HP Anyware: Q&A About the New Digital Workspaces Solution from HP Teradici

This post was originally published in July 2022. It has been refreshed to reflect product updates.

HP Anyware has officially been released! With HP Anyware, users can get secured access to digital workspaces from virtually anywhere. Anyware is the software leader for delivering high performance remote workloads in multicloud architectures. Based on the PC-over-IP (PCoIP®) remote display technology that powered Teradici CAS, Anyware also includes features from ZCentral Remote Boost and Connect. 

We know customers for both Teradici CAS and Remote Boost have a lot of questions about the new product. In this Q&A, HP Teradici product managers Mirela Cunjalo and Patrick McConnon share insights into HP Anyware, what it means for Remote Boost and RGS 7 customers, Teradici CAS customers, as well as how Anyware builds on what Teradici CAS and Remote Boost currently offer. 

Mirela and Patrick hosted a product webinar in July (get a refresher by watching our earlier webinar). Attend the webinar on demand and learn more about HP Anyware by reading the Q&A below. 

Remote Boost and RGS 7

Q: ZCentral Remote Boost and RGS Connect had been free with Z Workstations. Will existing customers automatically get free access to HP Anyware?

Patrick: As the working environment continues to change, we want to offer the best products for businesses in a variety of industries so they can continue to accomplish their goals. We understand that hybrid models are the future of work—99% of respondents to our security survey said their companies were adopting a hybrid model, and 85% of our March webinar respondents concurred. With that in mind, we want to ensure that HP Anyware is the most comprehensive solution in high-powered hybrid and remote compute. 

Teradici CAS users will automatically get access to HP Anyware, as it is the same subscription and product. ZCentral Remote Boost and RGS 7 customers with a perpetual license will need to purchase the HP Teradici single subscription to continue using the most updated version of the software. You can continue to use RGS 7 if you have an existing license, but please note that it is no longer supported.

From December 15, 2021, through December 31, 2022, ZCentral Remote Boost v22 will be available to Z customers. We are now offering customers the opportunity to speak with our sales team to put together a more well-rounded and valuable software package for their business uses. Please contact the Teradici sales team for more details. 

Q: What happens to customers who have already purchased a perpetual Z Central license (v20)?

Patrick: Customers with a ZCentral Remote Boost v20 license can continue to use their perpetual license even beyond 2022, however, without new features or updates being added. Support for perpetual licenses, including new releases addressing bug fixes, will end on February 27, 2023. Please contact the Teradici sales team for options on shifting your license to HP Anyware.

Q: Will there be any discount on subscriptions for Z Workstation owners?

Patrick: The HP Anyware sales team is dedicated to bringing the best solution to customers for both Teradici CAS and ZCentral Remote Boost. Please contact our team for available discounts, and we can discuss how best to cater to our customers’ specific scenarios.

Q: Will this change the way Z Workstations that already have Remote Boost built-in work?

Patrick: HP will continue to support customers with legacy ZCentral products until the end of their support and warranty agreements. However, to ensure that bug fixes and security issues are supported, it is highly recommended that customers use the most up-to-date supported versions of Z products, such as HP Anyware.

Q: Why should Remote Boost customers move to HP Anyware? 

Patrick: We have heard what customers require from our digital workspaces software and we believe that the current features and roadmap items for HP Anyware are exactly what you need in the new hybrid world. 21% of attendees of our March webinar have been using both CAS and Remote Boost, which demonstrates how valuable a product that combines both of these software would be. 

For Remote Boost customers, HP Anyware provides access to new features like ultra-secure remoting and endpoint architecture, and some of the widest platform flexibility available in the industry. Anyware is built on the secured PCoIP protocol that powered Teradici CAS, and the new single subscription of Anyware includes features from Teradici CAS, the Remote Boost product suite, as well as ZCentral Connect brokering features. 

HP is investing in Anyware to give businesses secured access to digital workspaces from anywhere they have a network connection. Anyware provides a user experience that rivals being in the office and using a physical workstation. Moreover, HP Anyware will future-proof company infrastructure by adding features such as enhanced security with zero trust architectures, so that employees can maintain their performance and flexibility. 

Additionally, new features and enhancements will only be included in HP Anyware, not in Remote Boost, Connect or RGS 7. Customers are highly encouraged to purchase either a CA or CA+ subscription for the new HP Anyware software as soon as possible to get the latest upgrades. 

Teradici CAS

Q: How are Teradici CAS customers affected by HP Anyware? 

Mirela: HP Anyware is built on Teradici CAS, so customers with an existing CAS subscription aren’t impacted. The name of the product has changed, new collaboration features have been added, and there will be regular improvements to the functionality and usability of HP Anyware. 

Q: If we have a current subscription for Teradici CAS, can we now also use ZCentral?

Mirela: Users with a Teradici CA+ subscription will have access to HP Anyware, which was formerly Teradici CAS, and includes access to ZCentral V22 software. ZCentral Remote Boost and Teradici CAS have been merged into a single product, HP Anyware, which is based on the PCoIP® protocol and the Teradici CAS licensing platform.

Q: Does an existing Teradici CAS subscription give access to ZCentral or is this limited to only 'new' subscriptions?

Mirela: You can access HP Anyware and ZCentral boost v22 with an existing CAS subscription.

HP Anyware

Q: What is HP Anyware and what are the benefits to users?

Mirela: HP Anyware was formerly known as Teradici CAS. It is a secured digital workspaces solution that combines the best features from Teradici CAS and ZCentral Remote Boost. HP Anyware is based on the secure PCoIP remote display protocol that keeps business information safe by only transmitting fully encrypted display pixels to endpoint devices, so your information never leaves the data center. HP Anyware will also include features such as broad peripheral support, simple VDI management, high color accuracy, as well as low latency, even on projects that require graphics-intensive applications.

Patrick: For ZCentral customers, HP Anyware offers a variety of flexible benefits, no matter what your host client, cloud, VDI or on-prem needs are. Anyware supports clients such as Chrome OS and, on the host side, MacOS. The PCoIP protocol is also designed with zero trust gateways, so no VPN connections are needed to access data securely. CAS, and now Anyware, also has third party software integrations with a host of ISV vendors.

Mirela: HP Anyware aims to provide the highest quality experience to users. Based on the PCoIP protocol, Anyware has been engineered for virtually any type of host environment and any endpoint, so users from a variety of industries can access digital workspaces from anywhere with a network connection. With HP Anyware, you can achieve color-accurate remoting – if you look at an image on a local system and compare it to the colors on your screen while remoting, it will be almost the same. Most third-party remoting solutions offer H.264 compression, which is beneficial when you have lower bandwidths to work with, but these result in lower quality and color accuracy. With PCoIP, you won’t lose millions of colors while working remotely. You can also enable the build-to-lossless feature for more accuracy without using up large amounts of bandwidth.

Additionally, HP Anyware supports a variety of endpoints and peripherals, including Wacom pens and tablets, webcams, as well as 4K multi-monitor support. Anyware also includes support for Quadro, GTX cards, and AMD GPUs, depending on the type of OS in use, as well as RHEL support.

Q: What protocol will HP Anyware use?

Mirela: HP Anyware is based on the PCoIP remote display protocol that Teradici CAS was based on. PCoIP is a secure, high-definition and highly responsive computing experience that uses advanced display compression to transmit only fully encrypted image pixels, not raw data, to a variety of endpoints. This ensures that business information stays in the data center.

Q: What features from Remote Boost does HP Anyware include?

Mirela: HP Anyware will include pro-grade collaboration, power management and performance health insights from Remote Boost.

Q: Is HP Anyware a one-time purchase, or is there an ongoing cost for subscription?

Mirela: Pricing for HP Anyware will be $240 per year, per concurrent user.

Q: How does the HP Anyware licensing work? 

Mirela: HP Anyware is subscription-based and there are two annual licenses available, Cloud Access (CA) and Cloud Access Plus (CA+). The CA license is for knowledge workers who have hosts without a GPU. CA+ is meant for Mac and workstation users that run high compute and graphics-intensive applications where hosts have a GPU. 

If you have either the CA and CA+ subscriptions today, that same subscription will enable you to access both HP Anyware and Remote Boost so you can more easily transition over time from Remote Boost to Anyware. 

Licensing models for HP Anyware will be evolving and eventually won’t be called Cloud Access. Stay tuned for more information about the licensing names and features. 

Q: Will HP Anyware be available on MacOS with full feature parity?

Mirela: Yes. HP Anyware operates on any endpoint system - Windows, Linux, MacOS, Chrome OS, iOS, and Android. We have recently announced M1 support for Anyware and will continue to update our solution to support MacOS.

Q: Will third party brokers such as Leostream be able to work with both Teradici CAS and the HP Anyware combined offering?

Mirela: Yes, third party brokers including Leostream will work with HP Anyware.

Q: Now that HP Anyware has launched, what beta features are available?

Mirela: HP Anyware was launched as part of the 22.07 GA release. We have software releases about every three months and the next release, which is 22.09, is available in beta now. Beta releases include a host of new features that users can test and give us feedback on. 

One of the beta features right now is USB support for Macs. We’ve resolved an issue with USB support for macOS and that will be available in 22.09 using the latest Monterey macOS. If you use peripherals such as Wacom tablets, keyboard, mouse, or monitors on macOS clients on the latest Monterey OS, you will be able to use a USB to connect. 

Patrick: We are also making exciting updates to the Anyware Client to refresh and modernize the UI and improve usability. As we release the beta version of 22.09, the login experience for HP Anyware is going to be updated. The aim of improving usability is to make the software easier to use for customers with less technical expertise. We see the login experience as step one for users. So, the first milestone for enhancing that usability is to make it as easy as possible for users to understand connection requirements and how to access a computer remotely. We're going to continue to iterate through that experience on the front end, right at step one of the workflow, which is logging in to access the computer. 

Visit our support page at help.teradici.com to access the development build of 22.09 and test it out.

Q: Are there tech previews for HP Anyware?

Mirela: Yes! Stay tuned for tech previews such as advanced collaboration that introduces edit control. The secondary user will be able to take over the keyboard and mouse in the collaboration session that they've been invited to. 

We have also heard from many of our customers who need Federated User Authentication support and we will be offering a tech preview of this feature later this year.

Q: Are there more developments from HP Anyware?

Patrick: Beyond 22.09, we're bringing in some key elements from Remote Boost to make HP Anyware an effective tool for teams to be more productive and efficient in their hybrid environments. 

We know that graphics-intensive users greatly value specific metrics as it relates to image fidelity, bandwidth consumption, frame rate, and visual performance. HP Anyware is going to have an additional layer of analytics for connection performance, and it will be easier to navigate levers for performance control for the end users’ needs. These updates are going to become more apparent as users onboard to the HP Anyware solution through 2022-23. 

We're going to continue to showcase critical metrics to suit and support high performance tuning and ensure that end users are comfortable with the performance of the PCoIP protocol in their hybrid work scenarios. 

The performance management tool will explicitly state what the overall health of a user’s connection is, which will be important for users who are less familiar with performance metrics. These upcoming performance management options will provide utmost granularity and logic behind the performance of a user’s connection, while also using that information to empower users that don’t have as much technical knowledge so that they can iterate and tweak the controls according to their needs.  

Have more questions about HP Anyware? Contact us on hp.com/Anyware. For more information about how HP Anyware is evolving, watch the webinar entitled HP Anyware: Understanding the Future of Digital Workspaces on demand.