Over the past 12 months, we’ve continued to evolve Horizon Cloud with a clear goal of making it: easier to deploy, more flexible to operate, and capable of running workloads across more environments than ever before. From streamlined onboarding to expanded infrastructure support—and new operational capabilities, the pace of innovation reflects our ongoing investment in helping customers deliver secure virtual desktops and applications anywhere.

Here’s a look back at some of the major milestones from the past year.

Faster time to value

One of the most significant enhancements this year was the introduction of Express Onboarding. This capability streamlines the deployment process, reducing the time and complexity required to get started with Horizon Cloud. By simplifying initial setup and automating key steps, Express Onboarding helps organizations accelerate their path from deployment to production, making it easier to evaluate, pilot, and scale Horizon Cloud environments.

We also introduced Horizon Cloud on Azure Standard, a new offering designed to provide greater flexibility in how customers purchase and deploy Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure. This option expands subscription choices and offers a more cost-effective entry point for organizations delivering single-session or multi-session desktops and applications in Azure. By aligning packaging and licensing more closely with common deployment patterns, Horizon Cloud on Azure Standard helps customers optimize costs while maintaining the full Horizon experience for delivering secure, cloud-hosted desktops and apps. Customers interested in trialing Horizon Cloud on Azure can do so on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace.

Together, these improvements focused on a core objective: helping customers realize value faster while reducing operational friction.

Greater flexibility and operational control

Another major milestone was the introduction of Self-Managed Pools, which expand how organizations can deliver desktops through Horizon Cloud. With this capability, customers can bring existing desktops under Horizon Cloud management and brokering while maintaining control over the underlying infrastructure and lifecycle operations. This provides new flexibility for phased migrations, specialized workloads, and environments where infrastructure control remains a priority.

We also introduced Linux desktop support on Microsoft Azure, including support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Ubuntu Server in single-session desktop configurations. These desktops support both pay-as-you-go and bring-your-own-subscription licensing models, enabling organizations to deliver developer workspaces, engineering environments, and other Linux-based use cases alongside Windows workloads within the same Horizon Cloud environment.

For service providers and managed service partners, we introduced the Horizon Cloud Partner Admin Console (PAC), a multi-tenant management interface that allows MSPs and resellers to oversee all customer tenants from a single UI, rather than navigating separate environments one at a time. With role-based access controls and cross-tenant visibility into session activity and connection health, the PAC is purpose-built for partners delivering Horizon Cloud as a managed service at scale.

Another addition is the introduction of Horizon Cloud Cost Insights, a new capability that gives administrators direct visibility into Azure desktop infrastructure spending, including actual incurred costs, potential costs, and estimated savings, surfaced directly within the Horizon Universal Console at both the deployment and pool group level. This makes it easier to pinpoint where spend is concentrated and validate whether cost-saving power management policies are actually working. Complementing this, a beta feature is also available that delivers data-driven recommendations based on observed historical usage, helping administrators proactively reduce over-provisioning and idle resource consumption across Azure desktop pools.

These capabilities significantly broaden the range of workloads Horizon Cloud can support, while giving customers greater visibility and control over how they operate and optimize their environments.

Expanding infrastructure choice

A major focus over the past year has been expanding where Horizon Cloud can run.

We introduced a tech preview integration with Platform9, enabling Horizon Cloud workloads to run on Platform9 Private Cloud Director environments. This approach allows organizations to deliver VDI workloads on private cloud infrastructure while benefiting from high availability, live migration, and modern cloud management capabilities. It also reflects a broader strategy to give customers more infrastructure choice and flexibility.

We also announced Horizon Cloud OpenStack Edge, currently in beta, which enables desktop and application workloads to run on OpenStack-based infrastructure. This capability is particularly relevant for sovereign cloud providers, service providers, and organizations with regulatory or data-sovereignty requirements, allowing them to deliver Horizon-based services on open infrastructure while still benefiting from the Horizon Cloud control plane.

In parallel, we continued to expand AWS and multi-cloud deployment options, providing customers with more ways to run Horizon workloads on native cloud infrastructure and hybrid environments. These efforts reinforce Horizon Cloud’s role as a unified control plane that spans clouds, private infrastructure, and hybrid deployments.

We also announced a tech preview of Horizon Cloud on Nutanix, extending the Horizon Cloud control plane to run on Nutanix AHV-based hyperconverged infrastructure. This builds on the broader Omnissa–Nutanix partnership, which reached a significant milestone with the GA of Horizon 8 on Nutanix AHV and brings cloud-managed desktop delivery to organizations already running or considering Nutanix as their infrastructure foundation.

Looking ahead

The pace of innovation in Horizon Cloud isn't slowing down. Each of these investments is designed to help organizations adapt to evolving workforce needs, support a wider range of workloads, and deploy virtual desktops and applications in the environments that best meet their requirements. As we move through 2026, customers can expect continued advancements that build on this foundation, further expanding flexibility, improving operational simplicity, and extending Horizon Cloud to new platforms and use cases. The past 12 months has been an exciting one for Horizon Cloud, and the year ahead promises even more innovation.