I had placed a SR with VMware Support, here is their response.
First of all, I need to set expectations up front that bypassing the licensing error you're seeing would involve highly complicated programming around security APIs, requiring a very large effort on the part of our developers. Due to this, product management made a decision to not support SSMS or any software suite that includes it as a component. Unfortunately, this means that we can't troubleshoot or provide solutions to problems with this product.
Having said that, there is a potential workaround that's been identified and which *may* work for you - although there are no guarantees. I will pass it on, but if it doesn't work I'm afraid there isn't going to be anything more I can do to help you get around the issue.
Here's the procedure:
1. On a clean Windows 7 machine, take a prescan immediately followed by a postscan. (Don't actually capture anything.)
2. Accept the entry point "cmd.exe".
3. When prompted, select "Restricted write access (WriteCopy isolation mode). (This is not the default.)
4. Build the project.
5. Launch the resulting virtual command prompt.
6. From the virtual command prompt, navigate to the SSMS 2012 installation directory and run the command to install it.
7. After installation, run SSMS, verify it's working as expected, then exit the application.
8. Exit the command prompt by entering the command "exit".
9. Click Start > Run.
10. Enter the command "%appdata%".
11. Navigate to the "thinstall" folder.
12. Copy "SSMS" to "C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware ThinApp\Captures\SSMS", creating a subdirectory (Note: Replace "SSMS" with the actual name of the project.)
13. Launch a normal command prompt. (Not a virtual command prompt.)
14. Navigate to "C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware ThinApp".
15. Enter the command "sbmerge -projectdir captures\ssms -sandboxdir captures\ssms\ssms".
16. Wait for this to finish, then in the project folder ("captures\cmd"), double-click build.bat. to rebuild the cmd application.
17. Launch a virtual commmand prompt again.
18. Navigate to the directory to which SSMS was installed.
19. Execute SSMS.
20. Confirm if works.
21. If it fails, we won't be able to help any further. If it works, however:
21. a) Take the contents of the bin folder for cmd and copy it elsewhere.
21. b) Revert the Windows 7 machine back to a clean state.
22. c) Copy the cmd bin folder to the reverted VM.
23. d) Run the virtual command prompt and repeat executing SSMS manually.
I was not able to get these steps to work in the sort time that I tried. I will continue to try and see if the steps need any tweaking to get them to work.
I get the same results as logiboy123.