On the Horizon: Three ways VMware App Volumes improves your app management experience

Having been here at VMware a year and drinking from a firehose to learn about all of our products, one of the things that really impresses me is what has been happening with App Volumes. Having been at Unidesk, the app layering company acquired by Citrix, I was keen to learn what was going on here.

I hadn’t looked at App Volumes 4 in-depth and most of my knowledge was still based in the 2.x platform. I was surprised at how much the “layering” had advanced and was really not traditional “app layering” or “App Stacks” anymore. Of course, since the beginning of App Volumes, VMware’s approach has been to focus on the apps and their delivery. This differs from Citrix App Layering, where to deliver apps, you must change your image management model and move everything to their app layering product. This includes OS management, vendor agents, antivirus, and of course, apps. For anyone that has done this in larger environments, you know the pain it can cause with the slowdown of the integration, cross-team issues, and politics.

VMware’s focus on app delivery has allowed us to continue to keep OS or image management separate from the apps (resulting in easier implementation) and allowed the applications to be added to desktops or servers as needed (giving greater flexibility in app deployment). In addition, our App Volumes teams are moving to a more holistic app management approach and beginning to individually address the applications in virtual disks. This does away with the “app stacking” requirements of the past while speeding up app delivery and execution.

With that in mind, today I’d like to take a look at three specific features that you need to look at when you evaluate app management tools in your virtual desktop environment. These three features, while simple and easy to understand, really show the emphasis that VMware is placing on improving your app management capabilities as well as integrating them with your existing tools.
Host: Andy Whiteside
Co-host: Gabe Knuth
Guest: Ron Oglesby