Real Time Collaboration in a Virtual Desktop Environment
The scenario: In a virtual desktop environment the users have only a thin client on their desks. The thin client (a web browser, Citrix client or Wyse terminal) accesses the business and office applications running on a server in the data center or in the cloud. Technical terms used for this are Desktop Virtualization (VDI, Microsoft Web Access) or Cloud Computing (Google docs and Apps).
In my humble opinion (IMHO) desktop virtualization is great when you want to ensure nobody can copy your customer data and walk away with it. There is simply no way to copy any data on a USB drive if you have no active USB connector. And nobody can steal the desktop PC/Laptop with the data on the harddrive. Customer loving this are banks, financial institutions or any other highly regulated industry or security concerned customer.
The challenge: IMHO current VDI solutions with integrated voice and video don't deliver what's required to make it a success. The voice and video quality is not good enough to deliver a good customer experience. That's a strong inhibitor for broader deployments.
The solution: IMHO the solution is decoupling voice/video from the thin client functionality and bringing it together in the data center. There are various ways how this can get achieved. For example:
1) The simplest method is to place a VoIP desktop phone on the desk together with the thin client terminal. Using the ethernet switch in the VoIP phone the thin client terminal gets connected behind the phone. Great voice quality results.
2) Another way is to run a voice/video softclient on a desktop PC together with the thin client software. To satisfy security needs you want to lock down the desktop PC so that no other SW can run and all USB interfaces are disabled.
Voice/Video and the thin client data then travel over the ethernet to the datacenter. Here the thin client data get connected to the virtualization servers while the real time voice/video packets hit the real time communication servers. Both get connected through Web Services or CTI interfaces.
The implementation using Avaya's technology: Use Avaya's IP phones or Avaya One-X® Communicator to implement great voice/video quality on the end users desk with Avaya Aura™ on the infrastructure side. Use Web services or classic CTI to connect to the servers for the data part using products as Agile Communication Environment (ACE) or Application Enablement Service (AES).
Let me know what your think about desktop virtualization. I like to learn about your experience. Leave a comment here or on my private blog at: http://telecomdisruption.blogspot.com/2010/02/real-time-collaboration-in-virtual.html
I thank all the readers of my previous blog for their input. As suggested i've added a section on how to implement it using Avaya's technology. Looking forward for more input!
Christian von Reventlow reventlow@avaya.com, vonreventlow@yahoo.com, twitter: vonreventlow, Skype: vonreventlow, Linked-In: vonreventlow
Posted by Christian von Reventlow at 20:23 on February 07, 2010