Now this is very interesting news because with all the interest around VDI there is still no real alternative to ICA other than RDP (or VNC...?) and in this I'm not even going to consider Ncomputing's WoIP, as from a techies point of view this would appear to simply be a rehash of RDP, although I'm prepared to be convinced otherwise?
But it might be exciting to see that there is a real possible alternative to the ICA/RDP stranglehold and this might have the makings of some interesting changes to how things might be approached in the VDI space?
******UPDATE******
As a consequence of this post I have been contacted by Ncomputing and it would appear that their WoIP is actually what they term a combination of UTMA and UXP and does indeed make the connection/transition/session at a lower level in the stack. However, you will not find much detail on the inner workings of this as it's proprietary, and I'm still trying to understand how this all plays out with regards to the Microsoft Licensing side of things as detailed here in a post on their Forum
http://ncomputing.com/ncomputing/wbb2/thread.php?threadid=963&hilightuser=1087
If/when I find out more I'll update either here, or as a separate post on my new blog at www.techagility.info
******UPDATE******
Qumranet leaves stealth mode and enters VDI market with Solid ICE
By Alessandro Perilli
After almost two years in stealth mode, one of the most interesting virtualization startup at the moment, Qumranet, launches its first product: a VDI solution called Solid ICE.
Solid ICE is made of a connection broker, but also features a server component which adds resources control capabilities to KVM, and a new remote access protocol, called SPICE, which can be optionally used as replacement for Microsoft RDP.
The connection broker has some interesting capabilities in itself, supporting high availability and exposing a web portal for standard PC clients access which is designed to scale up to thousands of virtual machines. Despite that first version will provide basic capabilities to operate the virtual machine, with enhancements to be released over time.
The new protocol adds further value to Qumranet solution, being designed to deliver on thin clients all those multimedia protocols which usually don't perform well into a terminal services session (an approach which competes with NEC VPCC one).
Last but not least Qumranet took care to support several thin clients on the market, developing a dedicated MiniOS (probably a special purpose Linux distribution).
Solid ICE will support Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP and Linux as guest OSes, and it's expected to be available before the end of this year.
more at source...