Last month Microsoft created quite a storm with their announcement of RemoteFX included within Windows 2008 R2 SP, which is a technology designed to deliver media-rich applications being run in the datacenter to remote users and still get a local-like experience.
So why is Microsoft RemoteFX important? Because its support for full-fidelity video as well as rich media and 3D graphics helps close the gap between the user experience of a local user sitting at their physical desktop and that of a remote user connected to a virtual desktop.
Customers looking to deploy a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) expect their users to be able to plug any peripheral device into their client device and have it "just work" within a virtual desktop as if it was a physical desktop.
The situation today is that the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) only provides certain kinds of high-level redirection (such as printer redirection, disk drive redirection, PnP device redirection, etc). However, due to the wide variety of device types and variances in the quality and availability of drivers, it is impossible to provide a consistent high-level device redirection solution for every device across every platform used with RDP. As a result, device-specific solutions for each type of device are necessary.
A much better solution is to redirect devices at the USB level. With that type of solution, which Microsoft have chosen for VDI desktops, no device drivers are needed on the client device, and we can provide a universal interface that works with any USB device on any of our supported platforms. This solution is able to successfully redirect most of the devices users wish to use, including audio in/out devices, storage devices, HID devices (tablets, keyboards, etc.), and printers and scanners.
This is an interesting time for Microsoft based VDI technology, that coupled with the announcement of VECD licensing last month, makes Microsoft a very interesting option for VDI.