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The Desktop Challenge
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"The Citrix solution provided by Centralis has enabled the Council to introduce hot desking and home working services...which has allowed us to reduce our total office accommodation footprint by 20%. Overall we have seen direct savings in the region of £300,000 a year from the project." |
Ian Slee, CTO, Bracknell Forest Borough Council |
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"Centralis has delivered a managed desktop for Centrica's mobile workers which has reduced the return to base rate for laptop PCs by two thirds." "This approach supports thousands of our engineers in the field by providing them with a user interface designed specifically for their job, and supports Centrica by reducing our support costs for this vital group of users." |
Peter Christie, Head of Mobile Technology, Centrica plc. |
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For most organisations the Windows XP desktop has been an effective workhorse - reliable, with a wide range of mostly stable and compatible applications. Where users needed to work in remote offices, or away from the offices altogether, many organisations used tactical deployments of Citrix technologies or purchased laptops (or both).
The costs of maintaining applications in multiple environments, of supporting laptops and managing branch office infrastructure has been a cause of much debate and TCO analysis over many years. Most organisations have resisted moving to a single, centrally delivered desktop due to concerns over performance, reliability and personalisation - and because they already have a perfectly good desktop estate in place.
This "status quo" has been challenged by four key motivators for change:
- Support for Windows XP will become increasingly limited withdrawn in the next couple of years
- Up to date, reliable IT systems are increasingly critical to most users' working day
- The workforce is becoming more dispersed and mobile
- Users are increasingly expecting to use new devices and more "modern" desktops
How Centralis Can Help - Desktop Virtualisation & VDI
When considering how to meet these challenges and deploy the next generation of desktops to replace Windows XP, many organisations are looking at desktop virtualisation to evaluate the potential benefits.
Desktop virtualisation provides users with access to a working environment which is centrally delivered but retains a variable degree of personalisation ranging from a very controlled environment up to users having full control and administration rights to their own virtual PC.
The main benefits of desktop virtualisation are:
- Supports secure, high performance flexible and remote working
- Simplifies support, application deployment and desktop upgrades
- Provides a Windows 7 look and feel to users
- Allows the use of thin-client devices to reduce cost and energy
Centralis specialises in the specification, design, deployment and support of desktop virtualisation solutions, delivering applications and desktops with the highest levels of performance and security.
Centralis recommends:
Citrix XenDesktop - Offering the best performance over WAN connections, the best peripheral support and the best multimedia experience, XenDesktop is recommended by Centralis for comprehensive desktop virtualisation.
Centralis has worked on XenDesktop deployments since being asked by Citrix to join the elite/spearhead programme and the response from customers has been overwhelmingly positive - contact us to find out more.
Proof of Concept
Many organisations have a number of applications that are critical. Centralis can assist in the early stages of project by giving the customer access to a cloud-based desktop for testing, or by deploying a desktop virtualisation test environment on loan equipment and licenses. Centralis can deploy the critical applications into the virtual desktops for customer testing. To request more information about a proof of concept please contact us
Discovery
If you want to move to virtual desktops it is essential that you get a good understanding of your existing application and desktop estate.
Centralis
recommends a Discovery exercise which uses agent-based
software from Liquidware Labs to profile customer's desktop
estates, including application usage, memory, CPU,
networking and other key metrics.
This information is critical in rationalising the application estate (removing unwanted applications), profiling user groups and capacity planning for the environment, the network and storage. To request more information about Liquidware Labs and Centralis Discovery service please contact us.
What About the Applications?
Desktops don't offer much to your users without applications. If you are moving to a new desktop it's probably a good time to look at your application set and how it's delivered.
Centralis
recommends the toolset available from App-DNA to analyse
your applications. Working with the App-DNA tools
Centralis can provide simple reports that indicate the
readiness of your applications for Windows 7, App-V, Citrix
XenDesktop and a whole range of other options.
We can even provide estimates for virtualising the whole application estate. For more information about our application delivery service please click here.
Design, Verification & Pilot
To achieve a successful desktop virtualisation project a detailed design is required. The key decisions and rationale for them are documented and the design acts not only as the blue-print for the solution but as the reference manual explaining why the design looks like it does.
Centralis employs a number of very experienced design architects, across multiple disciplines, whose work is recognised as being on a par with that of vendor consulting - that's why over 25% of the current FTSE Top 100 companies have engaged Centralis consulting services on desktop projects.
For more information about how we design, test and pilot desktop virtualisation please contact us.
Coming Soon...
The Centralis Optimised Workspace TM - click here for more information
Centralis Desktop Transformation
For more information on how Centralis can help with all aspects of Desktop Transformation, please see:
