Teradici has taken the code powering desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) offerings from VMware and Amazon Web Services and turned it in products you, yes you, can run.

The “Cloud Access Software” and “Cloud Access Platform” let users run up DaaS rigs. The first product migrates apps to the cloud. The second tool delivers them from the cloud to the device of your choice.

Users need not provide a complete desktop experience as the tools make it possible to wrap a custom GUI around an environment so that users can only see the apps managers deem fit for cloudy consumption.

Teradici CEO Dan Cordingley told The Register he hopes that users will see the products as a new way to offer remote access to graphics-rich applications. As is often the case in the DaaS world, graphics-rich applications are the target for two reasons. Firstly, workstations are expensive to acquire, so using a shared and/or virtualised GPU can save some money. Secondly, lots of graphics-heavy application users work in nasty places – mines, oil rigs, hipster architecture offices where everyone streams Spotify - where bandwidth is at a premium. Because the two products use Teradici's PCOIP protocol, which takes a desktop and turns it into a stream of encrypted pixels, Cordingley says DaaS can be more comfortably consumed than other means of remote access.

By dealing in pixels only – no other data passes between client and server – Cordingley thinks Teradici also has a nicely secure way of providing remote access.

Teradici has also added the ability to deliver Linux desktops and apps, advancing the cause of Linux on the virtual desktop. Yes, we know we predicted 2016 would be the year of penguin-powered cloudy desktops after Citrix and then VMware announced cloudy Linux desktops in 2015. But hey, the year of Linux on the desktop is always next year. ®