Although Microsoft Teams is the online communication and collaboration platform of choice for many organizations since it comes bundled with Microsoft 365 and Microsoft does keep adding more features to it, another option for some is Google Meet. Today, Google has announced a somewhat major improvement that will likely please some customers.
Basically, Google Meet will now offer better audio and video quality when you join a call via a virtual desktop interface (VDI) such as Citrix, VMware, or Amazon Workspaces. Google says that this optimization will happen automatically, but doesn't go into the technical details. The result will be less load on your VDI's CPU, GPU, and RAM utilization, which should result in better performance and quality overall.
In order for this to actually work, IT admins need to enable the Enterprise Hardware Platform API policy to ensure that Meet can detect when it's running inside a virtual machine (VM). End-users don't need to do anything in particular. Once the policy is enabled, the enhancement will be automatic will require no input from the end-user.
The feature will benefit remote worker and/or contractors who use a VDI to connect to their employer's resources and attend calls from a VM.
The improvement is being made available to all Google Workspace, and legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers. It has started rolling out already and should become available to everyone within the next 15 days.