For years, desktop virtualization customers have faced a familiar choice. You either manage everything yourself, or let someone else manage everything for you.
I’ve always felt it was kind of like choosing between a car that you fully maintain, repair and drive with the control of a manual 4 speed. Or using one of those autonomous vehicles that just does it all for you, including running the stop signs.
Digital workspaces, or VDI, have followed a similar pattern. Organizations could deploy and manage their own Horizon environment, controlling every component, every upgrade, every integration, and every operational decision. Or they could move to a cloud-delivered service and offload much of that responsibility.
Both approaches work. Both have tradeoffs. And both are tailored to fit your needs and preferences.
With the recent announcement of Horizon Cloud on Nutanix now in Limited Availability, customers now have a new option that sits comfortably between those two extremes, and honestly, I think that's what makes this announcement very interesting.
Not because it's another deployment model but because it changes who manages what.
The Problem Nobody Actually Wants to Solve
I've spent years, 30 years! talking with EUC customers.Is that even possible? I feel like I’m 32. :)
Nobody wakes up in the morning hoping to spend more time managing brokers, gateways, control planes, upgrading windows, monitoring systems, and lifecycle operations. I know I don’t. I wake up in the morning and take inventory of which body parts hurt the most. ;)
What they want is simple:
- Secure digital workspaces
- Great user experiences
- Reliable operations
- Happy users
- Fewer 2:00 AM surprises
The challenge is that delivering those outcomes often requires managing a lot of moving parts behind the scenes.
And that's why I think Horizon Cloud on Nutanix matters.
It helps shift some of that operational responsibility away from IT without requiring organizations to give up control of where their desktops and applications actually run.
What Runs Where?
This is usually the first question customers ask. “What components run in the cloud and are managed by Omnissa and what do I manage on-prem?”
Omnissa Manages
With Horizon Cloud, Omnissa delivers and manages much of the Horizon service layer, including cloud-based management and control plane capabilities. So in practical terms, customers gain access to cloud-delivered Horizon services while reducing the number of Horizon platform services they need to operate directly.
Nutanix Runs
Your desktops, applications, and infrastructure continue to run on Nutanix, same as it ever was.
That means customers continue leveraging:
- Nutanix AHV
- Nutanix storage
- Nutanix networking
- Prism Central operations
- Existing operational skillsets
- Existing infrastructure investments
Customers can keep desktop and application workloads on Nutanix infrastructure, it’s the management experience that evolves.
Which is exactly the way it should be.
Simplified? Yes.
Less control? Not really.
Just different responsibilities.
And for many organizations I speak to, those are exactly the responsibilities they want to keep.
Why Buyers Should Care
This isn't just about architecture diagrams. It's about outcomes. Organizations are under pressure to deliver more than ever from their digital workspace environments.
Employees expect seamless experiences. Security teams expect enhanced protection. Business leaders expect efficiency. And apparently every department has an AI initiative now. Could this really be my first mention of AI in this blog??
What customers don't want is more complexity. Horizon Cloud on Nutanix helps address that challenge by allowing organizations to consume more of the Horizon management experience as a service while continuing to leverage Nutanix as the infrastructure foundation.
The result is a simpler operational model that can help teams focus less on maintaining infrastructure services and more on delivering outcomes.
Looking Ahead
What excites me most isn't the technology itself. It's the direction. For years, organizations have been forced to choose between control and simplicity. This starts to blur that line.
Some customers will continue managing everything themselves. We’ll call them the Porsche 911 with 6 speed manual transmission.
Some will consume fully managed DaaS offerings. We’ll call them the Tesla C series with auto drive.
Others will land somewhere in the middle. We’ll call them the Corvette Stingray with the 8 speed dual clutch, they get the casual ease of a cruiser until the driver takes over gears manually to unleash the power of the V8.
That's probably where most organizations live anyway. Not fully cloud. Not fully traditional. Just looking for the right balance of control, simplicity, and operational efficiency.
Or, as I've been saying a lot lately: Simplify VDI. Amplify Outcomes.
Learn more: Horizon Cloud on Nutanix – Limited Availability