HP Inc slurps Teradici to get better at delivering remote PCs

HP Inc has acquired remote PC specialist Teradici. Teradici's best trick is PC-over-IP (PCoIP), software that makes PCs remotely accessible by streaming whatever would be on their screens. The company's approach means that no data moves over networks – just bitmaps. The tech is well regarded and can point to one ringing …

[teknopaul]

did the pay less than 10 billion?

[Anonymous Coward]

Screen remoting is a solved problem...

It's all about the desktop management stuff now....

[katrinab]

Having read various articles elsewhere on this site, I would be extremely nervous about selling my company to HP.

We have RPD for remote desktop access. That's what most people use. I'm sure if I asked people here what the problems with it are, they would be able to come up with something.

Does Teradici solve any of these problems? Would people be willing to pay whatever it is they are charging to have these problems solved? Does it introduce any new problems which might discourage people from going wtih this solution. How does it compare with the other alternatives to RDP? Does the expected and actual revenues justify the price paid for the company?

[HPCJohn]

Re: Switching on the "monitor stand"

Teradici PCOIP is fantastic - I have deployed it. RDP is of course adequate for desktop use. But if you are doing high end graphics and 3D then PCOIP is what you need. I gather it uses adaptive compression - different compression depending on the type of movement on the screen.

PCOIP Also 'builds to lossless' - so on restricted bandwidth when you stop moving or rotating you will get a lossless image.

PCOIP is also entirely secure - certified to UK Govt standards.

[Doctor Syntax]

"The company's approach means that no data moves over networks – just bitmaps."

What about keyboard input? Does it send bitmaps of the keys?

[HPCJohn]

The keyboard and mouse devices appear as USB devices.

SO the cute thing is that you can lock out unknown USB devices - such as USB drives - at the hardware level. Your remote workstation never 'sees' them at all.

For hardware PCOIP you have a daughter card power from the host workstation, and appears on the bus as a USB device for keyboard/mouse.

The graphics card output is looped into the PCOIP card and there is an onboard processor which does the conversion to a network stream. The card has its own ethernet connector.

[guyr]

Sounds like VNC

"no data moves over networks – just bitmaps"

That's called VNC, which has been available - for free - for 20+ years.

[Daniel Feenberg]

anonymous coward no doubt means RDP - Remote Desktop Protocol which Microsoft provides free for Windows and OSX under the name RDC- Remote Desktop Connection. or mstsc. The cMS client also works with Linux servers xrdp software. We use it extensively. It is OK, much better than most MS products and better than the free as in speech alternatives we have tried, but everyone tells us there are security risks that require a VPN or tunnel which users do find complicated. The Teradici website provides no suggestion of how that software might differ from RDC.

[HPCJohn]

How it differs? Built in encryption, adaptive compression of moving graphics.

You can do 3D CAD etc. over a PCOIP session.

[orly_andico]

Teradici performs much better than VNC or RDP over high latency links

Subject says it all, having used all of them.

Whether Teradici performs better than Citrix or VMware Horizon, I can’t tell, but there are large customers using it. For example Pfizer is a major (10’s of Ks of seats) Amazon Workspaces customer. (Workspaces uses PCoIP as the underlying transport)