By Tony Huynh, Product Line Manager, End-User Computing, VMware
For the past several months, VMware has been working closely with XYZMO to enable SIGNificant—a cutting-edge e-signature solution—to work seamlessly with VMware Horizon with View virtual desktops.
Now, we are pleased to announce our hard work has finally paid off: The latest SIGNificant solution from XYZMO now supports VMware Horizon with View virtual desktops. This exciting development enables new use cases and deployment scenarios, especially for organizations with remote branch offices. Simply put, you can now use the SIGNificant solution with a variety of signature tablets remotely connected to View virtual desktops.
SIGNificant Solution from XYZMO
With more than 10 years of digital-signature expertise, XYZMO has processed millions of electronic signatures via their SIGNificant e-signature solution.
At its core, SIGNificant allows you to perform real-time signature verification and mobile e-signing quickly and confidently. But before we get into how SIGNificant works with Horizon with View, let us first take a look at how it operates in non-VDI environments.
SIGNificant in Non-VDI Environments
In a non-VDI deployment, the signature tablet is connected to the client computer via a USB connection. On the client computer, a SIGNnificant Web Signing Interface (WSI) Java applet fetches the biometric data (x-coordinate, y-coordinate, pressure, time stamp) from the signature tablet and relays this information back to the SIGNificant Server platform for processing. All in all, the process is fairly simple:
Figure 1: A Non-VDI SIGNificant Deployment
However, in a VDI environment, things get a little trickier.
Challenges of Using Signature Tablets with Virtual Desktops
In the past, organizations have had to use USB redirection on the client computer to redirect the signature tablet to the virtual desktop for use. The performance of redirected USB devices tends to vary greatly over a wide area network (WAN), depending on network latency and packet loss.
In the case of latency or lost packets, the generated signature picture and the corresponding signature data may not accurately reflect the signature of the original signing party, making a forensic examination of the signature and real-time signature verification much more difficult or even impossible.
Luckily, we found a better way.
New Solution: SIGNificant Thin Client Add-On
Now, thanks to our new solution, SIGNificant components are installed on both the client computer and the View virtual desktop.
On the client computer, you install the SIGNificant Thin Client add-on. The Thin Client add-on then leverages the PCoIP virtual channel to manage communications between the signature tablet and the WSI Java Applet running on the virtual desktop. Essentially, this eliminates the need to use USB redirection to connect the signature tablet to the virtual desktop.
The result is a solution that is more resilient, provides better performance over the WAN, and utilizes less bandwidth.
Figure 2: The New SIGNificant Thin Client Add-On Solution
Want More?
For more information on the SIGNificant solution, see XYZMO.
