BC Business
The company's virtual desktop technology has changed the way people work
Engineering Emmy Awards host Kirsten Vangsness honours Teradici
Chances are you’re not super familiar with the name Teradici, but if you haven’t already consumed entertainment that the Burnaby-based company had a hand in creating, you probably will soon.
Launched in 2004, Teradici has evolved over the years, but its core mission has always been the same: developing a state-of-the art virtual desktop experience. The team has since worked to develop its PC-over-IP (PColP) technology, which delivers remote desktops and applications to endpoints around the globe.
Ziad Lammam joined Teradici as a product manager in 2005, just as the company was getting started. It had a staff of just 10 back then, most of them recruits from established tech firms like U.S. giant Broadcom.
These days, not so much. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, Teradici had well over 100 employees, thousands of customers and about 15 million endpoints worldwide. But as you can imagine, it’s the type of enterprise that has seen an explosion in business since the virus found North American shores.
“Right away over the first few months, business roughly doubled, and it’s not slowed down since,” says Lammam, now Teradici’s vice-president, product management and marketing. “And one of the cool things that’s come out of it is the realization for these companies that, long-term, they can look for talent anywhere in the world, just by giving them access to this virtual work station.”
Teradici, which plans to hit 200 staff worldwide by the end of the year, has taken on a few high-profile clients recently, including Fox Sports and Pixar Animation Studios. The former entrusted it to help bring the World Series to screens across the globe.
“What [Fox] would typically do is show up at each big event with a huge media truck, and they would run the entire live production out of the truck and have everyone fly in and do all the editing and colouring locally,” Lammam says. “Of course now, people can’t just hop on planes and do that easily. So they utilized Teradici’s software, which allowed all the editors and producers to log in from anywhere in North America.”
That’s just one of Teradici’s applications, Lammam argues. Pixar, for example, is using the technology to allow its animators to work on Soul, its new feature, slated for a Christmas Day release in North America: “There’s been this explosion in remote VFX and animation design in the home office.”
The company had another recent brush with Hollywood. Last week, Teradici was honoured with an Engineering Emmy alongside 11 other recipients—including heavy hitters like Apple and Hewlett-Packard Co.—for its contributions to broadcast technology development.
“It’s a huge milestone for Teradici—everybody’s proud and excited,” Lammam says. “Unfortunately we didn’t get to fly down to L.A., but we accepted it virtually.”
Makes sense, really.