Release: VMware View 4

VMware has announced VMware View 4, enabling rapid adoption of virtualized desktops and establishing a desktop as a managed service model.

VMware View 4 is a desktop virtualization solution that it claims sets a new quality, cost and scale standard for desktop virtualization environments. Built on VMware vSphere, the industry’s leading virtualization platform, VMware View 4 is a complete desktop virtualization solution featuring a rich, flexible desktop user experience while delivering dramatic efficiency, security, performance, scalability and management improvements — all while reducing desktop total cost of ownership by as much as 50 percent.

Desktop virtualization has long remained a top IT goal because of the added security, manageability and compliance capabilities delivered. Adoption, however, has been limited due to high acquisition costs, insufficient user experience, scalability issues and limitations on the use cases that could benefit from virtualized desktops. With VMware View 4, VMware and its ecosystem of partners eliminate these barriers, enabling broader, mainstream enterprise adoption of desktop virtualization.

VMware View 4 provides:

• Simplified desktop provisioning and management with flexible on-demand provisioning of thousands of desktops and applications instantaneously and the ability to manage up to tens of thousands of desktops from a single console
• User flexibility and rich user experience with always on access to applications and desktops from nearly any device
• Differentiated desktop SLAs including enterprise-class availability, disaster recovery, failover and scalability supporting tens of thousands of users across the enterprise
• Improved security and compliance through centralized management of security policies permissions and updates

VMware View 4 establishes a new desktop experience standard, capable of satisfying the broadest range of users — from the basic task worker to the designer, with a rich, high-quality user environment across the widest range of devices and networks. View 4 will deliver a complete desktop environment including:

• VMware View with PC over IP (PCoIP) — New adaptive display protocol specifically developed for virtual desktop delivery dynamically detects device type, network connections and locations providing the optimal desktop experience for each unique user scenario. Only VMware View with PCoIP analyzes and optimizes for both hardware and software environments. A strong ecosystem of hardware and solution providers have announced support for PCoIP, enabling adoption and support of this key innovation.
• VMware View Display — Multi-monitor, adaptive display support, resolution optimization for each monitor with an option to pivot and rotate the display output, supporting rich audio and video content with increased performance.
• VMware View Direct — Seamless mapping from the virtual desktop to the end users device for locally attached peripherals through USB connection for increased productivity.
• VMware View Printing — Users automatically discover, connect and print to locally attached printer without the need to install print drivers. Delivers a high quality printing experience even over low bandwidth connections.
• VMware View Unified Access — Continuous desktop availability with a single point of authentication for users to access — VMware View environments, Windows Terminal Servers, Blade PCs or even remote physical PCs.

VMware View 4 will establish new levels of efficiency and cost savings through product advancements and close collaboration with partners, driving down storage, networking and compute resource costs.

• Platform Optimization — VMware View 4 is built upon VMware vSphere 4, the industry’s leading virtualization platform. VMware vSphere 4 includes unique enhancements for desktop virtualization, delivering better performance and higher virtual machine densities to support demanding desktop environments on a minimum number of servers, reducing overall costs.
• Centralized Security and Management — VMware View 4 will enable enterprises to significantly reduce the ongoing management and operating expenses associated with desktops. Centralized management, standardized desktop images and flexible provisioning and upgrades enable enterprises to manage thousands of users from a single console while bringing greater enforcement of security, permissions and compliance policies. Customer deployments consistently demonstrate administrative cost reductions of 50 percent or greater.
• Broad Ecosystem Alignment — Desktops as a managed service requires coordination between multiple software and hardware infrastructure providers to reduce the overall solution cost and to drive support and interoperability. Through close collaboration with key partners ranging from PCoIP hardware endpoints and other thin clients to management, security, storage and network infrastructure providers, and ISVs, VMware has further reduced acquisition costs and TCO for customers. VMware and partners have designed, built, and validated end-to-end solutions of hardware and software to take the guesswork out of designing a virtualized desktop deployment, documented in reference architectures

New Scalability and Performance Standards

VMware View 4 also raises the bar for performance and scalability of desktops with:

• Industry-Leading Virtualization Platform — VMware vSphere 4 will ensure scalability and consistent performance regardless of desktop loads and across peak usage periods, balancing resources and requirements for optimal performance, without disruption or downtime. Proven in the most demanding enterprise environments, vSphere will deliver unparalleled availability and business continuity for virtualized desktop environments, ensuring the highest level of performance without disruption to desktop users.
• Scalable Desktop Management — With VMware View 4, customers will be able to deploy and manage up to tens of thousands of desktops as a result of advancements in desktop brokering technology.
• Partner Ecosystem Optimization — VMware View takes advantage of unique optimization at the CPU, hardware, server and network levels to drive the highest performance, highest quality solutions. Partners also have provided reference architectures (http://www.vmware.com/products/view/resources.html) — blueprints showing best practices for deploying virtualized desktops — for VMware View 4.

Pricing and Availability

VMware View 4 will be generally available on November 19, 2009 through VMware sales and the company’s extensive network of OEM partners and channel partners.

VMware View 4 is a family of products available in two editions:

• VMware View 4, Enterprise Edition: includes VMware vSphere 4 for desktops, VMware vCenter 4 and VMware View Manager 4, a flexible desktop management server enabling IT administrators to quickly provision and tightly control user access.
• VMware View 4, Premier Edition: includes VMware vSphere 4 for desktops, VMware vCenter 4, VMware View Manager 4, VMware ThinApp 4 and VMware View Composer requirements.

VMware View 4 Enterprise Edition is priced at $150 per concurrent connection and the VMware View 4 Premier Edition is priced at $250 per concurrent connection.