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Is VMware Horizon Workspace Maturing Fast Enough?

We are nearly a month post-VMworld 2013 now and I’m still a bit shocked by the lack of End User Computing (EUC) news announced. Even though VMware has talked about how committed they are to the EUC space, there has been only a single update since they released VMware Horizon Suite back in March.

(Editor’s note: Learn more about the changes to Horizon Suite’s licensing in “VMware Horizon Suite Licensing Explained.”)

VMware Horizon Workspace: Not Enough Progress

In the weeks leading up to VMworld they released Horizon Workspace 1.5. This dot release did not add much functionality, but what it did add was the initial release of their mobile device management solution. But it only included support for Android, and the Apple IOS support that was due was held back. VMware is now re-architecting to support the updated features built into the newly released IOS7.

The mobile management solution is disappointing so far because of the following reasons:

Limited number of supported devices and cellular carriers are slow to adopt.
Does not seem to support Android-based tablets yet, only Android phones.
The overall features included are low, which is to be expected in a version 1 release. But with other competitors much further down the road with fully baked solutions, this leaves VMware stalled at the starting line.

(Image via VMware.)

I’m not sure when the next version of Horizon Workspace will be released, but VMware needs to make a big leap in the 2.0 version. It cannot simply add support for presenting XenApp applications and a few other small items. VMware needs to make a big leap and let customers know they are working hard on moving EUC forward rapidly and stop customers from looking at Citrix’s more complete suite.

These are a few things that I would like to see or expect VMware to get into an upcoming version if they want to win customers over.

Present applications directly to any device, AKA feature parity with XenApp.
Increase the policy options in Workspace for providing more advanced management of users and data.
Advance the features in Horizon data and integrate with windows shares and applications.

I am hoping that VMware is holding back some great news about Horizon products that they plan on announcing at VMworld 2013 in Barcelona on Oct. 14-17. Maybe they did not want to put out all the good news at once. We will know next month if there will be any EUC announcements and whether there is anything to be excited about.