https://www.channelfutures.com/wp-content/themes/channelfutures_child/assets/images/logo/footer-new-logo.png
  • Home
  • Technologies
    • Back
    • SDN/SD-WAN
    • Cloud
    • RMM/PSA
    • Security
    • Telephony/UC/Collaboration
    • Cable
    • Mobility & Wireless
    • Fiber/Ethernet
    • Data Centers
    • Backup & Disaster Recovery
    • IoT
    • Desktop
    • Artificial Intelligence
    • Analytics
  • Strategy
    • Back
    • Mergers and Acquisitions
    • Channel Research
    • Business Models
    • Distribution
    • Technology Solutions Brokerages
    • Sales & Marketing
    • Best Practices
    • Vertical Markets
    • Regulation & Compliance
  • MSP 501
    • Back
    • MSP 501 Rankings
    • NextGen 101 Rankings
  • Intelligence
    • Back
    • Galleries
    • Podcasts
    • From the Industry
    • Reports/Digital Issues
    • Webinars
    • White Papers
  • Channel Futures TV
  • EMEA
  • Channel Chatter
    • Back
    • People on the Move
    • New/Changing Channel Programs
    • New Products & Services
    • Industry Honors
  • Resources
    • Back
    • Channel Futures 20: Top Tech Providers
    • Advisory Boards
    • Industry Organizations
    • Our Sponsors
    • Advertise
    • 2023 Editorial Calendar
  • Awards
    • Back
    • 2022 MSP 501
    • Channel Influencers
    • Circle of Excellence
    • DE&I 101
    • Technology Advisor 101 (TA 101)
    • Channel Leaders Lists
  • Events
    • Back
    • 2023 Call for Speakers
    • CP Conference & Expo
    • MSP Summit
    • Channel Partners Europe
    • Channel Partners Event Coverage
    • Webinars
    • Industry Events
  • About Us
  • DE&I
Channel Futures
  • NEWSLETTER
  • Home
  • Technologies
    • Back
    • SDN/SD-WAN
    • Cloud
    • RMM/PSA
    • Security
    • Telephony/UC/Collaboration
    • Cable
    • Mobility & Wireless
    • Fiber/Ethernet
    • Data Centers
    • Backup & Disaster Recovery
    • IoT
    • Desktop
    • Artificial Intelligence
    • Analytics
  • Strategy
    • Back
    • Mergers and Acquisitions
    • Channel Research
    • Business Models
    • Distribution
    • Technology Solutions Brokerages
    • Sales & Marketing
    • Best Practices
    • Vertical Markets
    • Regulation & Compliance
  • MSP 501
    • Back
    • MSP 501 Rankings
    • NextGen 101 Rankings
  • Intelligence
    • Back
    • Galleries
    • Podcasts
    • From the Industry
    • Reports/Digital Issues
    • Webinars
    • White Papers
  • Channel Futures TV
  • EMEA
  • Channel Chatter
    • Back
    • People on the Move
    • New/Changing Channel Programs
    • New Products & Services
    • Industry Honors
  • Resources
    • Back
    • Channel Futures 20: Top Tech Providers
    • Advisory Boards
    • Industry Organizations
    • Our Sponsors
    • Advertise
    • 2023 Editorial Calendar
  • Awards
    • Back
    • 2022 MSP 501
    • Channel Influencers
    • Circle of Excellence
    • DE&I 101
    • Technology Advisor 101 (TA 101)
    • Channel Leaders Lists
  • Events
    • Back
    • 2023 Call for Speakers
    • CP Conference & Expo
    • MSP Summit
    • Channel Partners Europe
    • Channel Partners Event Coverage
    • Webinars
    • Industry Events
  • About Us
  • DE&I
    • Newsletter
  • REGISTER
  • MSPs
  • VARs / SIs
  • Agents
  • Cloud Service Providers
  • Channel Partners Events
 Channel Futures

Virtualization


VMware's Pat Gelsinger and Ray O'Farrell on stage at VWworld 2018.

VMware Adds Intelligence, Integrated AirWatch Mobility Management to Workspace One

  • Written by Jeffrey Schwartz
  • August 29, 2018
VMware showcased its forthcoming Workspace One upgrade at VMworld with an integrated AirWatch UEM agent, extended Windows 10 management and AirLift to ease migration from Microsoft’s SCCM and extended endpoint support.

(Pictured above: VMware’s Pat Gelsinger and Ray O’Farrell on stage at VWworld 2018.)

VMWARE VMWORLD — VMware is broadening the reach and capabilities of its Workspace One digital virtual client and application management environment with extended capability and support for Windows 10 PCs, mobile PCs and IoT-based edge devices.

The company demonstrated its new Workspace ONE Intelligent Hub at this week’s VMworld in Las Vegas. It combines into one application the Workspace One digital end user environment with VMware’s AirWatch device and policy management tool for protecting information across corporate and employee-owned devices.

Workspace One is VMware’s digital workspace and unified endpoint management (UEM) platform designed to give workers access to their desktop configurations and applications on any system or device. By integrating the AirWatch Agent with Workspace One, the new “intelligent hub” provides a single source of management, said Jeff McGrath, VMware’s senior director of product marketing for Workspace One.

“It’s a lot easier for the user because we can use that central point on the device to pipe more services to them and make it a more usable and feature-rich application,” McGrath told Channel Futures. The new Workspace One Intelligent Hub user experience provides an embedded URL into the user workspace that defaults to an intranet or external web page, a notification service to issue organizational alerts and a search interface for finding contacts and those within a group.

“We will continue to add to intelligent hub with more capabilities to bring more engagement and value to the employee,” McGrath said. “For example, we’ll probably add some type of how-to capability so users can reset passwords, recover encryption keys [and] fix simple issues without opening a help-desk ticket to keep them working quicker, if there’s an issue.”

McGrath said the company is in the early stages of training its solution-provider and integration partners on the new Workspace One upgrade, which is set for release by Nov. 2.

“All of our certification courses already up to date on these new features,” McGrath said.

Early Adoption

The new Workspace One Intelligent Hub is a critical focus of VMware’s portfolio and competes with Citrix Workspace, both of which are still in the early stages of delivering applications to workers on multiple devices and form factors, said Bob O’Donnell, president and chief analyst with TECHnalysis Research.

“They’ve been talking about this for years and years, but I think the combination of SaaS-based applications and the growth that they’ve had, as well as people starting to embrace the PC-as-a-service model, is getting people to think differently about how they manage their devices as well as how they deliver applications,” O’Donnell said. “It’s all part of the bigger picture of how the market is thinking about moving towards workspace as a service.”

As reported earlier this week, VMware also has tapped the PC business unit of corporate parent Dell Technologies to offer systems with Workspace One pre-installed and ready to provision. The Dell Provisioning for Workspace ONE will give employees their Win32 applications pre-installed, allowing them to be used once they enroll or recover their systems. It also enables self-service recovery.

“You give [employees] their credentials, and everything else is delivered by Workspace ONE — your image, your software, everything patched and upgraded, transforming your business beginning from your device experience,” said VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger, speaking in the opening keynote address at VMworld.

AirLift for Windows 10 Migration

One part of the new Workspace One release that VMware said is now generally available is AirLift, a connector promised earlier this year designed to provide a faster way to move away from Microsoft’s System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM).

While SCCM is the default management tool used by large Windows shops for more than 20 years, Microsoft has signaled that organizations should plan to transition to a more modern approach to managing Windows 10.  

Small and midsize organizations can shift to the modern UEM approach more easily than large enterprises, which typically maintain various Windows images, group policies, have more legacy applications, and are accustomed to using SCCM with Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) to roll out updates and patches.

VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger on stage at VMware VMworld 2018.

While Microsoft believes its own Azure-based Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS) service is the most viable approach for those looking to shift to Windows 10’s modern UEM model, the company also opened the EMS Intune Graph APIs to VMware and other UEM providers.

VMware has incorporated those APIs into the new Workspace One release, which also incorporates behavioral analytics capabilities it gained from last year’s acquisition of Apteligent, to add more predictive-management capabilities.

For example, it can help determine if an OS should accept patches and updates based on the version of apps on the device, hardware and aligned with group policy objects (GPOs). Now that Microsoft gives Windows 10 feature updates twice per year in addition to regular patch releases, managing the provisioning of these updates is critical.

Microsoft’s co-management option that lets organizations use SCCM and Intune together supports a limited number of workloads, according to McGrath.

“So basically, you’re stuck with two solutions for some period of time,” he said.

McGrath said the AirLift server-side connector provides an iterative approach to SCCM co-management by automating the migration of SCCM collections and PC life-cycle management (PCLM) workloads, including Win32 application packages, to Workspace One.

“Our goal with AirLift is to make it as quick as possible a transition if that’s what you want to do,” McGrath said.

Workspace One also includes Center for Internet Security (CIS) and other templates with polices that configure Group Policies over-the-air, providing GPO coverage that extends beyond native mobile-device management (MDM).

Asked to what extent VMware is working with MSPs to enable them to provide managed UEM services with Workspace One, McGrath said the company will step up that effort in the beginning of 2019.

“I still think Windows 10 modern management is in the very beginning of its life cycle,” he said. “Sales implementations led by partners are just beginning.”

Extending Horizon

VMware also intends to offer integration of its Horizon 7 catalog of VDI, virtual applications and SaaS services offered with the Workspace One Intelligence platform, which will allow for implementation of policies, enable monitoring and update images.

The company released previews of Instant Clones, App Volumes and User Environment for Horizon 7 for its VMware Cloud on AWS offering. VMware also extended the VM types and regions Horizon is available on Microsoft Azure, including Azure Government.

Horizon 7 also will have extended GPU support for AMD Radion Pro 340 MxGPUs and NVIDIA Tesla V100 graphics cards and vMotion for NVIDIA GPUs.  

Added Device and IoT Support

In addition to offering improved Windows 10 migration and management services, the updated Workspace One will offer unified support for Android Enterprise profiles and Samsung’s Knox mobile device management tool, MacOS app life-cycle enforcement and Google Glass.

During the VMworld keynote session, VMware CTO Ray O’Farrell demonstrated ESXi on ARM, a hypervisor for bare-metal 64-bit ARM servers.

“There’s a whole new class of computing devices at the edge, embedded or IoT,” Farrell said. “In many cases these will be in factories, your buildings controlling air conditioning, etc. This new class of computing needs to be managed and secured.”  

Tags: Agents Cloud Service Providers MSPs VARs/SIs Analytics Cloud IoT Mobility & Wireless Security Specialty Practices Strategy Technologies Virtualization

Most Recent


  • Making Waves
    7 Channel People Making Waves This Week at TD Synnex, Veeam, Kaseya, Zendesk, More
    Microsoft has discovered malicious activity by a state-sponsored threat actor based in China.
  • Businessman reading cloud computing news
    Cloud Computing News: VMware, Celigo, Google Cloud, AWS Dominate the Week
    Find out what the vendors are up to this week and how partners are impacted.
  • OffSec Partners Get Expanded Global Partner Program
    The expanded partner program includes three new partner types.
  • Tech investments
    3 Ways Businesses Can Optimize Their Tech Investments
    Help customers start small, minimize risk and demonstrate business value in a condensed time frame.

Leave a comment Cancel reply

-or-

Log in with your Channel Futures account

Alternatively, post a comment by completing the form below:

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Content

  • 5G security challenges
    6 Ways to Ready Your Customers for 5G Security Challenges
  • Multicloud
    VMware Cloud Assumes New Mantle as Multicloud Adoption Soars
  • Businessman chasing after a dangling carrot incentive
    VMware Rolls Out New Partner Incentives Based on Customer Life Cycle
  • Dell Reveals First Intel Xeon Ice Lake, AMD Gen 3 EPYC Servers

Upcoming Events

View all

Channel Partners Europe

June 13, 2023 - June 14, 2023

Channel Futures Leadership Summit

October 30, 2023 - November 2, 2023

Channel Partners Conference & Expo

March 11, 2024 - March 14, 2024

Galleries

View all

7 Channel People Making Waves This Week at TD Synnex, Veeam, Kaseya, Zendesk, More

June 2, 2023

Cloud Computing News: VMware, Celigo, Google Cloud, AWS Dominate the Week

June 2, 2023

Channel People on the Move: HPE, Lumen, Sophos, TD Synnex, AireSpring, More

June 1, 2023

Industry Perspectives

View all

Dell Technologies World: Dell Apex Expanded Across On-Premises, Cloud and Edge

May 22, 2023

Identity Is Increasingly Valuable – and Targeted

May 18, 2023

Gaining a Competitive Advantage through AV Managed Services

May 10, 2023

Webinars

View all

From Problem to Profit: Mastering the Science of Selling Using Business Outcomes

May 9, 2023

Meet the 2023 Channel Futures Channel Influencers

April 13, 2023

DE&I Dialogue: How the Right DE&I Initiatives Can Propel Your Business

April 5, 2023

White Papers

View all

6 UCaaS Reseller Challenges and How Real World Businesses Solved Them

February 1, 2023

Frost Radar: North American UCaaS Market, 2022

February 1, 2023

The Complete Guide to White-Label UCaaS for Reseller Success

February 1, 2023

Channel Futures TV

View all

Coffee with Craig and James Episode No. 123: MartinWolf M&A Advisors, CP Expo Preview

UScellular Takes On Rivals with Partner Program Simplicity

April 21, 2023

OpenText Simplifying Deal Registration, Doubling Down on MDF

April 21, 2023

Everything-as-a-Service: CloudBlue Touts Critical Customer Transition

April 18, 2023

Twitter

MSP 501

The industry's largest and most comprehensive partner awards program.

Newsletters and Updates

Sign up for The Channel Report, Channel Futures Update, MSP 501 Newsletter and more.

Live Channel Events

Get the latest information on the next industry-leading Channel Partners event.

Galleries

Educational slide shows and images from live events.

Media Kit And Advertising

Want to reach our audience? Access our media kit.

DISCOVER MORE FROM INFORMA TECH

  • Channel Partners Events
  • Telecoms.com
  • MSP 501
  • Black Hat
  • IoT World Today
  • Omdia

WORKING WITH US

  • Contact
  • About Us
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter

FOLLOW Channel Futures ON SOCIAL

  • Privacy
  • CCPA: “Do Not Sell My Data”
  • Cookie Policy
  • Terms
Copyright © 2023 Informa PLC. Informa PLC is registered in England and Wales with company number 8860726 whose registered and Head office is 5 Howick Place, London, SW1P 1WG.
This website uses cookies, including third party ones, to allow for analysis of how people use our website in order to improve your experience and our services. By continuing to use our website, you agree to the use of such cookies. Click here for more information on our Cookie Policy and Privacy Policy.
X