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What is VMware AppBlast?

with 11 comments

At this years VMworld in Las Vegas, VMware introduced a new product called AppBlast. This new technology enables you to use remote applications of any type and platform and deliver them to any HTML5 browser or device. It doesn’t matter if you’re using Mac, Windows, Linux, ChromeOS. You don’t need to install any client, all is pure HTML5. In the demo at VMworld Scott Davis showed a demo on his MacBook, running AppBlast in Goolge Chrome.

AppBlast

In the screenshot you can see the Lauch Portal which gives you access to all the published Windows applications.

A really interesting technology, but what does this give you for the future?

From my view this is a game changing technology! Today if you want to run Windows applications on an iPad or Mac, you always need to install some client and use a remoting technology such as Terminal Services, XenApp or VDI to access the applications but with AppBlast there is no need for a client. This fits exactly in the VMware End User Computing vision, Brian Gammage gave to the audience at VMworld. Companies can centralize their desktop workloads with desktop- and application virtualization and bring it together with web based and SaaS applications via VMware’s Horizon AppManager. But instead of installing a View Client for example and delivering a full Windows desktop, you can just deliver one application to the user.

Think about a complete solution with Zimbra as collaboration solution, AppBlast, Horizon AppManager, Project Octopus, View and ThinApp! This is the user workspace of the future!

Check the video linked below to get a deeper insight of the new technology!

Link: VMworldTV

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Written by Christoph Harding

September 1st, 2011 at 8:52 am

Posted in End User Computing

Tagged with , , , ,

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  • Christoph

    Sounds great, when will be GA?

  • http://www.cd-k.de/ Christoph Harding

    No date yet Christoph. I hope we can here more about it in Copenhagen.

  • Matt

    Has there been any discussion on the show floor about what the back-end of AppBlast will look like? Is this going to be a combination of View and ThinApp similar to Citrix’s VM-hosted apps, where a full Windows desktop is spun up per seamless application and then brokered through Horizon/View? Seems like it could be a decent competitor XenApp, but the resources required would be far greater if this is based purely on VM-hosted apps rather than RDS.

  • http://www.cd-k.de/ Christoph Harding

    Hey Matt! As I’ve understood the videos it doesn’t matter which platform you’re running as a virtual machine (Mac/Linux/Windows). It’s pure HTML5 technology so there shouldn’t be a need for RDS. As Windows apps are going legacy I don’t think the overhead will be too much. I’m always asking my customer for the ratio between web apps and Windows apps and the answer is mostly 50%/50%. Give the IT 10 years and all apps will be web based. Just for a few apps there is the need for local installation / OS dependency. This apps can be delivered by AppBlast i.e.

  • Matt

    It’s being delivered as HTML5, yes, but that app, let’s use your Photoshop example, needs to be running on a Windows OS somewhere. If 500 users want to run Photoshop simultaneously, that’s 500 Windows 7 VM’s hosting those applications, provided these as VM-hosted apps rather than leveraging RDS. That’s a lot of resources. 

  • http://www.cd-k.de/ Christoph Harding

    Sure, you’re right with that but you could use Linked Clones to reduce the amount of storage needed. Anyway I know what you mean. As always it depends on the use case and the requirements.

  • VMwareHateandLove

    What about peripherals and stuff… printers, usbs devices, multi monitor support, local drives, etc etc…?

    More VMware hype…. It looks interesting but lets not get carried away…. View still fails to execute! 

  • http://www.cd-k.de/ Christoph Harding

    Oh yes, again a post from the competition?

    2011/9/2 Disqus

  • http://twitter.com/snorkel42 snorkel

    My understanding is that AppBlast by itself isn’t really a product, but rather a “Core Technology”.  In other words, it does not sound like there will ever be a GA for AppBlast specifically, but that the technology that has been showcased will end up in some other VMWare offering down the line.

    AppBlast
    Horizon
    Octopus

    Those seemed to be the new hype at VMworld this year..  Sure looks like puzzle pieces being assembled to remove the need for the Guest OS.

  • NotAVMwareBiggot

    So you admit that you’re wrong about not needing a RDS or VDI infrastructure?

  • http://www.virtualizationpractice.com/ Michael

    Greg Shields was interviewed at VMworld about AppBlast. Here’s the interview on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gERz1BQmZ8s.