Want to Join Webex Meetings from a Virtual Desktop? No Problem

The move to virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) is becoming more common. It’s hard to ignore benefits such as cost reductions, security, and data recovery. Customers considering this transition often ask whether they can deploy their Cisco collaboration applications in their virtual desktop environment. The answer is yes.

Cisco has been on the forefront of providing HD video and audio and content sharing on VDI thin clients for years with Cisco Jabber. We’ve worked tirelessly to optimize the experience for these environments while delivering the superior quality your users need to collaborate and to get work done. Today, users can not only message and call using voice and video, but they can host and join Webex video conferencing meetings from the Jabber app itself.

The VDI landscape is complex. It requires a mix of thin-client operating systems plus a variety of video and audio drivers to make real-time media work. We have architected the app to support almost every flavor of thin-client operating systems including Windows, Windows Embedded, Windows Thin PC, Windows 10 IoT, eLux, HP ThinPro and Ubuntu, working with both Citrix and VMWare VDI environments.

Now we’re leveraging our expertise and taking this to the next level to provide an even more native meetings experience. We’re working to develop the Webex Meetings VDI client, bringing together our learnings from Jabber and the new Webex. In fact, the Webex Meetings VDI client keeps media on the edge, eliminates network bandwidth usage, and lowers data center compute costs while delivering superior real-time audio and video quality. Not bad.

On top of that, the underlying technology of the Webex Meetings VDI client is proven. Organizations, including some of the world’s largest financial institutions, have chosen to deploy Cisco’s VDI technologies. They tell us that our solution gives them the security and management of the virtual desktop environment while delivering best-in-class media quality and industry-leading collaboration to their users.

VDI continues to be an important element of Cisco’s collaboration software suite. We are committed to continuing to enhance our VDI solution to deliver a first-class experience for real-time media communications. Stay tuned.