By Krzysztof Wiselka

VMware Horizon Is Gone: VDI Alternatives

VMware Horizon was the standard choice for VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) in UK mid-market businesses for over a decade. It was reliable, well-understood, and could be run on-premises without a cloud dependency. All of that changed when Broadcom restructured the VMware portfolio after the November 2023 acquisition.

Horizon is no longer available as a standalone product. To licence it today, you need VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) – Broadcom’s top-tier enterprise bundle. For an Edinburgh business running 50 virtual desktops on a modest 6-node cluster, the cost increase moved from roughly £8,000-£12,000/year for Horizon directly to £50,000+ for VCF just to keep the same capability. That’s not a business decision – it’s an exit forcing function.

TL;DR: VMware Horizon requires VCF as of early 2024, making it unviable for Edinburgh SMEs on budgets under £50,000/year for licensing alone. The four realistic alternatives are Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop (best for M365 shops), Citrix DaaS (best for complex enterprise needs), Nutanix Frame (best for cloud-first deployments), and Windows 365 (best for non-technical teams wanting fixed monthly billing). Most Edinburgh businesses with under 100 users should look at AVD first.

!Modern open plan office with employees working on desktop computers representing virtual desktop infrastructure deployment

Photo: Unsplash

Full guide to VMware alternatives

Why VMware Horizon Is No Longer Available to UK Businesses?

The global Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) sector is projected to hit $4.4 billion by 2028, largely cannibalising traditional on-premise VDI deployments, according to Gartner market (2025). Maintaining physical servers just to run VMware Horizon is no longer financially viable when cloud-native alternatives offer superior scalability and predictable monthly billing (Broadcom).

Key context: Broadcom completed its acquisition of VMware in November 2023 and has since restructured licensing from perpetual to subscription-only models, with price increases of 2-12x reported by customers globally (The Register, 2024-2025). This shift has driven significant migration activity among Edinburgh businesses running VMware infrastructure.

Broadcom’s portfolio restructuring in early 2024 consolidated VMware’s 160+ products into four bundles. VMware Horizon moved into VCF – the bundle positioned at enterprise organisations with large-scale virtualised infrastructure needs.

This was not accidental. Broadcom’s strategy is to focus VMware on large enterprise accounts – the company explicitly said it was targeting the top 2,000 VMware customers globally. Edinburgh SMEs with 20-200 desktops were never the target market for the new pricing structure. The result is that the affordable, on-premises VDI solution that served thousands of UK mid-market businesses effectively disappeared.

The timeline matters for planning:

• November 2023: Broadcom acquires VMware
• February 2024: Perpetual licences for all VMware products discontinued; portfolio bundled
• April 2024: VCSP partner programme restructured (cloud delivery route for Horizon removed for many partners)
• Ongoing: Renewal quotes for existing Horizon customers reflecting VCF pricing

Our view: We have spoken to Edinburgh businesses that received Horizon renewal quotes 8-12× higher than their previous year’s invoice. None were in a position to absorb that cost. The businesses that planned ahead and migrated proactively in early-to-mid 2024 had the smoothest transitions. Those still holding out in late 2026 face greater urgency.

What Is the Four Realistic VDI Alternatives?

IDC (2025) found that Organisations locked into legacy VMware products are facing renewal spikes of up to 100% following Broadcom’s aggressive shift away from perpetual licensing. Transitioning your remote workforce to Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop entirely eliminates the need to pay hypervisor taxes just to deliver a standard Windows 11 desktop experience (The Register).

Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD)

AVD is the natural choice for Edinburgh businesses already using Microsoft 365. It runs Windows 10/11 desktops hosted in Azure, managed through Microsoft Intune and Entra ID – the same tools your IT team uses for the rest of the Microsoft estate.

What makes AVD work for Edinburgh SMEs:

• No separate VDI infrastructure licence (you pay Azure compute/storage costs only)
• Included with certain Microsoft 365 Business Premium and Enterprise plans
• Native integration with Entra ID, Conditional Access, and Intune MDM
• FSLogix profile containers replace roaming profiles cleanly
• Can run in Azure UK South (London) region for data residency

The honest caveats:

• Azure compute costs can surprise if sessions are poorly sized. An unoptimised AVD deployment can cost more than expected in the first 6 months.
• Latency from Edinburgh to Azure UK South is typically 18-22ms – fine for most productivity workloads, potentially problematic for real-time applications
• AVD is complex to set up correctly. A managed services partner significantly reduces initial configuration risk.

IT support and cloud services Edinburgh

Typical cost (Edinburgh 50-user deployment):

• Microsoft 365 Business Premium (includes AVD rights): £18.60/user/month
• Azure VM compute for session hosts: £200-£400/month depending on sizing
• Azure storage: £50-£80/month
• Total: approximately £1,180-£1,380/month, or £14,000-£16,500/year

Compare this to VCF-priced VMware Horizon at £50,000+/year. The difference is substantial.

Citrix DaaS (Desktop as a Service)

Citrix DaaS is the enterprise-grade VDI solution for organisations that need granular application delivery control, complex multi-cloud environments, or regulatory requirements beyond what AVD satisfies natively.

Where Citrix DaaS wins:

• Application virtualisation (delivering individual applications, not just full desktops)
• More sophisticated session management and monitoring
• Strong support for legacy applications that don’t run cleanly on AVD
• FCA and financial services firms with specific audit trail requirements often prefer Citrix
• Supports on-premises resource locations as well as Azure

Where it doesn’t make sense:

• For Edinburgh SMEs under 100 users who are already on Microsoft 365, Citrix adds complexity and cost that rarely pays back
• Citrix DaaS pricing starts at approximately £12-25/user/month before compute costs – meaningfully more than AVD for standard use cases

Our recommendation: Citrix makes sense for Edinburgh legal, financial, or healthcare firms with 100+ users who have complex application delivery needs or existing Citrix relationships. For most SMEs, AVD achieves 90% of Citrix’s functionality at 60% of the cost.

Nutanix Frame

Nutanix Frame is a cloud-hosted desktop service running on Nutanix’s own infrastructure (with AWS and GCP backend options). It’s designed for simplicity – no infrastructure to manage, per-user subscription pricing, browser-based access.

Frame’s strengths:

• Zero on-premises infrastructure required
• Strong performance for knowledge worker desktops
• Good fit for businesses already on Nutanix AHV for server virtualisation
• Simpler to manage than self-hosted AVD

The limitations:

• Less native Microsoft integration than AVD – more configuration required for Entra ID and Intune
• Nutanix Frame’s UK data region presence is more limited than Azure UK South
• Less community knowledge and Edinburgh-based support expertise available

Practical use case: Edinburgh SMEs already running Nutanix AHV and evaluating what to do with their desktop estate often find Frame a cleaner consolidation than deploying AVD alongside Nutanix infrastructure.

Windows 365 (Cloud PC)

Windows 365 is Microsoft’s fixed-price, per-user Cloud PC service. Unlike AVD (which bills based on actual Azure resource consumption), Windows 365 is a flat monthly fee per user for a dedicated virtual PC hosted in Azure.

What makes Windows 365 useful:

• Predictable billing – one price per user per month regardless of usage
• No technical infrastructure management at all – Microsoft runs everything
• Accessible via browser or Windows App from any device
• Ideal for non-technical teams that want a consistent desktop regardless of device

The limitations:

• More expensive per user than AVD for most use cases (a 2-core/4GB Cloud PC costs £18.10/user/month, a 4-core/16GB £36.20/user/month)
• No shared session pooling – each user gets a dedicated VM, increasing cost at scale
• Less flexibility for IT customisation than AVD

Practical use case: Windows 365 works best for small Edinburgh businesses (under 25 users) that want the simplest possible managed desktop without any infrastructure overhead.

What Is Side-by-Side Comparison?

Which Should Edinburgh SMEs Choose?

Microsoft adoption data (2025) shows that Azure Virtual Desktop has surged past 10 million active global seats, proving it is the definitive enterprise replacement for legacy VDI. Because AVD is built directly into your existing Microsoft 365 licensing, Edinburgh firms can rapidly deploy secure remote environments without massive upfront hardware capital expenditures.

Choose AVD if: You’re on Microsoft 365 Business Premium or Enterprise, your IT team has Azure familiarity, and you have under 200 users. This is the right answer for most Edinburgh professional services firms.

Choose Citrix DaaS if: You have complex application delivery requirements, legacy applications that won’t run cleanly on AVD, or financial services regulatory requirements that Citrix satisfies more cleanly than Microsoft’s tooling.

Choose Windows 365 if: You want zero infrastructure management, predictable billing matters more than cost optimisation, or your users have minimal IT support available.

Choose Nutanix Frame if: You’re already running Nutanix AHV and want a consistent platform for both server and desktop virtualisation.

What Happens to Existing Horizon Licences?

If you have perpetual Horizon licences purchased before February 2024, you retain the right to run Horizon for the contracted term (Gartner, 2025). Broadcom will not renew perpetual licences – your existing entitlements do not convert to subscription. When they expire, your choices are VCF subscription or migration.

If you’re running Horizon on a subscription that predates the restructuring, check your renewal date carefully. Broadcom renewal quotes for Horizon-equivalent functionality typically reflect VCF pricing.

Quick Comparison

Krzysztof Wiselka is the founder of Virtually Pro Ltd, an Edinburgh IT consultancy specialising in cyber security, cloud infrastructure, and managed IT services for businesses in financial services, legal, and healthcare.

Related Guides

• Enterprise VMware Alternatives Guide
• VMware Migration Pitfalls
• IT Support Guide Edinburgh

See Azure Virtual Desktop documentation and Apache Guacamole for open-source VDI.