Nine months after acquiring remote desktop software developer Teradici, HP today revealed the payoff: HP Anyware, a remote computing solution combining the best of Teradici’s cloud access software (CAS) platform with HP’s ZCentral Remote Boost technology.

“This is bringing those two solutions together and offering that as a single, richer solution, all under one umbrella, to our joint customer base,” said Ziad Lammam, HP’s Global Head of Teradici Product Management, in an interview with engineering.com.

HP launched the beta of HP Anyware today and expects it to be generally available this summer.

And The Winning Protocol Is…

When HP acquired Teradici last July, we wondered what was in store for HP ZCentral Remote Boost, a remote desktop protocol that directly competed with the popular PCoIP protocol that underpins Teradici CAS (as well as other remote desktop solutions like VMWare and Amazon WorkSpaces).

We finally have the answer: ZCentral Remote Boost is getting the boot, and PCoIP perseveres.

“To really create the stronger single solution we had to pick a path forward, and so the protocol that will be used going forward is PC-over-IP,” Lammam explained.

But ZCentral Remote Boost won’t be forgotten, as many of its most popular features will be ported over to HP Anyware. Chief among these is screen-sharing collaboration, which allows multiple users to view and control the same desktop in real-time. Resource scheduling, remote tuning options, and hardware health monitoring are also coming over from ZCentral Remote Boost.

“It’s really Teradici CAS adding on all of the great features that ZCentral Remote Boost customers enjoy,” Lammam said.

What ZCentral Remote Boost Users Should Know

Buyers of HP Z workstations have always gotten ZCentral Remote Boost as a bonus, giving them a free remote desktop solution out of the box (though HP’s ZConnect management software was extra). That bonus will continue to be offered until the end of this year. Support for ZCentral Remote Boost will end on February 27, 2023, though customers will still be able to use their perpetual licenses.

Lammam implied HP is still considering the option of including Anyware with Z workstations (“no decisions there,” he said). However, an HP/Teradici FAQ from February suggests the decision is all but made.

“To deliver the best of both ZCentral and Teradici CAS to meet our customers’ increasingly more complex remote computing needs, we need to combine the products within a subscription model. This will allow us to invest more in development and to enhance our solutions and services designed for hybrid work,” states the document.

HP is offering the usual consolation prize when perpetual licenses turn into perennial subscriptions: a limited-time discount for existing users. In this case, for each ZCentral Remote Boost license, HP RGS license (the predecessor to Remote Boost), or Z Workstation purchase, HP is giving a 40 percent discount on annual subscriptions to the new solution, now revealed to be HP Anyware. At time of writing, the discounted price is given as $144 per concurrent user (full price $240). That offer is valid until April 30.

“If the new HP Anyware solution meets the needs of a ZCentral Remote Boost customer, they can transition right away when the product is available in the summer,” Lammam said. “If it doesn’t, they can certainly stay on ZCentral Remote Boost until HP Anyware has what they need. As long as you’re under the subscription umbrella starting next year, then you’re able to use both software packages and transition in your own time.”

One of the reasons HP offered ZCentral Remote Boost for free with its workstations was because the protocol was designed to serve users with high performance requirements. Though Teradici cast a wider net with PCoIP, Lammam promised that HP Anyware won’t lose sight of the workstation users.

“We’re still going to be very committed to the high performance engineering user base,” Lammam said. “The workstation user base will have more features, more capabilities. But we’re also going to be servicing the wider user base, and that’s where the flexibility of Teradici CAS comes in.”  

For more on ZCentral Remote Boost, PCoIP, and other remote desktop protocols, read What is the Best Remote Desktop Protocol for Engineers?