Keeping It Simple With Pano Logic 'Zero Clients'

Company:

Headquarters: Menlo Park, Calif.

Technology Sector: Virtualization

Key Product: Pano System

Year Founded: 2008

Number of Channel Partners: 250 in North America

Ideal Channel Partner: Midmarket-focused solution providers

Why You Should Care: As midmarket firms climb out of the recession, refreshing outdated IT infrastructure is a priority. Pano Logic's desktop virtualization offering provides low total cost of ownership and simplified IT management for customers.

The Lowdown: For a company that has yet to celebrate its second birthday, Pano Logic has already made quite an impact in the IT channel. The vendor of "zero client" desktop virtualization technology has a rapidly growing partner base of midmarket-focused solution providers and also has a growing presence in the health care and education markets, said Dana Loof, vice president of marketing at Pano Logic.

"We're radically centralizing desktop management," Loof said. "You're gaining simplicity, overall lower TCO and absolutely zero end-point management. Plus, our systems use 97 percent less energy than traditional clients, so we're very green."

The company's Pano System, which connects a Pano Device "zero client" end point to a VMware-powered server in lieu of a traditional thick client PC, delivers overall management and servicing savings on the order of $1,500 per PC per year in a typical mid-sized IT environment, according to Loof.

"We're a complete solution, with an end-point device that's essentially a frame buffer to the desktop -- no processor, no OS, no moving parts, no agents, no memory, no storage at the end point," she said.

But what about user experience?

"We're perfect for task workers and knowledge workers," Loof said, but conceded that power users would still require a local client as their primary PC.

Pano Logic partners also have the option of utilizing VMware's own VMware View console for managing Pano System end-points or using Pano Logic's own proprietary management interface. The technology allows for networking and connections to printers and other peripherals in a typical office environment. The Pano System also lets users connect remotely to their hosted desktops from home or, in the case of IT environments found in areas like health care, from distributed thin-client stations.

Outfitting kiosks with the Pano System is another opportunity for channel partners, Loof said. The Pano Logic Pano Device is built more robustly than the typical PC, making it attractive for such installations, she said.