The startup Pano Logic releases today version 2.5 of its VDI platform.
Its Virtual Desktop Solution (VDS) is comprised of a connection broker, the Pano Management Server, that currently supports VMware Infrastructure, and a minimal thin client that doesn’t require an operating system or any other software.
This 2.5 release is specially important for the company as it ditches Microsoft RDP as the remote desktop protocol of choice.
Pano Logic developed its own remoting protocol called Console Direct, which delivers audio, video and USB device interfaces on the zero client.
The company published a presentation of this new technology.
Pano Logic is not the first company working to replace RDP in VDI environments: Qumranet (recently acquired by Red Hat) was the first to drop the Microsoft protocol for their own, called SPICE, and VMware is working with Teradici to do the same.
Even Microsoft itself took serious steps to renew RDP for VDI purposes, acquiring the company Calista.
The only VDI players that are seriously enhancing RDP without looking at replacements are Citrix and Quest/Provision Networks that recently achieved a 8x compression factor for RDP sessions.
We’ll see which approach will return the most on the investment once that Microsoft will have integrated Calista technology.