Some big announcements about VMware Horizon have come out and I want to highlight a small piece that I am excited about. The VMware Horizon Mirage 4 piece has me excited because VMware is now integrating application layering. This piece begins to put the offering closer to Unidesk and will eventually make the puzzle fit together better. Anyone doing VDI today knows to separate the layers into Persona, Apps, and OS, so integrating the application layering into Mirage gets even closer to the dream scenario. Obviously Mirage is not just about VDI and almost an entirely different beast to tackle, but integrating Mirage for physical and virtual desktops will be a dream come true for administration. Now admins can get closer to a single corporate image for workstations.

Workstations are the key to the excitement I have today from the announcement as now VMware is officially supporting VMware Fusion Pro with Mirage so the Apple lovers can now have their corporate Windows image deployed locally on their beloved hardware. This is a key piece to integrating Apple hardware into some businesses as VDI was a stop gap. There was a gap due to offline use that has now been filled by supporting Fusion Pro and Mirage.

These are exciting times for end user computing and I look forward to working with customers on the End User Computing journey.