Virtualization has been a growing trend in communications systems at the server side, but the enterprise trend toward VDI (virtualized desktop infrastructure) has been a tougher nut to crack when it comes to real-time communications. As Irwin Lazar has explained, there's an inherent tension between VDI's use of processing at the server core rather than on the thin client, and the softphone's need to do localized processing so as not to incur latency and bandwidth problems that can result from processing real-time media remotely.
Mitel made a splash at VMWare's VMWorld show this week, by announcing that they've solved the softphone/VDI problem. Mitel announced that it has integrated its softphone client with the VMWare View 5 thin client, and can now provide real-time performance on softphone deployed as part of a virtualized desktop.
Mitel's CTO, Jim Davies, explained to me how the Mitel solution works. A softphone application typically includes both the application GUI interface logic and the media packet handling function. The packet handling is the part that needs to stay on the local client in order to minimize latency in real-time performance of the call itself; the rest can be off-loaded to the centralized servers.
Incidentally, Jim Davies noted that keeping media processing in the endpoint is important not just because of latency issues, but because you can't capture the efficiencies of virtualization if you have to dedicate server resources to peak-load levels of media processing.
"In the VDI space, the reason why the math works so well is you don't have a PC for every person in the datacenter; you oversubscribe the resource," because you don't have everyone using all their resources all the time, Davies explained. So "even if you solve the latency problem, which is solvable, you still have the math problem."
Rewriting the softphone application enabled Mitel to solve the latency problem; VMWare created an API for View that lets the Mitel softphone's media streaming function plug into the thin client on the desktop, while the remaining functions move to the datacenter.
Right now, Mitel is working with lead customers to implement the early version of the solution--the Chicago Bears organization is their reference customer for this week's press release. Davies expects the thin client plugin to be in customer labs for beta this fall, with general availability likely around the end of the year.
Mitel's been one of the pioneers in IP voice virtualization, and has been a key (though not exclusive) partner with VMWare for the function. Davies said VMWare was keen to highlight this latest integration at VMWorld, and that they're seeing it as a major differentiator for the VMWare client: "The View guys were over this like a rash," he said.
