As AI moves from buzzword to daily reality in the workplace, the questions IT leaders are asking have shifted dramatically. It’s no longer just about adopting new technology — it’s about knowing when to trust it. That’s the central theme driving Omnissa ONE 2026, the company’s flagship event making its first stop in Orlando this September before continuing on to Amsterdam and Tokyo later this year.
Ahead of the show, VMblog caught up with Bharath Rangarajan, vice president and chief product officer at Omnissa, to talk about this year’s tagline — “trust is built, autonomy follows” — and what it means for an industry grappling with agentic workflows, hybrid workforces that now include digital workers alongside human ones, and the growing convergence of UEM, DEX and security disciplines.
In this wide-ranging Q&A, Rangarajan breaks down Omnissa’s four-step framework for autonomous work (alert, advise, assist, autonomous), previews what attendees can expect from the event’s roughly 40 breakout sessions, hands-on labs and customer case studies, and offers his take on why IT organizations can’t afford to treat AI as either a pure opportunity or a pure risk. Read on for his full insights into what’s shaping this year’s event — and where the digital workspace is headed next.
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VMblog: Omnissa ONE 2026 is bringing its flagship event to Orlando this September. For readers who haven’t attended before, how would you describe the event in a nutshell, and how will it be different from the prior year?
Bharath Rangarajan: Omnissa ONE is really about bringing the EUC community together to look at what’s changing in digital work. We bring together customers, partners, practitioners and our product teams, so there’s a good balance between strategy, real-world experience and hands-on learning.
What’s different this year is how quickly the conversation around AI has moved. Last year, we talked a lot about the path toward a more autonomous workspace. Now AI is already part of how people work, and we’re beginning to see agents become part of that environment as well. So the questions have changed to How do you manage that? How do you secure it? When do you trust an agent to take action? Those are some of the conversations we’re going to get into at Omnissa ONE.
VMblog: This year’s tagline appears to center on trust and autonomy in the digital workspace — the idea that “trust is built, autonomy follows.” Can you unpack what that means in practice, and why it’s the right theme for where the industry is right now?
Rangarajan: Companies aren’t going to hand everything over to AI overnight, nor should they. Before you’re comfortable letting technology take action on its own, you need to understand what it’s doing and have confidence in the outcome.
That’s where trust comes in. Before IT can allow technology to take increasingly autonomous action, it needs visibility into what’s happening, context to understand what’s happening, clear policies around what should happen and the ability to maintain control.
We’ve talked about this journey through the four steps for autonomous work we call alert, advise, assist and autonomous. Each step gives IT an opportunity to build confidence before moving to the next level. Eventually you’re able to move from technology that simply tells you there’s a problem to technology that can help resolve it, and ultimately take appropriate action autonomously.
VMblog: With AI and agentic workflows increasingly part of the conversation, how is Omnissa ONE 2026 addressing the shift from managing human endpoints to managing a workspace that also includes autonomous agents?
Rangarajan: I think we’re entering a new definition of the workforce. For years, when we talked about hybrid work, we meant people working across the office, home and other locations. Today, hybrid is beginning to mean something else: people and digital workers operating alongside each other.
For IT, that’s a pretty significant shift. You’re not just managing the devices and applications employees use anymore. You’re also going to have agents that can access information and take action. So you start asking different questions: Do I know what they’re doing? What can they access? What are they allowed to do? When should a person be involved?
I think that’s where EUC has an important role to play. IT needs visibility and control, but the answer can’t simply be to lock everything down. The goal is to create enough trust that you can safely give people and agents more autonomy.
VMblog: The agenda includes a general session, roughly 40 breakout sessions, and a full expo floor. Can you walk us through how the content is structured, and are there particular tracks — VDI and apps, UEM, DEX, security — that you’d point first-time attendees toward?
Rangarajan: The general session gives you the bigger picture of what’s changing and where we’re headed. Then you can go much deeper through the breakouts, labs and expo depending on what matters most to you.
If you’re a Horizon person, there will be plenty for you. The same is true if you spend your day in UEM, DEX, security or app management. But I actually wouldn’t tell a first-time attendee to stay in one lane.
These areas are becoming much more connected. You can’t really talk about endpoint management without talking about security and experience anymore. And once you start adding AI and automation, those connections become even more important. So review the Omnissa ONE event agenda and sessions catalog. Go deep in the area you know, but spend some time outside of it too. That’s often where you pick up an idea you weren’t expecting.
VMblog: Hands-on learning seems to be a big part of the event, with instructor-led labs and on-site certification exams available. How important is that “learn by doing” element compared to the traditional keynote-and-breakout format, and what kind of skills or credentials can attendees walk away with?
Rangarajan: It’s a huge part of what we want Omnissa ONE to be. There’s certainly value in hearing where the industry is going, but ultimately our attendees have environments to run when they get home.
That’s why the hands-on component matters so much. The labs, training, certifications and demonstrations give people an opportunity to move from hearing about something to actually working with it and understanding how they could apply it in their own environment.
My hope is that people leave with more than ideas. They leave with new skills, practical approaches they can put to work and a better understanding of how to solve some of the challenges they’re facing today.
VMblog: Who is the ideal attendee for Omnissa ONE 2026? Should IT leaders, EUC administrators, security teams, and business decision-makers all expect equally relevant content, or is the event tailored more toward a specific role?
Rangarajan: The core of Omnissa ONE is definitely the EUC community, but that community has become much broader.
The person responsible for endpoints is increasingly thinking about employee experience. The DEX team is thinking about automation. Security teams are thinking about AI governance. CIOs are thinking about how all of those things affect cost, risk and productivity.
Those areas are also converging. UEM, DEX and security have traditionally been managed as separate disciplines, often with their own tools and data. But as AI becomes more embedded in the workplace, that fragmentation becomes harder to sustain. Bringing those areas together around shared data, intelligence and automation gives IT a more complete understanding of what’s happening and a better foundation for taking action.
That’s why there is content for practitioners who want to get very technical and for leaders thinking about where their digital workspace strategy needs to go next.
VMblog: Customer stories and real-world case studies are often the most valuable part of events like this. What can attendees expect to hear from peer organizations about how they’re actually implementing Omnissa’s platform today?
Rangarajan: That’s one of the parts of Omnissa ONE I’m most excited about because customers bring the conversation down to earth.
Autonomy can sound very futuristic until you hear from organizations that are already using better data, observability and automation to change how IT operates. They’re finding issues before employees report them, automating repetitive work, improving security and consolidating environments that have become far too complex.
And they’re not doing everything at once. That’s important. They’re starting with problems where automation can make a measurable difference, proving the value and building from there.
That makes the autonomous workspace much more tangible. It’s not a destination that suddenly arrives one day. It’s a progression, and attendees will be able to hear from organizations that are already on that journey.
VMblog: Orlando is the first stop on a broader world tour that continues to Amsterdam and Tokyo later this year. What’s the strategic reasoning behind expanding to a multi-city format, and should attendees expect the same experience wherever they go, or does each stop have its own flavor?
Rangarajan: We have customers around the world, so it was important to us that Omnissa ONE reflect the global nature of our community. The larger story will carry across Orlando, Amsterdam and Tokyo because the trends we’re talking about aren’t unique to one market. But I don’t want every event to feel exactly the same either.
Customers in different markets have different regulatory environments, infrastructure strategies, business priorities and partner ecosystems. We want each Omnissa ONE event to bring the global vision together with the issues that matter locally. That’s one of the benefits of bringing the experience closer to our customers globally rather than expecting the entire community to come to one event.
VMblog: Networking and community-building are often cited as a top reason people attend live events. What opportunities are built into the agenda for attendees to connect with Omnissa’s product teams, partners, and each other outside the formal sessions?
Rangarajan: That’s probably one of the biggest differences between attending Omnissa ONE and watching content online later.
We’re creating opportunities for people to spend time with our product teams, partners and, most importantly, each other. The expo is obviously a big part of that, but so are the conversations around sessions, labs and demonstrations.
EUC practitioners tend to be incredibly generous about sharing what works and what doesn’t. Being able to ask someone, “How are you handling this?” or “Have you tried this in your environment?” can sometimes be as valuable as the session you just attended.
We also have a very broad partner ecosystem participating, such as NVIDIA, Nutanix, AWS, Google, HP, IGEL and RedHat, which gives customers an opportunity to explore how different technologies and infrastructure choices fit together rather than looking at the digital workspace through the lens of a single vendor.
VMblog: Without giving away too much, can you tease any product announcements, roadmap reveals, or surprises attendees should watch for during the keynotes?
Rangarajan: I won’t spoil the keynote, but I would pay attention to the connection between AI, autonomy and trust.
We’re going to spend a lot of time showing what it actually means to move toward a more autonomous workspace. That includes how IT can use better intelligence and automation to become more proactive, how agents can begin taking on more work, and just as importantly, how organizations maintain the visibility and governance required as that happens.
I think people will come away with a much more concrete picture of what the autonomous workspace looks like and how quickly some of these ideas are moving from vision to reality.
VMblog: For an IT professional trying to justify the trip to their manager, what’s the elevator pitch on ROI — what will they bring back to their organization that they couldn’t get from a webinar or a whitepaper?
Rangarajan: I’d tell their manager they’re not going to Orlando just to hear what’s next. They’re going to figure out what to do next.
You can spend three days talking directly with the people building the technology, hear from customers solving problems similar to yours, get hands-on experience, learn from partners and sit down with peers who may have already figured out something you’re struggling with.
You can’t really recreate that in a webinar. If you come back with two or three ideas that save your team time, reduce complexity or help solve a problem that’s been sitting on your list, the trip has paid off.
VMblog: Looking past the three days in Orlando, what do you hope attendees — and the broader digital workspace community — take away from Omnissa ONE 2026 as a lasting impact on how they think about the future of work?
Rangarajan: I hope they leave thinking differently about what AI can make possible.
There’s a tendency to talk about AI as either this incredible opportunity or this enormous new risk. The reality is that organizations have to manage both at the same time.
That starts with having a clear understanding of what’s happening across your environment rather than looking at devices, experience and security in isolation. From there, you can put the right controls around AI, determine where it can be trusted to take action, where a person still needs to be involved and expand that trust over time.
If people leave our event with a clearer sense of how they can start putting those pieces together today and build toward a more autonomous workspace over time, I think we’ve done our job.
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