Popular rivals Microsoft and VMware are teaming up at last with a common objective,boost VMware applications using VMware technology.Windows security executive Jim Alkove and VMware EUC GM Sanjay Poonen announced the alliance at a VMware conference Tuesday in San Francisco.
The new initiative is to deliver Windows 10 apps to PCs using AirWatch’s enterprise mobility management suite,that VMware bought last year for about $1.5 billion and VMware’s App Volumes app delivery and layering technology.VMware said,this technology that is targeted at businesses seeking to distribute and manage their corporate applications with Windows 10.
Mark Lockwood, research director for VMware EUC said that:
Microsoft has shown a propensity under [CEO] Satya Nadella to be more open.We’re starting to see that [VMware] has a vision of using these products to deliver apps in unique ways
Since Microsoft and VMware are famous for their rivalry battles over big markets such as software ” virtualization” for computer servers, and Microsoft also offers its own device-management software that competes with AirWatch.The collaboration of these two companies shows that sometimes strange bedfellows in the technology industry can work together  as demands of consumers and businesses shift.But it’s unclear how much coöperation will be afforded in the partnership between VMware and Microsoft.For example, it remains to be seen if AirWatch can manage native mobile Office apps. To date, the only way to manage them is through Microsoft Enterprise Mobility Suite.
VMware also provided details on a few other upcoming EUC initiatives. VMware Identity Manager, introduced in June, will be available as a standalone product called VMware Identity Manager Advanced Edition. It was initially rolled out as part of AirWatch bundles. It will be available later in September and cost either $96 per user per year as a cloud offering or the same price as a perpetual license for on-premises deployments with additional costs for service and support.VMware will also release Horizon 6.2 and Horizon 6.2 for Linux later this month, which adds support for Skype for Business and NVIDIA Corp.’s latest NVIDIA GRID vGPU release. Pricing for Horizon 6.2 starts at $250 and is available per named or per concurrent user.And a qualified public beta for Project Enzo will begin this quarter. With Project Enzo, IT can build, deliver and manage virtual workspaces in cloud-based Web portal.
