Enhancing Flexibility in VDI Deployments

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) has become a critical tool for IT teams striving to provide scalable, secure, and flexible access to applications and data for distributed workforces. Omnissa (formerly VMware) has long been the go-to for VDI solutions with its Horizon platform. However, as enterprises shift towards more flexible, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments, the need for adaptable VDI deployments becomes more pronounced. The Leostream® Remote Desktop Access Platform offers a significant advantage over Omnissa by providing a flexible, vendor-neutral solution that meets the diverse needs of modern enterprises.

Vendor-Neutral Architecture for Greater Freedom

One key advantage of the Leostream® Remote Desktop Access Platform over Omnissa is its vendor-neutral architecture. Omnissa Horizon is heavily integrated into on-premises VMware’s ecosystem, which can limit the flexibility needed to manage complex IT environments. For enterprises using a mixture of hypervisors, cloud providers, and legacy infrastructure, being locked into a single vendor can stifle innovation and drive up costs.

Leostream provides freedom from these limitations by supporting a wide array of hypervisors, including ESXi and vSphere, Red Hat OpenShift, and open-source hypervisors, such as Xen and KVM, when managed by OpenStack. Additionally, it integrates seamlessly with public cloud providers such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud and hyper converged infrastructure vendors such as Nutanix, Scale Computing, and VergeIO. This flexibility allows enterprises to optimize their VDI environment by selecting the best infrastructure components based on performance, cost, and availability rather than being forced into a one-size-fits-all approach.

The Leostream platform allows easy transitions between on-premises and cloud environments for businesses adopting hybrid or multi-cloud strategies. Whether running part of your VDI in a private data center and leveraging cloud resources for peak demand or transitioning workloads between different clouds, the platform ensures your VDI deployment adapts to your needs, not the other way around.

Managing Diverse Environments from a Centralized Console

Managing a diverse range of environments can require augmenting an Omnissa environment with other tools, adding complexity and complicating IT. The Leostream Platform simplifies this with its unified, centralized management console, enabling IT administrators to oversee both virtual and physical desktops and cloud-hosted and on-premises resources, all from a single pane of glass.

The Leostream Platform’s Administrator Web interface is intuitive, reducing the operational overhead associated with managing complex environments. IT teams can easily configure and manage desktop pools, create and enforce user access policies, and handle load balancing across a variety of platforms. By consolidating these tasks into one interface, Leostream reduces the time and complexity of managing multi-environment VDI deployments.

This streamlined approach is especially beneficial for organizations looking to reduce administrative costs and minimize the risks associated with human error. Automated provisioning and de-provisioning features allow resources to scale dynamically in response to user demand, ensuring efficient use of infrastructure and enhancing the overall user experience.

Cost-Effective Scalability Across Hybrid Environments

Scalability is a critical concern for IT teams managing VDI environments. While Omnissa Horizon is a powerful platform, the costs associated with scaling it to meet growing demand can quickly escalate. Additional features often come with increased licensing fees, and scaling on-premises requires additional infrastructure costs. These cost considerations can restrict an organization’s ability to scale flexibly, especially in industries with fluctuating or seasonal demand.

The Leostream Platform offers a more cost-effective solution, allowing organizations to scale at their own pace. Its vendor-agnostic approach means you can leverage existing infrastructure investments, combining new and legacy systems to create a highly efficient VDI environment. Whether you need to add more virtual desktops, integrate new cloud resources, or scale up storage to accommodate growing data volumes, Leostream’s licensing and infrastructure flexibility keep costs manageable.

Leostream also enables efficient resource utilization by supporting dynamic load balancing and connection brokering across on-premises and cloud environments. This ensures that IT teams can maximize the performance of their existing infrastructure without unnecessary investments in additional hardware or licenses. The result is a scalable, future-proof solution that grows with your organization while keeping costs in check.

Seamless Integration with Cloud Providers

Omnissa offers cloud integration capabilities, which are often closely tied to its own Horizon Cloud or specific cloud partnerships. While this approach can work well in homogeneous Omnissa environments, it may not suit enterprises with more diverse infrastructure requirements. Organizations already leveraging multiple cloud providers or planning to adopt multi-cloud strategies often face challenges when integrating Horizon-based VDI deployments across different platforms.

The Leostream Platform excels at cloud integration, supporting many public and private cloud providers. This multi-cloud support ensures that organizations can choose the cloud infrastructure that best aligns with their business objectives, whether driven by performance, cost, or data sovereignty concerns. Leostream enables IT teams to distribute workloads efficiently across multiple clouds while maintaining centralized control and visibility.

By integrating seamlessly with AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and others, Leostream allows enterprises to extend their VDI capabilities without being constrained by vendor limitations. Furthermore, this flexibility simplifies disaster recovery and business continuity strategies, ensuring that resources can be quickly scaled or shifted between different cloud environments in response to outages or changes in demand.

Optimizing User Experience and Resource Allocation

Ensuring a smooth and responsive user experience is a top priority for VDI deployments, particularly in industries where downtime or performance lags can significantly impact productivity. While Omnissa provides robust tools to manage user experience, its Blast display protocol may not be the best option for each user and use case.

The Leostream Platform optimizes the user experience through intelligent connection brokering, ensuring users are routed to the best available resource based on their session needs. By dynamically allocating resources, Leostream minimizes latency, improves session performance, and enhances overall user satisfaction.

For organizations where resource efficiency is critical, the platform’s granular control over desktop session policies, load balancing, and power management ensures that infrastructure is used optimally. These built-in tools help IT teams maximize the value of their investments by eliminating over-provisioning and reducing unnecessary resource consumption.

Enhanced Security with Integrated Solutions

Security remains a concern for IT teams managing VDI environments, especially in industries with stringent compliance requirements. Omnissa offers advanced security features, but many come at additional costs,   complicating management and increasing the overall TCO.

The Leostream Platform embeds comprehensive security features, including multi-factor authentication (MFA), role-based access control (RBAC), and secure tunneling for remote desktop connections. These features are available as part of the core platform, meaning IT teams don’t need to invest in additional licensing.

Leostream’s support for Zero Trust architecture also ensures that no device or user is inherently trusted, providing a layered security model that reduces the risk of breaches. For enterprises transitioning to hybrid or multi-cloud environments, this security model is essential in ensuring that critical data remains protected, regardless of where the resources are hosted.