Pano Logic at the end of February received $20 million in venture capital to further its approach to desktop virtualization. What sort of client does it use? It doesn't use one other than a user's monitor and a little gray box with network and peripheral connectors. There's no CPU. Pano Logic calls it the "zero client."In virtualizing the desktop, organizations often connect data center servers to existing PCs. They sometimes resort to thin clients, which contain less hardware than PCs. And the "zero client computing platform" is much less than that. The little gray Pano Logic box contains no processor, no memory, no device drivers, no software, no firmware, no operating system, no moving parts of any kind. Thin clients at least have processors and a small amount of memory, along with a stripped down operating system.

The Pano Device is about 3.5 inches square and stands about two inches tall. The day after it was announced on April 27, 2007, InformationWeek reported that the Pano box "looks more like a paperweight" than a desktop machine.

It has ports for a local area network, a mouse and keyboard, three USB devices, a monitor's plug, and audio port for headphones. The virtualized desktop is running under Windows XP on a data center server, and it's sending down the wire only the end user's display. The end user can respond, typing on keyboard or clicking on a mouse, and the Pano Device picks up the activity and returns the input to the server. The return traffic is encrypted, according to a white paper on the Pano Logic Web site, www.panologic.com.

The white paper says the desktop virtual machine running on the data center server has the intelligence to "optimize the use of network bandwidth by only sending the minimum number of bits necessary to update the screen display on the attached monitor." That's fine for standard Windows XP operation, but the delivery of full motion video might remain a challenge on a heavily trafficked server.

On Feb. 24, Pano Logic published the specifications for the Pano Device to prove there was no CPU in it. It challenged other virtual desktop suppliers to do the same. "Zero client desktop virtualization will radically transform desktop computing for IT management," said Pano Logic CEO John Kish at the time.

What's the benefit of this? The most obvious one is that the virtualized desktop device doesn't require much capital investment or use much power -- about 3.5 watts, according to Pano Logic. That of course doesn't count the energy that will be needed to run powerful servers that are going to be needed in the data center to host the virtual desktops and do all the display processing. Some desktop virtualization schemes assign the end user device a share of the video display processing, to take advantage of the intelligence at the end user's device.

In addition, Pano Logic has added another piece of hardware to the virtualization mix. It's the Pano Manager, an appliance attached to the VMware ESX Server that manages user authentication and authorization. It monitors the Pano Devices to make sure they still have a heartbeat. If they don't, it suspends the user session until the user logs in again, probably at a new location. And the Pano Manager also manages backup and recovery. It combines several centralized virtualization tasks formerly done by multiple software products.

This combination, a minimalist endpoint device with a software appliance centralizing and combining virtualization management tasks, is an innovative one. Both Citrix Systems and VMware in their virtual desktop infrastructures conceive of using at least a thin client device, if not the existing PC. They offer several products to do what Pano Logic has merged into its appliance. It remains to be seen whether the little square device will win the hearts and minds of end users, as well as IT managers.

The CEO of the Menlo Park, Calif., firm is John Kish, a former CEO of Wyse Technology. The recent award of $20 million in venture capital was lead by the Mayfield Fund. In announcing the funding, Pano Logic said Mayfield's Navin Chaddha is joining Pano Logic's board of directors. Chaddha is a veteran investor. He ranked number 11 on the Forbes Midas List of top 100 dealmakers in 2009 and was number 10 in 2008.

A report on Pano Logic was aired by InformationWeek's Startup City April 11, 2009.

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