Greater deployment flexibility with Horizon Cloud and Platform9

With rising infrastructure costs and shifting licensing models, organizations may be reevaluating their approach to traditional virtualization platforms. For organizations that want to keep Horizon but want more infrastructure options, private cloud alternatives are gaining traction. To support this shift, Omnissa is broadening deployment options for Omnissa Horizon Cloud through its OpenStack Edge. As part of that expansion, Horizon Cloud now integrates with Platform9 to offer IT teams another flexible path for delivering virtual desktops and apps on private cloud infrastructure. 

By combining Horizon Cloud desktop-as-a-service platform with Platform9’s Private Cloud Director, enterprises gain a modern foundation that unites desktop and app delivery with a robust private cloud control plane. This approach gives IT leaders more control over their infrastructure strategy without requiring new hardware investments or disruptive re-architecture. Let’s dive in and learn more about these solutions.  

IT Leaders can choose which deployment model fits their use case for their datacenter workloads with the infrastructure managed by Platform 9 either through Platform9’s hosted service. 

IT Leaders can choose which deployment model fits their use case for their datacenter workloads with the infrastructure managed by Platform 9 either through Platform9’s hosted service (option above) or by being locally installed in each datacenter.  In both cases, the DaaS control plane remains in the cloud and requires connectivity to Platform 9 for lifecycle management of the workloads. 

Unified management and hybrid flexibility with Horizon Cloud 

Omnissa Horizon Cloud is a cloud-first, multi-cloud Desktop as a Service (DaaS) platform built on Thin Edge Infrastructure. It provides a single solution to deploy and manage desktops and applications across hybrid cloud environments, offering global visibility, centralized access control, cross-cloud entitlements, and open APIs for automation. To support hybrid flexibility and centralized control, Horizon Cloud features a next-generation architecture that bridges the Horizon Cloud control plane with on-premises environments, such as Platform9. The Horizon Edge, which includes the Omnissa Horizon Edge Gateway and Omnissa Unified Access Gateway, securely manages communication, telemetry, and authentication across environments and enables centralized management through the Horizon Cloud control plane while maintaining secure connectivity and consistent performance.  

Horizon Cloud integrates with Platform9 Private Cloud Director to connect cloud management with on-premises capacity. The Horizon control plane handles brokering, automation, and monitoring, while Platform9 Edge manages the local infrastructure, networking, and user capacity for desktops and apps. 

A familiar operational model with more flexibility  

Private Cloud Director offers organizations an alternative to traditional hypervisor stacks while preserving the deployment model and user experience they already rely on.  It delivers the familiarity IT teams expect from enterprise virtualization platforms while turning their existing infrastructure into a full-featured private cloud.  That experience is reinforced across several key areas. 

Familiar virtual machine (VM) management without the learning curve 

Platform9 offers the enterprise features customers expect including high availability, live migration, software-defined networking, and automated workload balancing to help ensure Horizon workloads remain resilient and uninterrupted. The GUI-based interface mirrors the workflows IT administrators already use, minimizing operational disruption and avoiding costly retraining. 

Horizon Cloud integrates with Platform9 Private Cloud Director to deliver virtual desktops and apps on private infrastructure, uniting cloud management with familiar enterprise operations tools and hardware. 

 Enterprise cloud ready at scale 

Private Cloud Director supports large-scale virtual desktop and app delivery across centralized data centers and distributed edge locations, using infrastructure customers already own. It can scale to thousands of VMs and hundreds of hosts without requiring new architectures, and it supports both traditional VM-based workloads and containerized applications on the same platform. Built-in enterprise security features maintain control and governance as environments grow, giving customers confidence that Horizon can run at scale without compromising their operating model. 

Integrated and extensible by design 

Platform9 integrates with the ecosystem IT teams already depend on, from storage platforms like Dell/EMC, NetApp, Pure Storage, HPE, and IBM to server hardware from Cisco, Lenovo, Dell, and HPE. It also connects with backup and recovery tools including Veeam, Commvault, Rubrik, Cohesity, and Veritas, and works seamlessly with operational systems like Splunk, ServiceNow, Okta, and New Relic. This lets customers shift their Horizon desktop and apps without replacing existing tools, disrupting workflows, or abandoning current investments. 

Migration without disruption 

Platform9 also gives organizations a straightforward way to migrate without rearchitecting their environment. With its vJailbreak capability, admins can move live or cold workloads from vSphere clusters in weeks and at a fraction of the cost of traditional re-platforming efforts. Migrations can scale to tens of thousands of VMs across thousands of hosts while maintaining performance and visibility. For Horizon customers, this provides a practical way to transition infrastructure without disrupting desktop and app access. 

Moving forward with Horizon and Platform9 

Horizon Cloud’s integration with Platform9 Private Cloud Director gives organizations the ability to deploy and manage desktops and apps on a private cloud infrastructure using the data center investments they already have. It supports customers that want more control over underlying infrastructure while keeping the Horizon experience in place. By extending Horizon Cloud to run on Platform9 through Omnissa’s OpenStack Edge, IT teams gain another deployment option that preserves both investment and control. 

The joint solution is currently in beta. Customers interested in participating can contact us at getHorizonCloudWithPlatform9Beta@omnissa.com.