Pano Logic 6 Transforms Old PCs into Virtual Desktops

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Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) vendor Pano Logic has been in the market for the last several years with a ‘zero client’ hardware. The zero client provides a small footprint hardware device that is used to deliver a VDI experience.

Now Pano Logic is expanding their client footprint with the Pano Virtual Client (PVC) as part of the Pano System 6.0 release. As opposed to the zero client, which requires users to buy hardware, the PVC enables users to leverage existing PCs to have a VDI experience.

Dana Loof, Executive VP of Global Marketing for Pano Logic, told InternetNews.com that the PVC works over RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) and is intended for use in a LAN environment.

Aly Orady, CTO and Founder of Pano Logic, explained that his company recommends that users install the PVC on top of a fresh Windows image. In contrast to Pano Logic’s zero client hardware, an older Windows PC may well have malware running on it. Even if a user is unable to re-image an older PC, and even if it is full of malware, Orady stressed that VDI network will not be at risk.

“A PC might be infected with a virus but it can’t spread a virus through the Pano Logic network,” Orady said. “Our protocol ships very low level screenshots across a network and there really is no way for a virus to piggy back on top of that.”

The PVC itself is not a virtualization layer for a PC. Orady explained that the PVC is an application that gets installed along with a service and a set of drivers on the existing Windows PC.

“We have system services that ensure that our client is always running and we have kernel level drivers to intercept things at the lowest level possible so the rest of the system can’t get it,” Orady said.

The Pano system did not take a Linux route for the VDI either. Orady noted that in his view, customers don’t want to switch away from what they already have and that’s why the PVC runs on top of Windows.

Moving forward, Pano Logic will be working on performance and bandwidth optimization enhancements. Multiple hardware vendors, including F5 Networks, have been talking about VDI acceleration in recent years. Pano Logic does not currently have any direct hardware partnership for WAN optimization.

“What we’re finding is that the WAN optimization technology is phenomenal, but it’s just really, really expensive from a customer standpoint,” Loof said. “When you enter into VDI and if you want everything over the WAN, it can be really expensive since all the optimizers cost a lot of money.”

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.