VMware Announces General Availability of VMware View 3

By VSM News Staff
published: Tuesday, December 02 2008

New Technologies Reduce Storage Costs, Improve User Experience, and Enable IT to Rapidly Provision and Update Thousands of Desktops From a Single Image.

VMware View 3 is a major step in VMware's vClient Initiative, announced at VMworld 2008 in September, to solve the "desktop dilemma." As described by VMware President and CEO Paul Maritz, the desktop dilemma is the business choice of whether to provide thick or thin clients for employees. Thick clients, or fully loaded PCs, give employees a rich set of applications in their desktop environment, but are a management nightmare because applications can be distributed across thousands of PCs that must be provisioned, updated, patched and secured individually. Thin clients are cheaper, more secure, and more cost-effective to manage, but traditionally have not been able to deliver the richness, flexibility, or compatibility of a thick client. Most businesses provide thin clients only for employees such as call center staff who can be productive in a more stripped-down environment. VMware View 3 solves this dilemma by combining the benefits of both approaches - delivering rich, personalized virtual desktops to any device (whether thick or thin), while simplifying management and securing endpoints with virtual desktops hosted in the datacenter.

VMware View 3 is a family of products available in two editions:

• VMware View 3, Enterprise Edition: includes VMware Infrastructure Enterprise Edition and VMware View Manager 3, a flexible desktop management server enabling IT administrators to quickly provision and tightly control user access.
• VMware View 3, Premier Edition: includes VMware Infrastructure Enterprise Edition, VMware View Manager 3, VMware ThinApp for agentless application virtualization and VMware View Composer, a new product that enables IT staff to create multiple virtual desktops from a single image, increasing the speed of provisioning desktops and reducing storage requirements.

"At Rochester General Health System, our goal is to provide increasing value to our clients with services designed to maximize their profitability and the effectiveness of their business," said Tom Gibaud, manager, server engineering, Rochester General Health System. "VMware's desktop virtualization products have been essential to maintaining efficient and cost-effective operations while we work with our healthcare customers."

"With VMware View 3, the most proven, feature-complete and widely deployed virtual desktop solution in the market today takes a major step forward. VMware is redefining what is possible with desktop virtualization," said Jocelyn Goldfein, vice president and general manager of VMware's Desktop Business Unit. "VMware View 3 introduces technologies that increase the scalability and richness of virtual desktops while reducing management time and costs. For example, the new VMware View Composer dramatically reduces storage consumption and increases the speed and flexibility of provisioning desktops. Our other new features such as virtual printing, multimedia redirection, offline desktop, and the brokering of Windows Terminal Services sessions, can provide end users with the best possible virtual desktop experience."

"With the launch of VMware View 3, VMware is expanding beyond its Virtual Desktop Infrastructure vision by combining its strength with both client-side and server-side desktop virtualization and continuing to solve customer problems with technologies that aim to improve desktop management and application delivery while providing an familiar PC-like user experience," said Mark Bowker, analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. "VMware View Composer, one of the new products released with VMware View 3, can further decrease the total cost of ownership of a virtual desktop solution by significantly reducing storage requirements and operational costs through its image management and linked cloning technology."

With the following new products and technologies, VMware View 3 is the only enterprise-class solution that delivers simple, end-to-end management of virtual desktops and virtual applications from the datacenter to the client:

• VMware View Composer is a new product that uses Linked Clone technology to create virtual desktops rapidly from a master image while consuming up to 70 percent less storage space. Automated image preparation and provisioning take only seconds and are centrally controlled by View Manager. In addition, View Composer can reduce management costs by enabling IT to update thousands of individual virtual desktops by simply updating the master image with a patch or application update and then applying the changes to each desktop cloned from the master image. View Composer provides this one-to-many image updating while preserving user data, settings, and preferences so patching is seamless to end users.
• VMware ThinApp is bundled with VMware View 3 to enable simplified application packaging and deployment to a virtual desktop environment. ThinApp and View Composer work together to provide streamlined virtual desktop image creation and updating. ThinApp enables applications to run independently of the host operating system version or patch level. This simplifies updating and patching applications, and provides additional storage reduction for virtual desktops by centralizing and compressing applications. ThinApp's unique architecture does not require an agent on the user's desktop, a major advantage compared to other techniques for virtualization applications.
• Offline Desktop, an experimental feature, provides the flexibility to intelligently and securely move virtual desktops between the datacenter and a local laptop or desktop, increasing user productivity while providing secure mobility. Users can "check out" a virtual desktop onto an ordinary PC, such as a laptop, run the virtual desktop locally and then check it back in to the datacenter. Offline Desktop allows a user to keep using his virtual desktop when no network is available, or simply to take advantage of local resources for the best virtual desktop user experience available.
• Unified Access, a new feature of VMware View Manager 3, provides desktop administrators with a single management platform for multiple types of sessions. VMware View Manager 3 connects to desktop environments hosted on VMware Infrastructure, or user sessions running on Windows Terminal Servers or even physical PCs such as a blade PC. Individuals have a single point of access to seamlessly connect to their desktop environment, while administrators have a single point of administration.
• Virtual Printing provides end users the ability to print to any local or network printer without installing specific printer drivers. Virtual Printing technology provides compression for print jobs and auto detection of local printers from the client. This eliminates printer driver issues and the need for printer configuration. End users get high quality printing with enhanced performance across the WAN.
• Multimedia Redirection improves the user experience with rich multimedia playback capabilities. The multimedia processing tasks are intelligently redirected from the server to the end user device where the multimedia stream is decoded, taking advantage of the local processing power.

Partner Enablement

To help partners build practices around VMware View 3, VMware has also launched the Enterprise Desktop Competency program, which includes providing new and comprehensive training for partners. Please visit http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/view_partner_support.html to view partner support of VMware View 3.

Pricing and Availability

VMware View 3 is available immediately through VMware sales and the company's extensive network of OEM partners and more than 20,000 channel partners. VMware View 3 Enterprise Edition is priced at $150 per concurrent connection and the VMware View 3 Premier Edition is priced at $250 per concurrent connection.

Register at http://www.vmware.com/go/viewlaunchwebcast to learn more from the experts about what's new with VMware View 3 or visit www.vmware.com/go/view for more information.

About VMware

VMware (NYSE:VMW) is the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter. Customers of all sizes rely on VMware to reduce capital and operating expenses, ensure business continuity, strengthen security and go green. With 2007 revenues of $1.3 billion, more than 120,000 customers and more than 20,000 partners, VMware is one of the fastest growing public software companies. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, VMware is majority-owned by EMC Corporation (NYSE:EMC). For more information, visit www.vmware.com.