Ensure your VDI is ready for modern demands with F5 and Omnissa

Yuichi MiyazakiDirector, Technical Alliances | F5

Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) isn’t new, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t fresh challenges to tackle. And with hybrid and remote work firmly cemented as the norm, VDI has never been more essential to daily operations. From the C-suite to the specialist, modern users rely on consistent access to applications and data from anywhere, on any device.

What makes supporting modern VDI environments challenging? Organizations need robust, reliable, and secure network infrastructure that performs at scale. Without the right tools, they face server outages that impact hundreds of users simultaneously, traffic bottlenecks that degrade performance, and expanding attack surfaces that put sensitive data at risk.

Strengthening the foundation of digital workspaces

F5 and Omnissa are working together to ensure the seamless, reliable access that today’s hybrid work models demand.

As a digital workspace leader, Omnissa delivers the first AI-driven digital work platform for unified endpoint management, virtualized desktops and apps, and identity and access management. Serving 7 of the top 10 Fortune 500 companies with over 26,000 global customers, Omnissa’s modern VDI Omnissa Horizon provides organizations with the virtualized desktop and application delivery capabilities that are essential to current operating models.

F5 extends and strengthens these capabilities with the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP)—a single platform that maximizes application performance and security across hybrid multicloud environments. . Together, F5 and Omnissa give organizations a powerful, integrated way to deliver secure, resilient, and scalable virtual desktops anywhere their users need them.

Joining forces to solve top-of-mind VDI challenges

F5 BIG-IP and Omnissa Horizon work together to deliver load balancing, zero trust access, and disaster recovery for VDI.

By combining the Omnissa platform with F5 delivery and security capabilities, enterprise organizations can avoid the pitfalls that hinder VDI outcomes.

For example, many enterprise organizations find themselves managing multi-vendor DMZ environments as part of their VDI architecture. These often involve individual gateways or proxies for each platform, which makes management cumbersome and can create inadvertent security gaps. To solve this challenge, F5 BIG-IP consolidates DMZ architectures into a single platform—delivering a full proxy for end-to-end protection and zero trust access across both modern and legacy applications alongside Omnissa Horizon.

F5 also enables intelligent traffic steering for Omnissa Horizon deployments. Horizon Unified Access Gateways (UAGs) and Connection Servers are the entry point for remote workers, but if they aren’t backed up by load balancing, they’re also a single point of failure. F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager eliminates that risk by distributing traffic intelligently across UAGs and Connection Servers, ensuring 24/7 availability and a single, consistent URL for users, regardless of underlying infrastructure health.

Additionally, running VDI at scale requires reliable failover in case of disaster. F5 augments multi-site Horizon deployments with F5 BIG-IP DNS and Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB) to enable intelligent, availability-aware traffic routing across sites. This can turn a potential hours-long outage into a minutes-long recovery. Plus, IT teams gain simplified namespace management and rest easier knowing that their VDI will remain available under stress.

And, of course, hybrid and remote organizations need zero trust access, everywhere. Omnissa Access provides identity and access management for Horizon, but enforcing zero trust policies requires dynamic awareness of device posture and user context. F5 BIG-IP Zero Trust Access works hand-in-hand with Omnissa Access to deliver context-based access controls through a centralized Omnissa portal—securing desktops, applications, and resources across multi-site and multi-pod Horizon deployments.

Built for the industries that depend on VDI most

The F5 and Omnissa partnership delivers measurable outcomes across the industries that rely most heavily on virtual desktop infrastructure:

• Healthcare: Support a dispersed workforce across hospitals, clinics, and remote practitioners with secure, compliant virtual desktop access that meets HIPAA requirements and protects sensitive patient data.
• Financial services: Deliver consistent, secure VDI across branches and remote employees, while meeting stringent regulatory requirements and ensuring continuous availability for business-critical applications.
• Government: Empower public sector organizations to modernize infrastructure, reduce technical debt, and deliver secure access to desktops and applications across agencies—without sacrificing compliance or citizen trust.
• Retail: Provide frontline and corporate employees with fast, reliable access to applications and resources, while protecting customer data and supporting rapid scaling during peak demand.

Remove barriers to VDI success with F5 and Omnissa

The combined F5 and Omnissa solution delivers more than infrastructure reliability. Enterprises gain reduced DMZ complexity—with lower management overhead and tighter security. They get a full proxy architecture, application and network DDoS protection, alongside zero trust access enforcement that reduces exposure across the entire VDI environment. And they unlock higher availability and faster recovery while enabling simpler access management.

Together, F5 and Omnissa enable organizations to run their digital workspace infrastructure with the reliability, scalability, and security the modern workforce demands—whether users are in the office, at home, or anywhere in between. When your business depends on VDI, you can’t afford anything less.

To learn more, visit our F5 and Omnissa webpage.

About the Author

Yuichi MiyazakiDirector, Technical Alliances | F5

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