Virtual Environments & Desktop Communications.

Over the last year or so, we’ve seen many organizations move away from traditional PC-based desktop architectures in favor of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and/or Virtual Application Infrastructure (VAI). VDI and VAI enable workers to locally access, via low-power terminals, software applications and desktops which are hosted in remote data centers. The benefit of a virtual infrastructure is well understood: it centralizes application management, it provides “green IT” resulting from lower power consumption, and it facilitates business continuity. However, the biggest benefit of VDI is that it enables “Virtual Organizations” by making it easy for users to work productively from anywhere with the best application performance and security regardless of location. VDI, in other words, provides users with access to their applications no matter where they are, while providing significant cost and carbon savings.

For organizations to become truly virtual, however, they not only need to provide users with access to their applications, they also need to provide users with access to other users—their coworkers, their partners, their customers, their suppliers. Desktop videoconferencing technology allows “virtual” access to users by providing a face-to-face experience across the network and allowing users to interact as if they were virtually in the same location.

Unfortunately, desktop videoconferencing and VDI do not always co-exist nicely. Using a VDI architecture for desktop video, video compression and decompression tasks are relegated to application servers in the data center, and uncompressed video is sent between the server and terminal, which puts excessive loads on the network. For example, an uncompressed CIF video stream running at 30fps uses approximately 50Mb/s. This makes desktop videoconferencing over VDI impossible in wide-area environments and impractical at best in local area deployments. The lesson learnt here: although VDI and VAI environments offer truly compelling saving and productivity enhancements, they can introduce some considerable drawbacks for mission critical solutions, such as desktop communications.

Fortunately, Avistar will introduce VDI-enabled desktop video products to address these challenges; Specifically, Avistar is planning a Citrix-enabled version of the Avistar C3™ solution that will enable the full Avistar suite of voice and video communications software on Citrix XenApp/XenDesktop. This solution will also enable other desktop video technologies such as Microsoft OCS to be deployed on Citrix as well. Another lesson learnt here: if applications such as desktop communications can be made aware of these VAI/VDI environments, they can be engineered in a way to leverage the VAI/VDI benefits, while dealing directly with the challenges that are introduced by these environments. The result is a win / win situation where the end user gets full desktop video communications capabilities, while the IT organization delivers the on the scalability, cost saving and environmental benefits that VAI/VDI have to offer.

So, there you have it: Avistar will provide the missing link that will enable organizations to become truly virtual by providing access not just to remote applications but also to remote people, all using the same VDI/VAI desktop architecture.

Comments and questions welcomed...

Chris Lauwers, Avistar CTO