Chromebooks are wedging their way further into the enterprise world thanks to a new deal between its maker, Google, and VMware. Announced amid VMware’s Partner Exchange in San Francisco on Wednesday, the virtualization giant’s Horizon View desktop-as-a-service has been optimized for Google Chromebooks. The pipeline is designed to provide access to legacy Windows-based applications, data and desktops via a Web-based application catalog on Chromebooks thanks to VMware’s Blast HTML5 Desktop Access software.
Google and VMware today announced that they are working together to make it easier for Chromebook users in the enterprise to access Windows apps and the Windows desktop on their machines. Using VMware’s Horizon desktop as a service (DaaS), which uses VMware‘s HTML5 Blast protocol, it will now be easier for Chromebook users to connect to a traditional Windows experience. Remote access to a Windows machine on Chrome OS is nothing new. Google offers its ownRemote Desktop app for this, and there are a number of third-party options that offer the same kind of service. For the most part, though, these solutions don’t offer the kind of security features that enterprises look for in a remote access tool. According to the companies, today’s launch will bring an enterprise-ready solution to the growing number of businesses that have deployed Chrome OS devices.