Earlier this year, we announced that Horizon 8 Term licenses are now eligible for deployment in public cloud environments. But what does that really mean for customers?  

With this licensing change, customers have freedom of choice, either opting for customer-managed Horizon 8 or the Omnissa-managed Horizon Cloud. This matters not only for enterprises but also for partners and service providers who would like to design a tech stack that fits their strategy. We are not enforcing a one-size-fits-all model. Whether organizations prefer full control or the ability to offload management to a trusted partner, Horizon adapts to their unique needs. 

That adaptability is more than a convenience—it’s a huge differentiator. It positions Horizon as a future-ready product, built to evolve alongside customer priorities and industry change. This update unlocks new possibilities for flexibility, scalability, and resilience for Horizon 8. Let’s explore how customers can take advantage of this change.  

Scenarios applicable for all Horizon 8 Term licenses 

Horizon Standard, Advanced, Enterprise, Apps Standard, and Apps Enterprise Term licenses all support the following scenarios using a hypothetical customer: 

• Single on-premises deployment: A customer purchases 100 seats and deploys them in a single on-premises pod. All sessions are hosted locally. 
• Single cloud deployment: A customer purchases 100 seats and deploys them in a single pod hosted in a public cloud (e.g., Azure, AWS, Google Cloud). 
• On-premises disaster recovery (DR): A customer has two on-premises pods configured for DR. During normal operations, all 100 seats are used in Pod 1. If Pod 1 becomes unavailable or under capacity, seats are shifted to Pod 2. At no point are more than 100 concurrent sessions active. 
• Cloud-based disaster recovery (same cloud provider): A customer has two pods in the same public cloud (e.g., both in Azure). Pod 1 is primary, and Pod 2 is for DR. Seats are dynamically reassigned as needed, with a maximum of 100 concurrent sessions. 
• Cloud-based disaster recovery (different cloud providers): A customer has Pod 1 in Azure and Pod 2 in AWS. During normal operations, Pod 1 hosts all sessions. If needed, seats are reassigned to Pod 2, maintaining the 100-session concurrency limit.  

Hybrid deployments available only for Horizon Enterprise Term and Apps Advanced Term licenses 

These licenses support hybrid deployments—mixing on-premises and cloud environments of Horizon 8: 

• Hybrid disaster recovery (on-prem + cloud): A customer has Pod 1 on-premises and Pod 2 in the cloud. During normal operations, Pod 1 uses all 100 seats. If Pod 1 is unavailable or under capacity, seats are reassigned to Pod 2. The total number of concurrent sessions never exceeds 100. 

What is the difference between Term and SaaS licenses?  

The main difference is Horizon Cloud DaaS and the Horizon Control Plane. Horizon Term licenses can only be used for the Horizon 8 platform without common SaaS services provided by the Horizon Control Plane. If you would like to leverage those common SaaS services (such as Universal Broker, Image Management Service, etc.), or if you want Horizon Cloud DaaS services (such as Horizon Cloud on Azure, Horizon Cloud on Amazon Workspaces Core), you will need a SaaS license. Check out our packaging and licensing whitepaper for a full overview.  

Flexibility without complexity 

With this update, Horizon 8 Term licenses deliver expanded deployment choices and powerful flexibility without changes to SKUs or pricing. Whether you're operating on-prem, fully in the cloud, or somewhere in between, Horizon 8 Term licenses now support your strategy under the same license. Organizations can now confidently design for: 

• High availability 
• Disaster recovery 
• Cloud scalability 
• Hybrid infrastructure 

At the same time, they can maintain license compliance and cost efficiency. Contact us to deploy Horizon 8 Term licenses today.