VMware unveils Anywhere Workspace innovations

As organisations navigate the evolving requirements of a hybrid workforce, they are challenged with managing operational complexities and obsolete tooling while supporting employees no matter the app, device, or location. VMware is announcing new VMware Anywhere Workspace platform enhancements, including radical changes to the Workspace ONE architecture that enable high performance and scalability for upwards of millions of endpoints; and new innovations in VMware App Volumes that greatly reduce management time and infrastructure cost of virtual app and desktop environments. Together, these enhancements enable IT teams to run more efficient digital workspaces that deliver productive and reliable experiences for their hybrid workforce. 

“As hybrid work requirements continue to evolve, organisations must constantly monitor changes, enforce reactive policies, and implement new workflows. We believe that automation powered by data science can greatly improve operational efficiency while transforming the IT workforce,” said Shankar Iyer, senior vice president and general manager, End-User Computing, VMware. “87% of organisations surveyed in a recent VMware report1 say they’ve increased their automation investment in the last two years. The new Anywhere Workspace platform enhancements announced today will give organisations the power to seamlessly integrate automation into every step of their IT workflow.”

Improve Performance and Speed with Workspace ONE SaaS Modernisation

The past decade has seen tremendous growth in both the amount and type of mobile and desktop endpoints secured by Workspace ONE. Today, VMware is unveiling a modernised Workspace ONE SaaS architecture that drives greater than 10x performance and scale improvements1. The new containerised architecture takes a SaaS leading practices approach in rapidly delivering innovative solutions to meet evolving customer needs.

As VMware continues to modernise the Workspace ONE architecture, organisations can anticipate:

• Better Performance and Scalability: Customers can comfortably scale their deployments to millions of devices, while experiencing a high performance on resource workloads. This includes upwards of 10x improved resource delivery performance for apps and profiles across all device platforms and improved console load times for better admin experience.

• Faster Feature Velocity while Driving Improved Product Quality: The modular architecture allows for more responsive development and greater product reliability, so customer IT teams can rely on VMware for same-day feature support for the latest OEM and platform configurations.

• Modern SaaS Platform Enabling New Value-Add Services: The modern architecture powers new platform services including Workspace ONE Freestyle Orchestrator and Desired State Management. This provides a low-code and automated toolkit for IT to solve higher order business problems across endpoint management, security, and user experience.

“Workspace ONE UEM 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.”

"As Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) technology continues to mature, VMware is driving innovation with Workspace ONE. By modernising their SaaS platform, they've positioned themselves to deliver faster feature velocity and performance improvements,” said Phil Hochmuth, program vice president, Endpoint Management and Enterprise Mobility, IDC. “Endpoint management teams play a critical role in improving operational efficiency and security across the digital workspace. To that end, the automation and desired state management capabilities Workspace ONE can provide holds great promise for helping these organisations."

Automate Anywhere with a Unified Orchestration Framework

At VMware Explore 2022, we announced our vision for a unified orchestration framework that extends the use of Freestyle Orchestrator capabilities beyond UEM use-cases, making it available across all Workspace ONE services and third-party applications. Delivering on that vision, existing Workspace ONE Intelligence customers will now see legacy automations replaced by the unified Freestyle Orchestrator canvas. Customers can now build the same powerful, policy-based workflows but with a modern, low-code canvas user interface.

Extending upon the unified orchestration, VMware is also announcing the general availability of the new Workspace ONE Marketplace. The Marketplace integrations allow organisations to connect third-party cloud applications and offers pre-packaged solutions including actions, templates, and scripts. Pre-packaged solutions and low-code orchestration bring more efficiency and simplicity for IT, streamlining use cases such as onboarding and offboarding, license optimisation, security quarantine workflows, and more.

Modernise Application Delivery with Apps on Demand for Published Apps

Building on the Apps on Demand functionality released last year powered by VMware App Volumes, VMware now offers Apps on Demand for published apps. The new functionality helps IT reduce management time and infrastructure costs of traditional published app deployments.

Using VMware App Volumes, IT can eliminate the need for a dedicated app farm infrastructure with a modern app delivery model that deploys apps on demand as users access them to generic RDSH servers. This removes management overhead and infrastructure cost of traditional published app farms built out to peak usage requirements. App Volumes also effectively separates the application layer from the OS, enabling simpler app and OS management and a radical reduction in the number of images IT needs to create and manage. With App Volumes, customers can capture even legacy apps with 99% app compatibility and publish them anywhere – on-prem, in the cloud, or across hybrid cloud deployments.