Pano Logic, the leader in purpose-built centralized virtual desktops, today announced that the Westerly Public School District, a progressive K-12 school system in Rhode Island, has selected the Pano System to deploy throughout their school district to replace aging PCs. With its Pano System deployment, Westerly has been able to fully leverage their VMware infrastructure, reduce the time spent managing desktops, save on energy costs and transform older classrooms into computer labs. 

“Pano Logic addresses our key IT needs simultaneously and has allowed us to do more with less,” said Mark Lamson, director of technology for the Westerly Public School District. “From helping us be able to staff more desktops through centralized management to securing desktop data to helping repurpose older classrooms with electrical distribution and space issues, Pano has met our needs and offered us a huge ROI from a management and efficiency standpoint. When you figure in the cost of energy, the Pano System pays for itself in approximately three years.” 

Supporting more than 3,200 students and over 700 staff  members, the IT department at Westerly needed to find a way to upgrade their PCs while reducing the management time typically associated with set up and maintenance.  The IT department researched several different desktop virtualization solutions, but did not feel that other approaches could fully take advantage of their existing VMware infrastructure. Since starting to test and deploy the Pano System in October 2008, Westerly has been able to transform an older classroom with electrical power distribution and desk space limitations into a computer lab.   Because of Pano Logic’s smaller physical footprint and low power consumption, Westerly plans to deploy additional labs in the near future, including spaces where a traditional PC deployment would be impossible. 

Additionally, the school district expects to realize significant savings on energy costs – especially given that Pano Logic has a longer lifecycle than the average PC – along with savings from reduced time spent in OS and application management and trouble-shooting through centralizing the desktop operating systems to the data center, which will also enable Westerly to quickly deliver the latest software and updates to their students and staff. Access to the latest software is especially important since students maintain electronic work portfolios. Westerly will continue to deploy the Pano System throughout the school district and will be looking into deploying and managing a distributed set of Pano virtual desktops over high-performance wide-area network links during the next school year.   

“Many K-12 systems today are feeling the budget pressures associated with today’s economic environment, and Westerly is a strong testament to how these organizations can invest in technology to reduce their total cost of overhead,” said Aly Orady, CTO of Pano Logic. “With its ease-of-use and reduction in management and energy costs, the Pano System is one of the most viable PC-replacement solutions on the market today.”