The intent of VMware, in the long run, to definitely ditch the C# based Windows client in favour of a Web client has been clear for a long time: and a few days ago the announce appeared on the official blog, with all the reasons about this choice and the news of the new product. (download it here).

The first statement regards the availability of the old Windows client that, starting with the next release of the popular hypervisor, won’t be supported anymore (but it will continue to work as expected with the previous versions up to 5.5 and 6.0), and the other is about the complete migration from Flash to HTML5, concerning the language the interface is developed with.

The vCenter Web client has been already available for a certain time alongside with the Windows one, and some features have been available only with the former, but being developed with Flash and the overall lack of reactivity haven’t made it the primary choice for vSphere management. Thanks to the transition to HTML5 VMware promises a new use experience similar to the “historic” C# Windows client. The new Web interface will also offer the VUM (vSphere Update Manager) feature, starting with version 6.0U1 of the hypervisor. The use of a Web-based platform will also offer a total portability in terms of desktop and mobile platforms. Updates, bugfixes, feature enhancements and release frequency will all benefit from this new approach.

This news finally closes the loop of transitions to an HTML5-based Web approach, which already involved Platform Services Controller UI, vCenter Server Appliance Management UI and Embedded Host Client, which we covered here.