed alongside SaaS, web and mobile apps within the digital workspace.

Driving towards a singular approach to manage virtual and physical devices, VMware is introducing previews of new integrations within Horizon 7 that allow IT to monitor, set policy, and update OS images for persistent virtual desktops within the Workspace ONE platform. Similarly, VMware is showcasing a preview of Workspace ONE Intelligence integration with Horizon to provide customers with better visibility into virtual desktop and app usage.

To accelerate time-to-value, VMware is also introducing new cloud-ready solutions that allow organizations to seamlessly move to the cloud including:

·         Horizon 7 on VMware Cloud on AWS Preview of Just-in-Time Platform: To address disaster recovery use cases and help IT departments drive towards a stateless future, VMware is showcasing a preview of support for Instant Clones, App Volumes, and User Environment with Horizon 7 on VMware Cloud on AWS.

·        Enhanced support for Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure: Helping customers choose the Azure VM type that best suits their needs based on price and performance, Horizon Cloud now supports additional VM types and locations, including Azure Government. To better meet their specific enterprise requirements, customers can now select subnets in their existing Azure networks to deploy Horizon Cloud and directly import optimized images from the Azure marketplace.

With extended vGPU support for AMD Radeon Pro v340 MxGPU and NVIDIA Tesla V100 graphics card support for high-end graphics and vMotion for NVIDIA GPUs, VMware is further optimizing Horizon user experience and eliminating downtime to increase user productivity.