Wyse ThinOS 8.6 Extends Smooth and Seamless Real-Time Communication on Dell’s Thin Clients

Companies all over the world are recognizing virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) with thin clients as a prime solution for some of their most pressing endpoint security and client management challenges. But until recently, it wasn’t the ideal solution for users that conduct real-time audio and video conferences using popular services like Microsoft Skype and Cisco Jabber.

With the launch of the latest version of our flagship thin client firmware platform, ThinOS 8.6, Wyse thin clients now offer additional exciting options for these enterprises, thanks to expanded support for high-quality unified communications products.

How ThinOS 8.6 Enables Better Communication

The challenge that typically comes with using unified communications products on VDI has to do with where the signal is processed. For example, if an employee Skypes with a vendor in another country over your VDI connection, the audio-video stream of their conversation must be processed and unpacked by an intermediary — a virtual machine on your server — before being sent to the employee’s device.

This puts a big load on your server’s CPU and causes latency issues, particularly if you’re part of a large organization where 500-plus users may be Skyping or Jabbering at the same time. If both parties are using VDI — say they work for the same company but are based in different offices — this so-called “hairpin effect” is only magnified, as the communications traffic must go through two virtual machines on the way to a target device.

Now if the clients can shoulder some of the load by handling the audio/video processing on the endpoint and communicating directly with the other party – you can deliver a better call experience while also reducing the overhead on the servers.  A win-win scenario!  Prior to this release, ThinOS could support Skype offload under Citrix environments using RTME. With 8.6, we’ve now extended our capabilities to include Jabber offload for Citrix environments with Cisco’s jVDI offload module and Skype offload with the VMware Horizon client. This gives ThinOS the ability to offload this workload for the lion’s share of the unified communications products now leading the market using a highly secure and easy to manage client.

Not only will end users appreciate the enhanced user experience and excellent voice and audio performance, but IT administrators can lighten the load on their VDI servers in the process and thus make more efficient use of those expensive resources.

The Power of Dell Thin Clients for Today’s Challenging User Demands

By adding these capabilities to our ThinOS clients, customers no longer have to trade off security and manageability benefits against the need to give their end users an excellent unified communications experience.

Our customers now have a range of powerful systems that offer ThinOS, including the sleek and compact Wyse 3040 that sports dual 2K monitor support and fits in the palm of your hand or you may choose a newly-introduced Wyse 5070 series platform, sporting the latest generation Intel quad-core CPU’s, true 4K displays, USB 3.1 type C and configurations with up to six monitors!

With this release, ThinOS continues to deliver the benefits of a robust and flexible firmware that can adapt to the ever-changing virtualization landscape. Moreover, it offers this support on a secure and manageable endpoint while delivering the best possible user experience for the workforce’s increasingly demanding and complex compute scenarios.

Choosing your workplace devices is about achieving the right balance among functionality, security, manageability and cost factors. With the launch of ThinOS 8.6 and its support for high-quality, real-time communications, you now have one more check in the “pro” column for Wyse thin clients and VDI.