With the fantastic advancements being made in cloud technology, customers need to sort through all of the hype to avoid making quick decisions that unnecessarily lock them into a specific cloud or cloud software stack.
Cloud adoption is being driven by many factors including business efficiencies, reduced technological burden, increased collaboration for an increasingly mobile workforce, adaptability and the ability to scale operations easily and quickly.
With the release of VMware’s Blast Extreme, some users are wondering if this H.264-based protocol is being positioned as an alternative or a replacement for PCoIP. As a proud VMware partner with roughly 10 million PCoIP seats around the globe, we are pleased to see VMware introducing options to their customers, but we caution against making this an either/or comparison.
Blast = single-codec, PCoIP = multi-codec
As we’ve mentioned before, there are many differences between the H.264 encoder used by Blast and PCoIP, among them being critical differences in lossless, color-accurate delivery of text and graphics and full multi-monitor support. Though Blast H.264 is good for video, the use of a video codec for your entire desktop creates major inefficiencies, delivering grainy images or causing unnecessary delays.
Though Blast H.264 is good for video, the use of a video codec for your entire desktop creates major inefficiencies.
It’s for this reason that we designed PCoIP to be multi-codec; to dynamically choose between codecs, frame rate and image quality based on available bandwidth, delivering the best end-result for the user with the greatest efficiencies for the whole system.
But that's not the only factor to consider...
H.264 a great video codec. It is a widely deployed, with a mature ecosystem of hardware and software. This is certainly a benefit but... is this benefit worth being locked into using only H.264?
What about being locked into one vendor? Going all-in on Blast H.264 will do just that, locking you into the VMware Horizon ecosystem - forget about using the public, private, or hybrid cloud solution of your choice.
These are real concerns. A recent survey demonstrated that 78% of IT decision makers believe concerns about vendor lock-in prevent their organization from maximizing the benefits of cloud resources. Reports by Gartner and Fortune have echoed their own concerns over vendor lock-in.
78% of IT decision makers believe concerns about vendor lock-in prevent their organization from maximizing the benefits of cloud resources.
Even if a multi-cloud solution isn't in the cards, do you want to lock into a single-vendor ecosystem that could force new hardware (such as new clients or unnecessary GPUs for H.264 offload) on your organization?
Choose any cloud with PCoIP
Only PCoIP provides you with the widest choice of cloud offerings, including VMware Horizon, Amazon WorkSpaces, PCoIP Remote Workstation Cards, Teradici Cloud Access Software and solutions built on the Cloud Access Platform. Unlike Blast, the PCoIP protocol is hypervisor agnostic, supported on all public clouds, private clouds and hybrid cloud deployments.
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Take your pick... With PCoIP, you aren't limited to a single cloud vendor. |
On top of all this, PCoIP doesn’t require the addition of a GPU for good protocol and virtual machine performance. In fact, PCoIP already offers many of the benefits of GPU protocol offload at a fraction of the cost with our PCoIP Hardware Accelerator for VMware Horizon deployments.
PCoIP Zero Clients are available from a large vendor ecosystem and can be used on multiple public, private, and hybrid cloud back-ends, so your choice of device will never lock you into a specific cloud solution.
PCoIP already offers many of the benefits of GPU protocol offload at a fraction of the cost.
Cloud desktop and workstation deployments are in their infancy; we’ve only just begun to tap into the power of the cloud. Do yourself a favor and leave your options open to take advantage of the latest innovations and opportunities in cloud solutions.
Learn more about the differences between PCoIP and Blast Extreme...
