Woodland Joint Unified School District, a Northern California school district of more than 10,000 students, cut the cost of powering a student computing seat by 90 percent by replacing 300 of its aging PCs with zero client computing from Pano Logic, provider of zero client desktop virtualization (VDI).
Woodland Joint Unified, a suburban school district of just over 10,000 students located about 15 miles northwest of Sacramento, has recorded the reduction in energy consumption since last spring, when IT staff replaced PCs with Pano Logic in five K-12 computer labs. The savings have been notable, with Pano Logic zero client computing seats costing just $5 per year to power compared to $50 per year for each PC. The energy savings is in addition to the time and personnel resources the district has saved by fully centralizing computing with Pano Logic and eliminating endpoint device support and maintenance.
"Saving money was the number one reason we went with Pano Logic and it's gratifying to see the dollars we're saving adding up and to know they will continue to add up in the long-term," said Todd Freer, information technology specialist at Woodland.
"We needed a solution that required less maintenance, consumed less energy, and improved productivity of our IT staff and Pano Logic has delivered," said Joshua Koch, director of technology at Woodland. "We were able to set up more than 300 Pano Logic virtual desktops, with the zero client devices in place and fully operational in the computer labs, in less than three weeks and we've cut down the number of hours each month devoted to device support and maintenance."
The Pano System is a complete end-to-end, hardware-and-software virtual desktop solution that independently interoperates with all three leading hypervisors (vSphere, XenServer, Hyper-V) and their management systems (VMware View, XenDesktop, Microsoft SCVMM). It offers a zero client desktop virtualization solution with a solid-state device that has no processor, no storage, no memory and no operating system. Pano Logic zero client devices consume 97 percent less power than PCs, 50 percent less power than thin clients and do not store data locally, eliminating endpoint security liabilities.
Woodland Joint Unified School District began implementing Pano Logic in Spring 2011, choosing to replace the PCs in the student computing labs for the first phase in a long-term plan to upgrade school technologies. Alongside the significant energy savings and reduction in support and maintenance demands, new conveniences from adopting Pano Logic have presented. Prior to implementing Pano Logic and VMware View, Woodland staff and teachers had to share just one PC that could scan multiple electronic Scantron answer sheets, used in the ubiquitous tests for measuring student academic achievement. With the deployment, Woodland teachers can access the scanning software, now hosted centrally, from one of multiple Pano zero clients located in the district or through the use of the VMware View Client installed on every teacher computer, which has helped ease the process and reduce potential future costs.
"Adopting cloud computing was a major accomplishment in our technology program and Pano Logic helped make it possible," added Freer. "The cloud-ready zero client devices will be helpful as we look to expand ways for staff, teachers and students to access computing throughout the district properties."
