Sleek, Sexy...and Smart

By VSM News Staff
published: Friday, April 11 2008

  The following is an interview with Nick Gault, CEO of Pano Logic, about their all hardware no software desktop solution, originally recorded in October 2007. Note: Pano Logic introduced Pano Virtual Desktop Solution 1.5 on February 19, 2008.

NG: Pano Logic is a year-and-a-half old company out here in Menlo Park, California. We just spent the last year-and-a-half developing a purpose-built desktop virtualization solution. Basically, we are riding all the market momentum behind server-side virtualization, with, as I say, a purpose-built solution for the desktop. That’s our company.

NG: Yes, but before telling you why this isn’t just a stylized thin client device, I should tell you what the difference is here between our approach to the desktop and the traditional thin client approach.

So, Pano has built a solution which is built on top of server-side virtualization and not on top of server-side thin client or terminal services, as in what people think of today when they think of Citrix ICA or Microsoft Terminal Services. In this new model, all of your desktop operating systems, like XP or Vista, all run on the server, on top of the same virtualization platform, VMware or Xen or Microsoft’s Virtual Server; your desktop runs there.

With terminal services, you use the desktop computer via the thin client or a regular computer to access what is really just a slice of Windows server, which is not part of your desktop operating system, your XP or your Vista as you know it. So, what we’ve done is taken sort of a fresh look at the desktop, starting with the premise that server virtualization has happened, it’s a good thing, people are invested in it, and so the best way to do the desktop now is to leverage server virtualization.

That said, since your XP or your Vista runs on the server, what does your desktop look like? So, a thin client vendor would say, well, your desktop runs an operating system, maybe it’s Windows XPE or maybe it’s Windows CE, embedded Linux, and it connects from that operating system to your instance of XP or Vista, that runs on a server. Well, it’s all good that your XP runs on top of a virtualization platform, to the extent that everybody appreciates what that virtualization platform does for managing the cost of your server site infrastructure. I think all server virtualization customers can appreciate how those same benefits can play for desktop operating systems.

That’s all good, but the problem occurs when you connect to that environment from a desktop device, be it a regular PC or a thin client, that also runs an operating system because then you’ve got two operating systems to manage: the XP or Vista that runs on the server and the other one that runs on the desktop. And because you have to manage these two operating systems, you also have to manage two sources of cost and complexity and security problems.

In the case of Pano, what we’ve figured out is that since you can run your XP or Vista on top of say, VMware ESX, and since the network is fast enough, you don’t need an operating system or a computer at the other end to give all of the performance of Windows XP or Vista to the end user, then we do away completely with the operating system. Then you get what you first described as a stylized thin client device. It’s this very attractive looking metallic cube, a shiny cube, which is not a computer. Thin clients are computers. This is really just a hub that connects all of the peripherals that you can connect to your desktop PC, but over a network. So, your monitor, your keyboard, your mouse, anything USB, your audio – absolutely everything that connects to your PC that probably sits underneath your desktop right now, connects to the Pano device and it all runs over the network in a way that is completely transparent to the user. Think of the network as being a sort of extension cord, which extends up from your desktop that runs on XP or Vista, that runs on top of a hypervisor on a server, then think of the network as being a bus, as we like to say, that is an extension cord that connects to this very attractive device, which all of your peripherals hang from.

What’s the benefit of all this? Well, you have much lower cost of management, everything, all the software, runs on the virtualized environment. There’s nothing to manage at the end point. So that’s the difference between the Pano device and other thin clients. It’s not a computer. It’s a very small box which doesn’t have a CPU, an operating system, drivers, any software to manage – nothing at all which connects back into your server. So that’s the Pano.

NG: So, as I mentioned, first your desktop operating system no longer runs at the end point. It all runs on top of the virtualization platform on the server. So you have two sources, two drivers behind cost reduction. One is that you’re now managing every instance of XP or Vista centrally, on a server, using all of the same tools, the same good practices that you’ve come to develop using server virtualization. So, first off, you are bringing all the benefits of server virtualization to the desktop. That takes the cost of ownership down.

The second driver behind the reduction in TCO is the fact that this is what we call a zero client, meaning that there is no CPU, no operating system no software, no memory – nothing runs on the desktop anymore. So, depending on who you listen to, $1,000 to $7,000 of annual TCO that a small business or enterprise may have for a given desktop, much more than half of that is associated with problems with updating, managing, fixing the software – that instance of XP or Vista - that is at the end point. Well, now, there is no more software at the endpoint to worry about. All of that software runs, centrally managed, on the hypervisor where it’s much less expensive to own. So, in a nutshell, that’s why you get this big reduction in TCO.

NG: There are two general points to make. The first is that the Pano Manager software, in combination with all of our other software, basically amounts to a complete solution on top of server virtualization. On a single CD, or with a single download from Pano, you get all of the software and all of the management capabilities. We’re talking about deployment and provisioning, brokering – everything comes in a single package. There are no other vendors to think about, other than the provider of your hypervisor (your virtualization platform). We simply install, in less than an hour, and you have a complete environment, that includes all of that management capability in the Pano management server. It gives you a complete desktop virtualization solution on top of that virtualization platform that you already have in place.

The second thing to say about the management server, in addition to the fact that it gives us a complete offering, is that that management server brings to the desktop a set of high-value functions that the Windows desktop on its own, does not provide. These functions, again, dramatically reduce the cost of ownership of the desktop.

Let me explain a little bit how that works. If you were to see a picture of a Pano device, you can do that by going to the Pano Logic Web site, you’ll notice you’ll notice that on the top of this cube is a button, a little blue button. What’s that for? Well, that blue button, when pressed can contact the management server and provides a whole layer of virtualization-enabled functionality which Windows on its own does not. For example, if, as an end user I am having a problem with my Windows – I may have downloaded some malware, installed something that I shouldn’t have, today my Windows just doesn’t work - that’s what the helpdesk is for most of the users: something broken with my Windows today. Well, rather than having to go visit that end point, the helpdesk can ask the user simply to press that button and what happens is that when that button is pressed, up pops a variety of options to the user that are provided by the management server over and above the Windows desktop OS.

So imagine a window that comes up on top of Windows XP or Vista that says, ‘Digital Options’ such as, “Take me back 24 hours to the instance of my desktop that I was using yesterday.” Or “Take me to this desktop VM image that I’m in some kind of industry that requires some sort of regulatory compliance that’s got a highly-managed, uniform desktop environment.” By pressing this button, I could select the latest approved compliant image. Or I could press this button and be presented with a virtual machine environment in Windows that had another set of applications and, potentially, connections into other parts of my secured enterprise that I didn’t have in the last instance of Windows that I was using.

So if you understand server virtualization, you understand how the panel management server can tap into that whole back end to provide a whole new level of capabilities and of user self-service capabilities which you don’t get with the Windows operating system desktop model that we know today, pre-server based virtualization. That’s an explanation of the management server and Pano.

NG: Absolutely because I think the Pano device is really the ideal client, it’s a purpose built client for desktop for virtualization. As I said, if you are going to do VDI and run your operating system on a server, well then you don’t need another operating system on the end point. Just putting a second operating system of any form on the desktop basically creates management drag. It’s expense, it’s burden, it prevents the consumption; it prevents people who otherwise would deploy VDI because they see all these benefits, from going ahead and doing it because in moving to the server-based desktop virtualization, if they retain that second version of the OS on the desktop to manage, basically they double their management burden. So Pano is the ideal server-based desktop virtualization solution and the client is zero. What we’re doing is making it as inexpensive, as cost-effective as possible to deploy VDI.

The other thing that I would say about easing barriers to adopting VDI is that Pano basically sells it’s product like a service, as an option. One option a customer has is to buy the device outright, for, say, $300. The other is to, effectively, rent it and to subscribe to the Pano software and desktop service and pay only $20 per month. So, using Pano, it costs only $20 per month to get started with VDI. That is a real breakthrough in pricing. There is no easier or less expensive way to try VDI than by using a Pano and, if you’d like, to do it on a monthly subscription basis and pay no more than $20 each month to try it. That’s why we believe it will encourage wider adoption.

NG: The Pano device and the software, as I mentioned, can be bought as a service and in a form that simply installs on top of an existing VMware server-based virtualization deployment. That works great for customers who are already familiar with server-based virtualization that have already bought it and deployed it.

There’s another market for desktop virtualization that hasn’t yet experienced, first hand, the deployment of ESX. So you do find a lot of customers out there who are interested in the idea of this solution, but who are a little intimidated by the idea of installing a virtualization platform on a server if they haven’t done it before. So we work with VMware to come up with a solution to solve the problem, to make it easy for that class of customers to adopt VDI. We take the Pano solution that I’ve just told you about, all the Pano software and the client, and we package that with VMware server, one of their server-based virtualization solutions and VMware Virtual Center which provides all the management. We take those VMware products and we package that in a single installation with all of our products, so for the customer who doesn’t already have VMware in place, or a virtualization platform in place, a single install can create a complete virtualization environment, installing both the hypervisor and VMware’s management capability and Virtual Center, and all of Pano’s solutions in a single step. And, we can do all that on top of an existing Windows server installation. It’s sort of 60 minutes to a complete VDI solution, with out any knowledge in advance of how this virtualization stuff works. So the motivation that Pano and VMware had in creating this solution was to make it extremely easy for customers to get started with desktop virtualization if they didn’t already know about server virtualization.

One other thing that I’d add is that same solution is also available on a monthly subscription basis. The first server will cost and additional $100 per month for all of the virtualization software from VMware. The second server is an additional $50 per month and a third is an additional $20 per month. It’s a very easy way to get started with a complete desktop virtualization solution, paying for it on a subscription basis.

This has all been shipping for several weeks and we’ve got over 25 customers now that are using this solution. So there you have it.

NG: www.panologic.com

Related Links:

PanoLogic.com , VMware.com , VDI