Zero Architecture


Desktop PCs Today: A Major Management Problem

Desktop PCs today are complex permutations of any number of hardware components, operating system versions, drivers and applications installed by both users and IT staff – along with an ever-growing list of OS and applications updates and patches. This myriad of components are installed on PCs distributed throughout offices and company locations and, even with the best of remote access software, are often inaccessible to IT staff without an on-site visit when a critical problem or crash occurs.

Maintaining and managing this constantly changing mix of PC hardware and software consumes more than 70% of the total cost of ownership (TCO) of a typical PC, and it represents the bulk of the help desk workload for many organizations.

Virtual Desktops: a Simpler Way to Deliver Windows

Virtual desktops combined with true zero client endpoints provides users with access to a standard Windows operating system desktop, along with whatever applications and data they need, but all running on centralized servers within your data center rather than scattered throughout your offices and facilities.  These virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) servers use specialized hypervisor platform software from Citrix, Microsoft, or VMware to create a “virtual machine” that simulates roughly the same capabilities as a physical desktop computer.  The desktop virtual machines connect over your local area network to our purpose-built Pano Zero Client endpoints at the user’s location, attaching the virtual machine to monitors, keyboards, mice and other USB peripherals at the users' locations to make a complete replacement for traditional PCs.

While this description may make virtual desktops initially sound more complicated than traditional desktop PCs, we think you'll find that centralizing all of the software, storage, processing and management within the data center makes deployment, security, and management of desktop computing much easier for both IT staff and the users they support.

For more information please see the Pano System for VDI product page.

Cloud Desktops: the Most Efficient Way to Deliver the Web

Cloud desktops provide the most efficient way to deliver a secure, reliable, and easy-to-manage desktop computing to users who have workloads that are web-based rather than tied to Windows applications. The Pano System for Cloud works with the same Pano Direct protocol and the same Pano Zero Client and Pano Virtual Client endpoints as our Pano System for VDI - only the server software and the desktop architecture is different.

Rather than running as a virtual machine on top of a hypervisor platform, the Pano Controller for Cloud runs on a Linux kernel directly on the server hardware.  Each cloud desktop is a compact sandboxed user process running just a customized version of Google's Chrome web browser. This architecture greatly simplifies both the security and management of desktop computing. These smaller, more efficient cloud desktops can run with user per server ratios that are 4 or 5 times that of VDI's Windows-based desktop virtual machines, reducing both costs per user and the overhead of deploying and managing large numbers of desktops.

For more information please see the Pano System for Cloud product page.