Omnissa, VMware's old end-user biz, emerges with promise of 'AI-infused autonomous workspace'

Omnissa, the newly independent business created by Broadcom's spinoff of VMWare's end-user compute arm, has proclaimed it will become a source of "AI-infused autonomous workspaces".

Omnissa came into being after private equity outfit KKR decided around $4 billion was a reasonable price to acquire VMware's portfolio of desktop virtualization, application publishing, and device management products.

It started operating as an independent business on July 1, and earlier this week staged a virtual event to outline its strategy.

CEO Shanker Iyer's pitch is that Omnissa is already the market leader - Citrix would dispute that - and is therefore poised to undertake a necessary re-invention of the field for the age of hybrid work.

Bharath Rangarajan, senior veep for products, said Omnissa wants to deliver an "autonomous workspace that is self-healing, self-configuring and self-securing, continuously adapting to the way people work empowering employees with engaging and personalized digital workspace experiences that are smart, seamless, and secure."

Such workspaces are necessary, he suggested, because IT departments are run off their feet, hybrid workforces are here to stay, and workers won't tolerate shabby tech.

Just what that will mean for Omnissa products wasn't explained. Nor was a timeframe offered in which something might debut debut.

But Iyer predicted Omnissa will build this stuff by adding AI to its current offerings, and will also strive to ensure its products are easier to work with - for customers and channel alike.

The customer piece should be interesting. VMware's end-user compute stack had, like the rest of its portfolio, become a little bloated. While desktop virtualization (VDI) is a complex workload, best practice on how to build and operate it predictably and cost-effectively has been established.

But it's also being challenged by the cloud. Microsoft and AWS are both aggressively promoting desktops delivered from the cloud as an alternative to traditional VDI.

Iyer proposed that Omnissa will, therefore, create an ecosystem that includes those two clouds - plus Google and many other cloudy players besides.

The Register has sought interviews with Omnissa to go deeper on its plans, but was told the biz isn't quite ready to explain itself in greater detail. We'll keep asking, in hope of getting more than the sweeping statements of intent delivered at this virtual event. ®