4JanStay productive anywhere in the world with VMWare and PCoIP

Advances in remoting technology now allow us to operate our PCs remotely from any location with an internet connection. But the quality of the remoting experience is often dictated by how fast our internet connection is and how well the underlying remoting technology performs.

With the myriad of choices available for remote desktop access, where does one begin? Well one option worth taking a closer look at is VMware View running over PCoIP. Lets take a quick look at this pairing starting with VMware View.

VMware is a virtualization technology allowing you to set up virtual machines. This means for example that you can host one or more “virtual computers” on one physical computer and then use each virtual computer as if you were using a normal computer. In other words it’s like having multiple computers each with their own installation of Windows, all on one physical machine. This is particularly useful in corporate environments where virtual machines can be hosted on powerful servers and then assigned to employees. The IT department can then perform system maintenance across all virtual machines, without having to visit each employee’s physical machine. Got a new employee? Simply setup another virtual machine on the server. The employees then access the virtual machine(s) assigned to them using a thin client (a device with a keyboard, mouse and network card) or via a window on their regular PC desktop. The best part is that employees can access their virtual machine from any computer in the office, from their home PC or from any PC in the world.

The second half of the equation is what makes this all possible: PCoIP is the underlying protocol used to deliver the virtual desktop experience across networks and the internet. And one of my clients— Teradici Inc.—just happens to be the developer of this great technology. Their protocol enables real-time or near real-time remoting experiences in a VMware View client from virtually anywhere. The basic premise of their protocol is simple: identify, compress and transmit only those pixels which have changed using optimized algorithms. The result? A near realtime remoting experience even on slower internet connections.

This is a dream for working on documentation projects remotely, because there is nothing a technical writer can throw at VMware View and PCoIP that this potent combination can’t handle. This comes as no surprise because PCoIP is targeted towards CAD and other graphically intense multimedia applications spanning multiple monitors.

So if you’re looking for a remoting technology that gets the job done, is easy to use and is secure, I recommend checking out www.vmware.com and www.teradici.com.