Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) vs. Omnissa Horizon

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Microsoft App-V
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft App-V supports the virtualization of applications, making them available to end users without an installation.N/A
Omnissa Horizon
Score 5.5 out of 10
N/A
A VDI solution used for the secure delivery of virtual desktops and apps from on-premises to the cloud. It is used to deploy, manage, monitor and scale desktops and apps across private, hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructure using a cloud-based console and SaaS management services.
$4.67
per month per user
Pricing
Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V)Omnissa Horizon
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Horizon Apps Standard
$4.67
per month per user
Horizon Standard Plus
$5.79
per month per user
Horizon Apps Universal
$6.00
per month per user
Horizon Enterprise Plus
$10.71
per month per user
Horizon Universal
$12.50
per month per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Microsoft App-VOmnissa Horizon
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V)Omnissa Horizon
Considered Both Products
Microsoft App-V
Chose Microsoft App-V
Microsoft Teams is included in our current Office 365 product set; therefore, there is no additional fee to use the application. It saves our company money by not having to pay for Slack or another internal chat service. For us, Microsoft Teams has a better user experience and …
Chose Microsoft App-V
APP-V is able to do the majority of software packages for internal organization use, but when you get to a program that is space and resource intensive, moving to EMCO MSI Package builder will allow you to capture the entire install process as well as any complex configurations …
Omnissa Horizon
Chose Omnissa Horizon
Citrix DaaS and Azure Virtual Desktop
Chose Omnissa Horizon
Omnissa Horizon was more cost effective and a better overall solution.
Chose Omnissa Horizon
We used XenServer initially for a few years, but (at the time) licensing for Omnissa Horizon was easier and the product was more reliable.
We only used Hyper-V in a very limited test environment, so it's difficult to compare w/ Omnissa Horizon.
Chose Omnissa Horizon
VMWare Horizon has several advanced features vs other competitors, choosing one option or another depends on the scope of the company's need and the cost of investment. In general, all the solutions of VDI are good and offer a good experience.
Chose Omnissa Horizon
Far more cost effective.
Chose Omnissa Horizon
At least in our company, Citrix only worked allied with a physical authentication token, which was a Smart Card written and provided by the company. The software randomly froze and came back as nothing ever happened and the Citrix support couldn't care less about this. We grew …
Chose Omnissa Horizon
We evaluated various other products, but as we are already on a VMWare based infrastructure, View just made the most sense for us. It's also feature-rich, and some other alternatives that we considered couldn't deliver certain critical features (such as managing access to …
Chose Omnissa Horizon
Citrix vid setup was very difficult and initially hard to set up. I believe this has changed somewhat now, but there are still multiple servers that need to be set up before it can be used. Vmware VDI was fairly easy to set up and was immediately working and up and running, …
Chose Omnissa Horizon
Some of the platforms are designed for smaller or standalone environments and do not allow for large-scale centrally controlled deployments. in the case of Citrix, there was better Chrome OS support but the lack of PCoIP UDP optimizations made is slower and less desirable by …
Chose Omnissa Horizon
I have not used any other products similar to View but I have used Citrix for RDS so that users could have a remote profile. This was clunky and became fairly troublesome as the users shared the same server and when one had issues sometimes the whole server had to be rebooted. …
Chose Omnissa Horizon
I suppose I'm prejudiced but I don't think either of those products is in the same league. I know XenDesktop has made some strides I just think VMware has the superior product.
Chose Omnissa Horizon
VMware Horizon seems to be more powerful and adaptable to multiple operating systems than the Citrix products I have used. VMware has been simpler to use and has a lot more customization than other of the other similar products I have used. It has solved a lot of the issues I …
Chose Omnissa Horizon
When we were considering a VDI solution, I reviewed Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop as alternative solutions to Horizon View. It seemed like Horizon View was a more mature solution and had the best integration to our existing Vmware vSphere environment. The systems …
Chose Omnissa Horizon
There are few competitors, main are:

Citrix Xen Apps and Dekstops
Chose Omnissa Horizon
Although I really prefer Microsoft Remote Desktop for accessing Windows servers (from Windows machines especially), and this can be done from off-site with a VPN, this entails much more effort, namely getting everyone's Active Directory in the correct group to have access. …
Chose Omnissa Horizon
Citrix did not have the level of Instaclone type feature that VMWare had in its offering. The application layering also was better in our opinion as well as overall support from our vendor. Security was a close call but we found VMWare to be a better fit for our company and its …
Chose Omnissa Horizon
Horizon View is probably my favorite to use. It isn't saying much as all of them have their ups and downs. VMware has fewer downs out of the bunch.
Chose Omnissa Horizon
VMware View provides a full suite of products which provide the functionality that many of the competing vendors have gaps in the you have to then use another third party application to get a working solution. With VMware View you have all the tools at your fingertips to be …
Chose Omnissa Horizon
Citrix XenDesktop is another big player in the VDI market, but the product simply isn't as mature or powerful as Horizon. Xen still struggles with Windows 10, whereas Horizon has accomodated every OS we throw at it with ease. XenDesktop is a great product overall, performance …
Chose Omnissa Horizon

Did not do a full evaluation on Citrix XenDesktop as VMware Horizon View integrates nicely with the VMware vSphere environment that we had currently set up.

We were using PanoLogic for about 6 months before we scrapped it and moved onto VMware Horizon View. Horizon View gave us …

Chose Omnissa Horizon
I think the reason VMware Horizon View has done so well is the lack of competition in this area. We have considered the Microsoft equivalent, but are concerned that their support will be worse than VMware (which can be pretty frustrating, to be honest).
Chose Omnissa Horizon
Each has its pros and cons however when properly configured and with a server infustructer to support it correctly vmware horizon view can be a highly scalable , powerful tool in your IT bag of tricks that can offer massive ROI and user satisfaction being able to deploy it …
Chose Omnissa Horizon
We did not deploy in-house testing, though we did review another company's deployment. At the time we liked what we saw in Horizon, though I have no doubts that XenDesktop could deliver just as well and still does for the other company that presented it to us. What tipped the …
Features
Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V)Omnissa Horizon
Application Virtualization
Comparison of Application Virtualization features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V)
7.6
Ratings
0% above category average
Omnissa Horizon
-
Ratings
Application support6.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Device support8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Ease of deployment10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Application packaging8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Security6.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V)Omnissa Horizon
Small Businesses
Parallels RAS
Parallels RAS
Score 6.9 out of 10
VMware Fusion
VMware Fusion
Score 7.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Nutanix AHV
Nutanix AHV
Score 9.0 out of 10
VMware Fusion
VMware Fusion
Score 7.8 out of 10
Enterprises
Nutanix AHV
Nutanix AHV
Score 9.0 out of 10
VMware Fusion
VMware Fusion
Score 7.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V)Omnissa Horizon
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(0 ratings)
4.5
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
5.1
(0 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
5.0
(0 ratings)
1.0
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
8.7
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V)Omnissa Horizon
Likelihood to Recommend
For large organizations that need software to update at the control of the IT department APP-V is a godsend to manage deployment based on AD group assignment, maintaining software versioning for specific services or upgrades, and areas where you need to make software available without having to install the entire package - the streaming portion of APP-v publishes a shortcut on the desktop, then streams the install on demand
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Horizon View is well suited in larger organizations where there are needs to securely access applications and data from outside the internal network. It allows users a complete desktop experience remotely with access to all resources that are available on the local internal private network. It is fast and robust as data does not need to traverse the connection like a VPN connection and stays within the local internal network increasing data security. Cost for hardware and software is a high initial investment so smaller organizations will find it hard to justify the financial costs. In a diverse user environment, there are many uses for Horizon View. When faced with a need for a solution for users to access information or applications outside the internal network, having Horizon View is one of the best go to's to have available. Use your imagination and creativity to solve many business needs
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Pros
  • It's incredibly customizable, integrates with Microsoft 365, and allows you to screen share with colleagues without even phoning them!
  • Call quality is excellent, and the user interface is basic and intuitive enough that there is no need for any training.
  • The user interface (UI) is quite professional, and it makes it simple to identify and operate the many features. And we record all of our meetings using Microsoft Teams as well.
  • In my opinion, it's an excellent file-sharing application, and the ability to change the theme to dark is a personal preference.
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  • Ability to set up new desktops quickly.
  • Faster boot times for PCs.
  • Virtual machines can grow in space and other resources as long as the ESXi Hosts have the resources.
  • Ability to create different types of desktop groups called pools and organize the different departments.
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Cons
  • Complicated software installs of interacting software needs significant care
  • Updating software requires a pristine virtual machine to update a packager
  • No longer being updated so new software practices aren't correctly captured.
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  • VSAN -- This experience is from a pre-Horizon 7 deployment. While we have had redundancy issues in our deployment, the concerns we experience are said to be resolved in the latest VSAN release.
  • Persona Management can be troublesome, leading to mismatches in user data against the server. This requires manual interaction to resolve if a network or user error led to the two falling out of sync. The risk in this is user data loss. Again, new developments in user management is said to resolve these concerns in Horizon 7.
  • Security Servers and off-site access to VMware Horizon View has been difficult due to the problematic deployment scenario (a server inside the network with several external hooks). This is said to be resolved with the advent of EUC in Horizon 7. I'm excited to begin testing on this solution as feedback elsewhere has been positive.
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Likelihood to Renew
No answers on this topic
We are committed to VMware Horizon and we plan to stick with it for the future unless something drastically changes.
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Usability
No answers on this topic
Because it delivers what it promises, I am giving this rating. While there is scope for improvement, it does the job and meets our requirements reasonab;y well. It helps our remote resources connect to our environment securely and improves their productivity. We also get to access our client environment from remote locations and complete the tasks assigned to us.
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Performance
No answers on this topic
There are a lot of things that went into my rating from the ease of use compared to other systems to the limited amount of issues I have had with this one. Any issue with this system has been identified and resolved in a much quicker manner than I have seen with like systems.
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Support Rating
APP-V is no longer a supported technology and is on the way out, only on legacy support at this time. The changes in security emphasis in windows, as well as the changes in software development have meant that APP-V is no longer able to correctly package software. It has been superseded by the MSIX format and distribution via the Microsoft Store for Business.
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It is surely way better than Citrix, but it could improve a bit. Usually, they send us the solution without saying what was the root cause so we can avoid breaking something in the future. Besides that, VMWare support answers in an OK time-frame and even speaks our language (Portuguese).
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Alternatives Considered
Microsoft Teams is included in our current Office 365 product set; therefore, there is no additional fee to use the application. It saves our company money by not having to pay for Slack or another internal chat service. For us, Microsoft Teams has a better user experience and product features. Teams' usability is higher than Slack's since it has access to OneDrive, email, and OneNote applications. Screen sharing, chat, and file-sharing operate smoothly, and the performance appears great.
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VMware Horizon seems to be more powerful and adaptable to multiple operating systems than the Citrix products I have used. VMware has been simpler to use and has a lot more customization than other of the other similar products I have used. It has solved a lot of the issues I have encountered with the systems put out by Citrix.
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Return on Investment
  • Some applications may be slower
  • Interaction between several applications can be better
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  • ROI is good, but from calculations it takes time, you won't see benefits in a first year or two
  • It will allow us to provide access to software on personal machines where it was not possible before
  • It is hard hunting applications that are allowed to be virtualized
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ScreenShots