VMware View 5.2 : Desktop Virtualization

Well today was interesting, a college and I sat down for lunch, and we were talking about VDI earlier, and wouldn’t you know it a technical lead for VMware View sat down with us. I can tell you there are big things on the horizon (Horizon Application Manager plug not intended!). That chance meeting was better than any session running today, direct to the source. My college and I asked him a few questions about Lync 2010 and Lync 2013, that question was, “Does VMware View fully support Lync hardware devices?” The quick answer is this, YES, VMware View 5.2 fully supports all Lync hardware via USB passthrough. Obviously make sure the hardware at the client side supports it, but you get the point.

So aside from that major question I had for using Lync and Lync Phones with VDI, I want to point out some new features of View 5.2…

• Media Services for rich 3D graphics
• Media Services for unified communications
• Horizon View HTML access
• VMware Horizon View Clients
• Windows 8 support
• Improved large-scale management
• VMware vCenter Server virtual appliance support

Block diagram of Horizon Application Manager (click to enlarge)

Thanks to the register for the above block diagram.

If you want more information on each point above, check out the PDF. For all  the information, pricing download links etc. go to the VMware Horizon View homepage.