Ericom To Announces Blaze: A Technology to Optimize RDP
Friday, 11 September 2009 by Michel Roth
Ericom is about to announce a tehcnology called Blaze which supposedly reduces RDP bandwidth consumption by up to 25 times and thus provides a better user experience.

This information is not entirely clear yet but after the news was "leaked" by a couple of the Ericom Thin Client partners I was able to find out more. To me it sounds a WHOLE lot like Quest EOP but I may be wrong.

Ericom Blaze transforms RDP into a fast, responsive, and extremely efficient remote display protocol that dramatically reduces bandwidth consumption and optimizes RDP network traffic across the WAN/LAN and slow bandwidth connections. With these dramatic and productivity-enhancing improvements to the end-user experience, Ericom Blaze enables the reality of deploying and scaling desktop virtualization (VDI), Terminal Services and thin client computing to remote / mobile users, branch offices and clouds – quickly and cost-effectively.

How Does It Work?

Blaze performs three key operations to compress RDP by up to 98% and to transmit data up to 25 times faster than RDP:

 

  1. Blaze intelligently introspects the RDP protocol and compresses display data by 20 times and more. In addition, Blaze performs enhanced bulk compression on all the data transmitted via RDP.
  2. Blaze performs packet shaping to optimize RDP communication over high-latency / low-bandwidth connections.
  3. Standard RDP breaks screen frames into multiple small chunks that are rendered individually on the local display. Blaze unifies these chunks and displays complete screen frames as single units, resulting in a much smoother and more pleasant and-user experience.

How does Blaze compare with other remote display protocols?

Ericom Blaze is a robust display protocol that exceeds the performance of the latest versions of RDP including RDP 7, across a latent / low bandwidth connection, or for complex graphics or animation displays. Moreover, performing introspection on the RDP client from within, Ericom Blaze surpasses the performance of competing software and hardware- based remote solutions that modify the RDP protocol only externally.

Use Cases

Ericom Blaze performs particularly well in scenarios where RDP performance normally degrades the user experience, such as over low-bandwidth, high latency WANs, or congested LANs. Some of the most common use cases include remote office and branch computing, mobile / home-based workers, outsourced / offshore workforces, and cloud-hosted virtual desktops and applications.

Platform Support

 

Server Platforms Windows 2003 and 2008 Terminal Services (physical or virtual). Both x86 (32-bit) and x64 (64-bit) are supported

Windows XP and Vista as remote desktops (physical or virtual). Both x86 (32-bit) and x64 (64-bit) are supported

Windows 2008 R2 and Windows 7 in Q4 2009

Server must have MMX instruction set support

Client Platforms Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7, both x86 (32-bit) and x64 (64-bit). Linux (Ubuntu, Red Hat, Novell SUSE, etc). Mac OS X (Intel) in September 2009. Windows CE support in Q4 2009

Client must have MMX instruction set support
Network Types DSL, E1, T1, T3, WAN, LAN, WiFi, wireless WAN/LAN, and others
Connection Brokers VMware View Open Client 3.1 for Linux

VMware View for Windows in Q1 2010

Ericom PowerTerm WebConnect (for TS and VDI)

Can also work as standalone (without TS or VDI Connection Broker)

 


Related Items:

Wyse Launches Virtual Desktop Accelerator (VDA) To Deal With Latency on RDP/ICA Connections (?) (8 July 2009)
Finally VMware View4 Details Are Revealed (9 November 2009)
Wyse Provides All It's Thin Client With Ericom Software’s PowerTerm WebConnect (19 January 2006)
2X Opens Source Code To Its NX Based Terminal Server For Linux (1 September 2006)
Ericom Software Partners with UCSI to Expand PowerTerm Offerings for Microsoft Terminal Server and L (5 April 2005)
Ericom Software Extends Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition Terminal Servers (21 May 2005)
PC-over-IP remote display technology: The inner workings of VMware View 4 (12 January 2010)
Ericom PowerTerm WebConnect 5.5 Review (18 July 2006)
Bandwidth Allocation For Terminal Server Connections Over RDP (10 April 2007)
Leostream Releases Connection Broker 6.2 (27 August 2009)
Comments (1)
written by Dan Shappir, September 13, 2009
Actually news about Ericom Blaze was first "leaked" at this year's BriForum. At the BriForum DEMO Lab James Lui, Ericom's Director of Technical Services, demoed a pre-release version of Ericom Blaze:

http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/videos/archive/2009/07/22/briforum-2009-demo-lab-ericom.aspx

You can find a better video comparing Ericom Blaze and RDP6 here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJjgDsPFo0A