News: VDI Startup Pano Logic Shuts Down

It has just been revealed that Bay Area desktop virtualization startup Pano Logic has shut down. The news comes from a surprising source, The Credit Union Times, which scooped the IT world to the news. The news was confirmed by a former Pano Logic employee who requested not to be named.

The Virtualization Practice has covered Pano Logic in the past as it grew from a turnkey SMB VDI solution to incorporate more enterprise class features, as well as to provide integration with Citrix XenDesktop and VMware View. It’s true breakout moment came when it introduced Pano Logic System for the cloud, an Ubuntu-based platform that ran Google Chrome at a fraction of the cost of buying either the Chromebox and Chromebook offered by Samsung and Acer. Unfortunately for Pano Logic, the move came too late, and the hoped-for education market did not materialize.

That The Credit Union Times heard the news first has a lot to do with the relative success that Pano Logic had in selling its turnkey desktop virtualization solution to credit unions. The front page of the still active Pano Logic website prominently displays news that $3.1B Redstone Federal Credit Union of Huntsville, AL was replacing 80% of its PCs with Pano Logic systems. And it was another credit union, this time Advantage Credit Union in Bridgeton, MO, that was the initial source of the news, reporting that it had been attempting to get code updates from Pano Logic for the last two weeks, without success.

PanoLogic customers find themselves in a difficult position. The Pano Logic system is completely proprietary, and with its doors closed, customers will not be able to buy any additional Pano Device thin clients, nor will established thin client vendors be able to offer alternatives without a comprehensive replacement of the entire Pano Logic system. With few resellers to fall back on for support, customers like Redstone FCU will have to hope for the best until a replacement solution is found.