eInterview with John Kish, CEO, Pano Logic

As Pano Logic president and chief executive officer John's responsibilities include managing day-to-day operations, short and long term strategic planning, and corporate oversight. Prior to joining Pano Logic John served as president and CEO at a number of high tech companies including Domain Solutions Corporation, Verbind, Cacheon, Wyse International and most recently BackFlip. In addition John has worked as Senior Vice President, Business Development at Oracle Corporation. John has a Masters and Ph.D. From The Johns Hopkins University and a B.A. from The University of Maryland.

Q: We last interviewed Pano Logic late 2008 – what’s happened since then?

A: We’ve continued to innovate with our software and hardware development, tripled revenues & customers, signed an OEM agreement with Fujitsu, secured $20M in Series C funding from Mayfield Capital, hired EMEA MD, Chris Hammans, who joined us in September of 2009 from VMware, put in place a solid value-add distribution model in our focused countries in EMEA and we continue to recruit virtualization partners to fulfil the demand we are creating for virtualized desktops.

Q: Are you still focussed on government and healthcare verticals?

A: The Pano solution is a very horizontal solution rather than a vertical one; it is just that it is particularly well suited to local & central authorities as well as healthcare and, of course, during the economic down turn this sector has still had IT budgets to spend. However, we have seen success in education, manufacturing, and financial services too.

Q: What do you see as the current differentiators between Pano Logic and competing solutions?

A: Our patent pending software is our differentiator between the myriad of other desktop virtualization solutions in the market.  While we are well known for our device, the fact that we 100% centralize the control and management of desktop computing into the data centre is what truly differentiates us.  On the device side, there have been many articles published that Pano Logic is the only true ZERO client – we have no processing, no operating system, no “nothing” on the end-point device.  No other vendor can hand on heart state that!

Q: Why have you openly published the hardware specification for the Pano device?

A:To my earlier point, we are the only true zero client.  However, as others have gotten on the zero client band wagon there are multiple claims in the market that thin clients are zero clients – this is just not the case if you follow the edict of our specification.  By publishing the specification we are challenging all these other claimants to prove they are zero clients too.  The overwhelming silence has, frankly, been deafening .

Q: What do you see as the current appetite for VDI in the marketplace?

A: I usually benchmark demand on two things; how many resellers want to join my partner program and how many customers are asking for my solution.  We have recently attended a number of the VMware Virtualization Forums across the globe and the interest levels have been overwhelming.  In one instance both my benchmarks were adhered to; our booth was next to a partner who had not yet signed into our program.  A customer visited our booth, totally bought into our strategy and said I want to buy now.  We asked who his partner was; he pointed to the folks at our neighbouring booth and said they are.  So we got the partner signed into the program and fulfilled the customer’s order the very next day!

Q: What are the business goals for 2010?

A: Just as with last year, we are looking to triple our revenues and customers. We will continue to focus on partnerships – with other technology vendors, system houses, & most importantly with our resellers. I am convinced that EMEA will be our greatest growth market, fuelled by customer interest in desktop virtualization as a viable (some would say, preferred) replacement for aging PC assets.

Q: What does the product development program look like for this year?

A: While we do not pre-announce specific product plans, you can expect to see Pano Logic continuing to improve the end-user experience & the simplicity of using our technologies. At the end of the day, I believe that desktop virtualization needs to be compelling to the users, the IT Department, and to the Chief Financial Officer – Pano Logic will blaze forward a path that will make all of these constituents happy.