Bringing HD Video Communication to Virtual Desktops and Thin Clients

You’ve heard us talk about HD video calling on the PC and the TV, as well as in the meeting room with LifeSize. Now, I’d like to tell you about another new way we’re delivering on our vision to bring seamless HD video communications to anyone – consumers and businesses – anywhere, on any connected screen.

I’ve already discussed some of our plans around the four screens people engage with the most: the PC, TV, smartphone, and meeting room. Today, we are happy to announce that we’re extending our HD video promise to another screen in the enterprise – the thin client – with the new Logitech B990 HD Webcam. Through collaboration with our partners at Avistar, Citrix and HP, announced at Citrix Synergy in Berlin, Logitech is bringing HD video communications to virtual desktops for the first time. Virtual desktops are accessible from a variety of devices, including PCs and thin clients, but unlike traditional desktops, their programs, applications and data are all stored and run on a remote server.

As more and more enterprises move from traditional desktop environments to virtual desktops, HD video is an application that’s typically compromised or sacrificed due to the processing capabilities of the thin client infrastructure. That’s why we designed the Logitech B990 HD Webcam to do the heavy lifting with embedded H.264 technology for onboard HD video encoding.

At Logitech, we have a history of bringing HD video communications to the PC – for consumers through webcams such as the Logitech C910 Webam and to businesses through products such as LifeSize’s LG Executive. The virtual desktop was really the final PC frontier for HD video in the business environment, so today’s announcement is an achievement that’s significant for us in our continued move toward making HD video communications ubiquitous. The Logitech B990 HD Webcam is expected to be available early 2011.

Author

Senior Vice President and General Manager, Logitech for Business @EricKintz