Avistar Brings Video to Virtual PCs

Sunday, 31 October 2010 13:49 Written by Peter Brockmann

The PC video conferencing company, Avistar provided a recent update on their latest announcement of support for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), the classic method for delivering PC-class of services to many users without the cost or hassle of issuing each user a PC. VDI avoids assigning each user a Windows license or providing a hard drive. In VDI there is still a need for mouse, keyboard, monitor and a low-cost device at the terminal that provides the high speed networking of the presentation aspects of the application running on the PC. Similar to the timeshare and mini-computing environments of the past decades, a central server supports many users by providing local presentation and data input & control with high speed networking allowing the applications to do their computing centrally.

Now, with the help of the B990, a new HD camera from the PC camera people, Logitech, Avistar customers can exploit the on-camera H.264 encoding and leverage the Avistar C3 Integrator software on the server for decoding to deliver a two-way, HD-grade desktop video conferencing application right on the VDI terminal. In their press release, Avistar noted that the VDI solution is optimized for HP thin client devices and Citrix virtual PC system software.

This first-of-its-kind Video on VDI solution enables a new, previously unaddressable segment of the market with realtime two-way PC video communications. It extends Avistar's enterprise portfolio directly into large enterprise scenarios where VDI systems are the security and maintenance platform of choice in shared computing spaces such on the floor of massive aircraft assembly production facilities, hospital environments and government offices.