Pano Logic moves beyond RDP with its VDI solution

Pano Logic announced that it had an update to its virtual desktop solution that would offer a better audio and video experience to its users and also provide a more simplified help desk management system for IT organizations.

Earlier versions of Pano’s solution relied on Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) as the API into the Microsoft Windows environment. But their latest release, Pano Virtual Desktop Solution (VDS) 2.5, eliminates that dependency on RDP as well as the dependency on Microsoft Terminal Services technology.

The Windows experience is now optimized via Pano’s native session support for Windows applications, video, and audio interfaces and native USB device drivers. These capabilities are available through Pano’s Console Direct technology — something new in Pano VDS 2.5 that plugs directly into the Windows Operating System to deliver a fully native experience.

The new technology also offers help desk staff the ability to access the Pano Manager console. This allows them to see who’s logged in and to which Pano Device and virtual machine they are connected, giving them added capabilities when helping to support their customers.

Pano Logic has definitely made traction in the early stage market of desktop virtualization. But the VDI market is an uphill battle right now, and it doesn’t yet have the same strong following that server virtualization has been able to achieve. It also faces stiff competition from large enterprise companies like Wyse and HP. Although to be sure, Pano’s silver box has definitely caught the eye of many conference attendees.

However, Pano isn’t the only company working to enhance the VDI market with a replacement for Microsoft RDP. Red Hat’s recent acquisition, Qumranet, created their own replacement protocol called SPICE which shows a lot of promise. And VMware is working with Teradici to deliver an uncompressed remote desktop experience over standard networks, co-developing and expanding on its PC-Over-IP technology. Even the big boys over at Citrix and Microsoft are working to solve this problem.

The VDI market is slow on the uptake right now, as people concentrate efforts on server virtualization and as they wait to see what happens with the advancement of remoting technologies — something that is really keeping a foot firmly planted on desktop virtualization. End-users may not mind working on a virtual environment if it operates just as fast and fluid as their local physical desktops. But this just isn’t the case right now. Maybe Pano is on to something.