Horizon 8 Reviews

VMware Horizon View is easily scalable. Its onboarding is easy and comes with flash provisioning features. 

We would like to see better performance with the product. 

I rate the tool's stability an eight out of ten. 

I rate VMware Horizon View's salability a nine out of ten. My company has more than 3000 users. We continue to onboard around 20-30 percent of new users. 

I rate the tool's initial deployment an eight out of ten. Deployment takes two to three hours to complete. It is a simple OEM SOP. You need around two resources to complete the deployment. 

We did VMware Horizon View's deployment in-house. 

VMware Horizon View pricing is high compared to other solutions. I rate it two out of ten. Its licensing costs are monthly. 

It is better to go for AVD on a private cloud than a public one since private clouds are expensive. I rate the solution a five out of ten. 

My company had deployed the solution for one of our customers earlier, and they still use it to date with around 6,000 users and 2,000 virtual desktops.

Compared to Citrix, which is one of VMware's main competitors, VMware Horizon View is easy to manage on top of the VPN connections and, owing to the integration it allows with the VPN part, makes up for some of its main features. With VMware Horizon View, the configuration, deployment, manageability, VMware vRealize Operations Manager, and everything else is much better in my experience.

With VMware Horizon View, we could deliver it without any issues and meet the current requirements of our company's customers. The integration part and other such areas are present in the solution. If it can manage or if a user can integrate VMware Horizon View with thin clients or zero clients, then a user can have a single pane of glass for managing both the physical and the virtual environment then it could be a good addition since it is one of the only areas where the product lacks.

The technical support offered by VMware is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required.

I have been using VMware Horizon View since 2011.

As the product runs on VMware vSphere, my company has not faced any issues with it, and it has been very stable. The only issues my company faced with the product were related to storage and performance issues.

It is a very scalable solution.

My company deals with four customers who use the solution.

With the technical support team, sometimes my company faces some issues, especially when we try to contact the customer support team of VMware. The quality of support service is not that good, especially if you compare it with the other products available on the market. Sometimes, there is a need for support in my company at midnight, and then we realize that the support team of VMware operates in another time zone.

The product's initial setup phase was neither very straightforward nor too complex.

I deployed the solution some time ago, and since then, we have had to keep upgrading the solution in my company. The deployment process doesn't take more than a week or a week and a half for VMware Horizon View deployment in the whole infrastructure.

The deployment itself is not too complex, but the planning part needs to be done properly. In our company, we plan our user groups, use cases, and everything else, including the area related to storage sizing. Deployment-wise, I don't see much complexity.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

My company deals with customers who use both subscription-based and perpetual licenses. For long-term use, perpetual licenses are more cost-effective, and for short-term use, subscription-based would be more cost-effective. Price-wise, I would say that VMware Horizon View's prices are comparable to that of Citrix, but Horizon View comes with some underlying licenses.

I recommend the solution to those who plan to use it.

VMware Horizon View is a very good product, especially if I compare it with other products, like Citrix. As a product and solution, VMware Horizon View is good.

I recommend to those who plan to use the solution to take care of the planning part related to the product, and before you use the solution, you need to identify the use cases for which the solution will be used. When it comes to VMware Horizon View, the initial planning has to be perfect, without which there will be some difficulties.

I rate the overall tool a seven and a half out of ten.

In our case, it's for our own internal use. Let's say I am at home, and there's an issue with our customer. Something has happened. I can connect using Secureline and log on to this virtual desktop, accessing the system from there. So it's only for internal use.

From my standpoint, the desktop is the most valuable feature. 

What I would like to see improved is not so much about the product. It's more about how to get information about products. It's always too much sales pitching and fancy works and stuff. This helps you improve this and that but doesn't tell me how. 

It's just hard to find information when you want to set up a system or find what can be good for a specific customer. You want to find something. That's where the documentation comes in, and explains how it will improve. So that's my biggest problem with everybody who makes a product. 

It says this will make your life so much better. Yes, but how would it make it better? That's the hard part to find. That kind of information is hard to find, really. So it makes it hard to find products. 

Therefore, I always have to call the vendor and ask for a meeting, and they have to make a demonstration. The process becomes so lengthy and exhausting sometimes because you have to make notes for everything. "Okay, this works like this," and "You can use it for that." And then you have to talk to the next one, compare. So I would like that to be my opinion. If they could think from the perspective of a technician, he doesn't want to hear all this fancy talk. That's my opinion. 

I have been using this solution for over half a year. 

I've only used it a few times, and it was very stable. The performance was good.

About 15 of us in our organization are using the solution. Our current size is sufficient.

The initial setup is easy. It's a remote desktop, not that fancy. It's easy to manage with just one guy.

I have used Citrix. 

Overall, I would rate the solution a ten out of ten. 

Horizon is used to create virtual desktops. It's helpful for people who want to transition from large desktops and laptops to more virtual desktops. More people are working remotely, and that freaks out IT departments when they can't get access to an employee's desktop. We are seeing a lot of demand for virtual desktops for remote working.

Horizon allows us to sell a solution to customers.

VMware Horizon View is easy to configure and deploy.

The cost of licenses is always a challenge. I would also like the deployment to be simplified and automated to be more streamlined. It would be helpful for managing. For example, if you are deploying 900, it would be nice to automate the management of groups of 30 or 40 or whatever you're doing. Automation and deployment tools would be good.

We've used VMware Horizon View off and on since it was first introduced in 2006. I have been messing around with VMware since early in my career. It's probably been about 18 months since I last did a direct Horizon solution. 

Horizon View is pretty stable.

Horizon View has been scalable enough for everything I've done so far. The last deployment was about 900 users. It was a mixture of office workers and managers.

VMware support is okay, but sometimes it's a little bit hit or miss trying to get somebody who knows what they're doing and talking about.

Our customers switched from more of a traditional laptop or desktop environment where they were maintaining 900 different systems and trying to keep them patched and updated. A VDI is helpful for tracking ransomware or viruses because you can lock down systems more easily when they're centrally controlled.

Setting up Horizon is probably not easy for an inexperienced person. You can't just read the manual and do it. You need some experience to set it up. It's not overly complex, but it also isn't so simple that you could deploy it yourself if you've never done it before.

It took about two or three months because you can't just roll it out. You have to migrate the users in batches. If you're rolling out a thousand users, you can't just turn it on and have at it with a thousand. You deploy 30 and migrate a department and then do another. That's the case with any virtual desktop solution. Rolling it out is always going to be a more gradual process than a big bang all at once overnight.

VMware has tools to calculate projected ROI. The customers don't hit that projection, but they get relatively close. Typically the projected return is higher than what customers actually see.

The pricing can be relatively competitive, but sometimes you have to go back to VMware and ask for additional discounts. You can make it competitive If you're prepared to put in the work. The list prices and standard discounts may not be competitive, but if you push hard enough, you can get the price to where you need it to be.

When you deploy the solution, the goal is to reduce normal operating costs by making it easier to keep your devices updated and patched. Obviously, there are hardware costs for running virtual machines, so there are additional costs depending on where you're running it, especially if you're using the standard hybrid cloud. If you use the Horizon Cloud, it's a different pricing model.

I'd rate VMware Horizon View seven out of 10. If you want to simplify management and retain control, give it some serious thought. If you're allowing users to work on their own devices, it's necessary. If everybody has their own laptops, you want to use something like Horizon or VDI to manage your corporate applications. It's absolutely essential for that type of environment.

VMware Horizon 7 is used for remote access to allow the users to work from home.

The most valuable feature of VMware Horizon 7 is its ease of use.

VMware Horizon 7 could improve by supporting the active-active data center. At this time we are only deploying it in the production environment. Our customer is considered to deploy the VMware Horizon 7 to a secondary data center, but we found out that it cannot fully support the user in the deployment in the active-active data center. Any improvement on this would be beneficial.

I have been using VMware Horizon 7 for approximately two years.

VMware Horizon 7 could improve stability.

The scalability of VMware Horizon 7 is very good. We have 100 users using this solution in my organization.

We typically open up the support page in VMware Horizon 7 for help. I did not find it very helpful but they tried their best.

We previously used Citrix before we chose VMware Horizon 7. The pricing of Citrix was better.

The initial setup of VMware Horizon 7 depends but for most it is easy. It took us one month.

We used a consultant to implement this solution.

The price of VMware Horizon 7 is more than some other solutions.

I rate VMware Horizon 7 a five out of ten.

We use this solution for our virtual desktop infrastructure where the user's desktops are running the data center using Horizon. With the increase in the number of people working from home, we wanted a solution like Horizon. We are customers and I'm a resident consultant. 

The major advantage of this solution is that users can log in from anywhere and from a variety of devices. Previously, it was difficult for us to manage but when we moved to VDI and people were able to log in from anywhere, it made a huge difference. I like that we're able to take a snapshot of the desktop. 

Reporting could be improved. We have 200-300 users and it's difficult to know who has logged in and when. We have to do this manually so having a tool that would enable the export of reporting would be useful and save a lot of time.

I've been using this solution for six months. 

The solution is stable and highly reliable. We haven't had any issues with bugs, users are able to plug in properly, and the VMs are working fine.

Scalability is good. We initially started with four servers and within a month we have scaled it up, adding an additional four servers. We initially purchased 100 licenses and then another 100. It was simple and straightforward to scale up.

We contacted support for implementing the SSL certificate and for enabling the MFA. The support was good and we were able to resolve our issues. 

The initial setup was simple and straightforward although it will be more difficult for anyone who doesn't have experience. We have around 200 users and deployment took about three days. We have one admin for patching and updating.

Licensing is on an annual basis and quite costly. 

We use this solution heavily and I would definitely recommend it. 

I'd like to rate this solution more highly, but because of the issue with reporting, I rate it eight out of 10. 

VMware Horizon is focused on VDI and application delivery. Organizations use VMware Horizon to deliver third-party applications to their end users. This is facilitated by Horizon's VDI solution, which provides the necessary infrastructure and management capabilities.

The console is straightforward and easy to understand for the end user. It can be deployed on any device, including iPads and Mac OS. Users can access their daily applications and resources provided by the VMware Horizon environment from any device.

It covers and deploy legacy applications to customers who are using outdated operating systems. Legacy applications run only on older computers, but with the power of Horizon, they can be deployed on any device. With recent changes, Horizon operates with a high degree of independence. It enables users to work anytime, anywhere, on any device.

VMware Horizon is best in class product, but they should the improve its connectivity of the agents deployed. They should create their own virtualization infrastructure to host their horizon moving forward.

I have been using VMware Horizon for four years.

We encountered licensing issues. It uses a newer type of licensing, leveraging the cloud for auto licensing rather than using a traditional license key. This change should be discussed with the customer moving forward. To address this, we needed to replace some of our components to connect with the tenants for auto licensing.

I rate the solution's stability a seven out of ten.

The scalability depends on the underlying infrastructure. Horizon operates with VMware vSphere. As long as the company regularly reviews the scalability and virtualization information, Horizon can be easily scaled up or down based on the requirements.

I rate it a seven out of ten.

Currently (Q1 of 2024), raising a ticket with VMware Horizon can be challenging with recent changes (Migration due to recent product acquisitions). Some of the customer portals and support portals are undergoing migration, making it difficult to access them directly and submit tickets.

Negative

The initial setup of VMware Horizon can be time-consuming since it involves deploying various components. There are separate components that you need to deploy as part of Horizon. You may have to deploy other components that can be integrated with Horizon. For instance, a Microsoft server that hosts the RDSH can be added to the Horizon environment. This kind of integration with different products can add complexity, making the implementation of VMware Horizon medium in terms of difficulty.

Deployment depends on the number of agents to be deployed on end-user devices & the number of VM's or VDI components to be deployed in the implementation. On average, it takes two weeks for deployment.

I rate the initial setup a six out of ten.

Compared to other VDI providers like Citrix or other VDI provider, it stands on par in terms of cost. It is neither cheaper nor expensive, but comparable to the standard pricing in the market.

VDI can be beneficial in many instances and use cases. One example is when you have existing users accessing the company network. For users who shift roles or locations but use the same laptop, VDI is advantageous. Instead of purchasing a physical hardware device for each individual user, you can build the infrastructure and deploy VMs for them to use moving forward. This approach simplifies onboarding and offboarding users, as VDI allows easy management of user accounts. 

VMware Horizon is a key component in deploying and providing a comprehensive digital workspace for organizations. Horizon can be used independently or integrated with other VMware products to create a unified digital workspace. It supports VPN and enhances the digital employee experience by using AI functionality to learn user behavior. This AI capability helps seamlessly identify and analyze any issues within the company, ensuring a smooth and efficient working environment. It includes various networking and monitoring tools, such as those provided by VMware virtual infrastructure VMware, which contribute to a robust and secure organizational framework.

VMware Horizon is still undergoing a migration process. This could be attributed to VMware's acquisition by Broadcom, followed by the sale of the digital workspace pillar, which includes the Horizon product. Horizon may have established its own company as part of this migration process, leading to issues, particularly with the portals.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

We use the solution for the virtual desktop environment. Our customers are mostly from the financial sector. 

The solution's most valuable feature is low bandwidth consumption. It helps to improve user experience.  

VMware Horizon View needs to improve orchestration and integrate additional images. I would also like to see its statistics.

I have been working with the solution for eight years. 

I rate the solution's stability an eight out of ten. 

I rate the product's scalability an eight out of ten. My company has four financial enterprise customers using it. 

The technical team assigned someone promptly whenever we encountered any issues, and the issues were resolved. 

Positive

I rate VMware Horizon View's deployment a five out of ten. You must install different components to get it working, which is cumbersome. We completed the deployment in three to four days. Once the hardware is in place, you proceed to provision your password and select the components you want to use.

I rate the product's pricing a seven out of ten. Pricing can be an obstacle for smaller businesses. Pricing is fixed, and there are no additional costs. 

I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.