Emerging Vendors

November 10, 2009

Company: ThinLaunch Software

Headquarters: St. Paul, Minn.

Technology Sector: Software

Key Product: ThinLaunch Thin Desktop

Year Founded: 2007

Number of Channel Partners: 8 worldwide

Ideal Channel Partner: Midmarket-focused solution providers

Why You Should Care: This could be the easiest way to help customers lock down their PCs so they perform only a single company-specified task.

The Lowdown: Few people go out and build a business to work around a complaint with Microsoft Windows.

However, that's just what Nick Rudnik, co-founder of ThinLaunch Software, according to Mike Cardinal, general manager of the company, which has developed software to lock down PCs so they can only run a specific application..

"He didn't like Microsoft's Group Policy, which is a Microsoft method for making a PC work in a certain way, but which can be complex," Cardinal said. "He hated Group Policy. So he wrote software to let the user do only certain things while taking advantage of all system resources."

ThinLaunch Thin Desktop

With Thin Desktop, the IT administrator controls what users can do with their PCs, such as preventing them from running non-work-related applications like games. The software works on any PC or thin client running an XP-embedded version of the Windows 2000, XP, Vista or 7 operating system, Cardinal said.

When a user turns the device on, Thin Desktop prevents the Windows Explorer Shell from running. Instead, an application of the administrator's choice becomes the only available user interface. If the application terminates for any reason, it is immediately re-launched by Thin Desktop.

"Underneath, we don't make any changes to local drivers for networks, printers, USB devices and so on," Cardinal said. "But the administrator has the control, not the user."

The use cases for Thin Desktop vary, and are often discovered or proposed by customers, Cardinal said.

For instance, the company's first customer wanted to set certain PCs to run only the RDP protocol, which made them available to be used as remote desktop PCs. Its second customer wanted certain PCs to run only as kiosk devices. Its third customer just wanted to run Citrix ICA, which turned the device into a Citrix thin client.

In addition to describing its technology, the name ThinLaunch also describes the company itself, which is a "virtual company" in that the two full-time staff and eight sales and development contractors work from their own homes, Cardinal said. "None of us particularly want to commute or drive around," he said.