Omnissa launches AI tools as endpoint use surges 1,000%

Omnissa has launched a set of AI products for digital workspace management, following a company report that found AI assistant use across enterprise endpoints rose by nearly 1,000% year on year.

The new products include a cloud PC service, software agents for IT operations and a governance tool called Elara, designed to oversee AI applications, agents and other high-impact actions across enterprise systems.

Its research found that three-quarters of AI assistant activity came from unsanctioned tools, highlighting a growing challenge for IT departments as employees adopt consumer and workplace AI services faster than internal approval processes can keep up.

To address that, Omnissa is adding products to its Horizon and Workspace ONE lines. One of the main launches is Omnissa Cloud PC, a managed desktop-as-a-service offering that combines compute with endpoint management, digital employee experience tools and Horizon Cloud services. It will initially run on AWS.

Another product, Horizon Delegate, is an agent that runs inside a user's Horizon virtual machine and can carry out tasks on that user's behalf using approved identities and permissions. The software can continue operating even after the user disconnects from the session, while remaining subject to the same entitlements and security controls.

IT agents

Alongside the end-user products, Omnissa introduced three agents for IT teams. They focus on troubleshooting employee issues, handling software vulnerabilities and preparing Windows applications for deployment.

The Digital Employee Experience agent is intended to help IT support teams investigate employee experience problems, identify likely causes and recommend fixes by drawing on existing playbooks and records from prior Workspace ONE Assist sessions.

A second product, the Workspace ONE Vulnerability Defence agent, is designed to review and prioritise vulnerabilities, prepare patching actions and present deployment steps for approval. The process includes human oversight and lets teams track the impact of a rollout on users through digital employee experience data.

The third, the Windows App Lifecycle agent, is designed to package and test Windows applications before presenting the results to an administrator for review. Omnissa said this should reduce manual work for IT staff.

Omnissa also announced a hosted MCP Server that allows administrators to use their preferred agentic tools to interact with services across the Omnissa platform, subject to existing role-based access permissions.

The launches come as workplace technology suppliers add AI tools to endpoint management and security products in response to customer demand for both automation and stronger controls over how AI is used inside organisations.

Omnissa says its platform processes about 50 TB of endpoint data a day and supports 150 million workflow executions a month across tens of millions of endpoints. It argues that this volume of operational data gives IT teams the context needed to move from identifying issues to taking action.

Governance focus

The governance element of the announcement centres on Omnissa Elara, which Omnissa describes as an authority layer for AI governance and high-impact enterprise actions. The product is intended to connect data points across separate systems so IT and security teams can see how AI applications, models and agents are being used, and apply policies before significant actions take place.

Bharath Rangarajan, Chief Product Officer at Omnissa, said changes in enterprise AI use were altering what IT teams need to monitor and control. "AI is compressing the distance between insight and action, and that changes what IT has to be ready for," he said. "Organisations need a unified foundation that gives them the visibility and control to build trust as AI becomes a part of the digital workplace. That trust is what allows them to move confidently toward greater autonomy."

Phil Hochmuth, Research Vice President, Endpoint Management and Enterprise Mobility at IDC, said organisations will need tighter management as AI takes on more work across business systems. "Autonomously managing, securing and monitoring the end-user workspace is now a requirement for enterprise IT, as AI takes on more responsibility across the business," he said. "IT leaders need clear visibility into human and AI-driven activity, along with the controls to govern actions at machine speed. Omnissa's approach around visibility, context and control reflects the capabilities organizations will need as they scale AI and move toward more autonomous workspaces."