Modern businesses need solutions that support remote and hybrid workers, cloud strategy alignment, and streamlined operations - all while enhancing the organisation’s security posture against an increasingly volatile threat landscape.
The security benefits of a VDI solution have never been more important for operational resilience. The right VDI solutions offer flexibility to meet business requirements while protecting critical information, and can significantly simplify the recovery process from a security incident.
In recent years, the technology offerings and associated vendors in this space have evolved rapidly. Businesses must carefully choose, and in some cases reassess, the VDI provider that best fits their current needs and long-term goals.
Changes in vendor ownership, price fluctuations, and a lack of coherent product roadmaps can complicate these critical decisions. Changes to Citrix’s pricing model, for example, have upset some existing customers who are worried about steep price hikes and cost uncertainty going forward. Other customers are struggling with Azure Virtual Desktop’s (AVD) restrictive architecture and inconsistent user experience.
“We’ve heard from a number of Triangle customers who are worried about what the Citrix acquisition means long-term for their licensing agreement,” says Niall Hughes, Head of Architecture Services at Triangle. “When you’re thinking about renewing a multi-year service agreement, you have to think about the changes that might be made to those systems when you’re locked into a contract.”
Omnissa Horizon: new name for a proven VDI solution
Many IT leaders know VMware’s VDI platform, Horizon, as a trusted enterprise solution. But while Horizon is no longer included under VMware’s offerings, it hasn’t disappeared. After Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware, this technology is now fully owned and operated by a dedicated end-user compute technology company called Omnissa.
While Omnissa Horizon may not yet have the brand recognition of other leading VDI providers, Triangle’s technical experts believe the platform’s stability, integrity, and track record of success make it an excellent option for any organisation seeking a long-term solution for its VDI needs.
“In our conversations with customers, a lot of people simply aren’t that familiar with the Omnissa brand,” says Ian Browne, Director of Technology at Triangle. “They don’t realise that Horizon is essentially the same product that it was before, but now with a new owner dedicated to an impressive innovation roadmap.”
Browne argues that this lack of brand awareness is the biggest challenge in promoting Omnissa to Triangle’s customers. Increased concern over other VDI providers is creating an opportunity to advocate for the many advantages of switching to Omnissa Horizon.
“We are infusing AI throughout our platform and accelerating our innovation roadmap,” says Shankar Iyer, CEO of Omnissa. “The Omnissa Platform is poised to become the industry's de facto platform.”
The benefits of using Omnissa Horizon for enterprise VDI
When properly deployed, Omnissa Horizon equips organisations of any size with flexible, secure, and resilient work environments that drive greater efficiency, performance, and value creation across their workforce.
Some of the highlights of Omnissa Horizon’s VDI platform include:
- Flexible deployment options: Horizon supports on-premise, private and public cloud, and hybrid environments.
- Just-in-time virtualisation: Its just-in-time management platform delivers desktops and applications that can be rapidly provisioned and personalised for each user.
- Robust security features: Horizon supports multi-factor and other strong authentication methods. It also offers a Unified Access Gateway and granular access control to maximise security for remote access portals.
- High-performance UX: Omnissa Horizon offers advanced graphics acceleration options, as well as optimised display protocols, to deliver a media-rich UX across virtual desktops and apps.
- Supported by Triangle Cyber Recovery: Triangle’s experts can implement our Cyber Recovery solution and services for full data protection and improved business resilience.
- Flexible, pay-as-you-go pricing: Omnissa Cloud’s pricing model offers flexible resource allocation and usage-based pricing - giving you better control over your VDI costs, and eliminating the need for capacity planning and over-provisioning.
- Easy integration with VMware and other infrastructure solutions: As a former VMware product, Horizon offers broad integration capabilities, ensuring a seamless fit with your existing tech stack. Horizon Cloud offers next-gen API extensibility to support integrations with more advanced third-party technologies.
Triangle’s Omnissa advantage: simplifying migration through proven expertise
As a platinum Omnissa partner with extensive Horizon expertise, Triangle is uniquely equipped to guide organizations through a smooth and secure adoption and/or migration to Omnissa Horizon.
“Our value is twofold, for customers not yet using Horizon," says Hughes. "We can manage a complete transition from your existing VDI provider — for example, Citrix — while also implementing customized Horizon solutions for customers struggling with Azure Virtual Desktop's restrictive architecture and inconsistent user experiences.”
According to Hughes, Triangle can address the frustrating aspects of AVD’s architecture and UX “by layering Horizon over AVD to experience the enhanced performance, flexibility, and enterprise-grade security that Horizon delivers.”
For cyber recovery customers who have invested in isolated recovery environments, Triangle has also developed a new offering using Horizon to enable rapid restoration of secure virtual desktop environments within isolated clean rooms after cyber incidents. This ensures business continuity, protects your organisation against data loss, and minimises downtime while primary systems are remediated; ultimately protecting your revenue, reputation, and customer trust.
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Build resilience with Omnissa & Triangle
Whatever your starting position, deploying Omnissa Horizon is a step towards building operational resilience at both the user and infrastructure layers.
VDI plays a critical role in helping organisations improve their digital resilience and ensure business continuity in any scenario. But Horizon, like any other VDI platform, requires the support of a robust recovery strategy to maintain operations amid network outages and other disaster scenarios.
When choosing a VDI provider, dependability and trust are crucial. Omnissa meets and exceeds those requirements, and Triangle’s experts can help ensure that this critical infrastructure is properly deployed and optimised for long-term business impact.
Find out how Triangle and Omnissa can take your organisation’s IT resilience to the next level.
