Why to access legacy applications in Chromebook?

First of all, I want to clarify that accessing Windows legacy applications in Chromebook is not exactly a vision paralysis. Chromebook is a thin client and we should be able to carry out most, if not all, mundane jobs through a Chromebooks. Unfortunately, we have many applications in Windows Operating system which were designed for a stationary machine. In today’s context, of course, the focus is shifting more towards cloud computing. This process of conversion of legacy application to cloud platform is not slow but is not fast either. It needs strong technological and commercial drivers to get them converted into cloud platform. In view of that, upto a substantial time span from now, we are going to see the need of accessing legacy applications from the stationary machines.

Significance of Chromebook accessing legacy applications is immense. Chromebooks started slow but slowly and surely they are curving a niche for themselves. In, President of Google Enterprise, Mr. Amit Sing’s language “Chromebooks are designed for the way people use computers today and are a secure, easy, and cost-effective solution to help organizations embrace a new way of doing business,”

Not only that, in a depressing scenario of PC dying its slow death and Microsoft finally withdrawing the support of Windows XP, Google Chromebook is making giant leaps. According to NPD group, Chromebooks accounted for 21% of all Notebook sales during 2013!!

Let us have a look at the options and procedures to access legacy applications in Chromebook.

The first free solution that comes to my mind is the Chrome Remote Desktop Apps which can be downloaded from the Chrome Web Store. Apparently, you need to exchange a set of access code every time you make a connection. But, you can automate that as well, with pre-set passcodes. You will notice that the connection speed is a bit sluggish and the graphics are not that great.

These drawbacks can be overcome substantially when it comes to the Access clients by ericom.com. There are, in fact, two options for that. AccessNow and Access To go. AccessNow is based on RDP protocol but thanks to deployment of better compression, the speed has been enhanced substantially. While the client and the server are located in the same LAN, it works great. By the word server, here it means, small software component installed on the target machines which you are going to access or where your legacy applications are located.

When it comes to accessing the server from outside the server network, solely relying on RDP is sometimes frustrating. Access To Go is having the ability to connect the remote server by using either RDP or Blaze protocol. As per Ericom’s claim (also, as I experienced), connection becomes faster. It works very well in WAN scenario. Here it’s worth mentioning that for using Blaze protocol, you need to install a special Blaze server component instead of Access server of Ericom.

I tried using VMware Horizon View for the same purpose. I heard that it works great in LAN scenario but I am yet to experience the same. This is predominantly because Horizon view server can only be installed on a Windows 2008 server machine. So, I reckon that it is mainly aimed at the corporate users, creating a common resource pool and taking benefit of distributed usage of specialized software, rather than serving the need of individual users.

Conclusion

The above are the top few applications / technologies which are available for accessing legacy applications in Chromebook, as on date. I will be updating this article as and when I come across newer innovative and efficient means of connecting to legacy applications. To summarize, we still look forward to a perfect solution which will cater to the following:

– Suitable for individual usage and can be scaled up for corporate environment

– Flexi pricing as you scale up

– Affordable pricing , giving users enough incentive to substitute a full-fledged laptop

– Both high and low bandwidth operation

– Easy customization and management of server and the clients

What is your opinion on accessing legacy applications in Chromebook? Please leave your comment below.

Author: Technology Blog