Case Study

Bracknell Forest Borough Council and Centralis Deliver a "Joined Up" Solution

Covers Citrix MetaFrame XP, Novell ZENworks 3.2 & eDirectory, Centralis AXE and Contex, Centralis consultancy & project services.

The Customer

Bracknell Forest Borough Council is an organisation of 3200 people with an annual turnover of £150m, providing a wide range of services to the local community.

Bracknell Forest Borough Council has placed eGovernment at the heart of its modernisation agenda, providing its community and employees with easier and quicker access to services. As part of the Borough Councils “joined-up” approach to working with public and private sector, ICT (Information and Communication Technology) plays a vital role in improving organisational efficiency and communications and supports the councils overall Best Value principles.

	.....The solution demonstrated by Centralis did address this requirement...... and the Council was impressed with the Company’s understanding of both Citrix and Novell environments...
	Ian Slee, Assistant Borough IT Services Manager, Bracknell Forest Borough Council

The Council has been careful to select 'blue chip' companies to form partnerships which can transfer market leading technologies and expertise into the public sector. This sits very well with the Borough Councils geographical position, surrounded by world-leading technology companies.

Bracknell Forest Borough Council is well known for leading the public sector in the deployment of portal solutions based on Novell technologies. Their secure, authenticated gateway access to a range of Council services is part of an ambitious development plan, which already provides the citizen with access to many key services.

The Challenge

Bracknell Forest Borough Council face a twofold challenge. On the one hand they are faced with a requirement from the UK government to extend access provision, and on the other, they have a requirement to control infrastructure and support costs while maintaining quality of service.

The government requirements are part of a broad vision of improved access for both citizens and local government staff, set out in June 2001, by the UK Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions through their Beacon Council Research Report. These included:

• Making Council services accessible remotely (e.g. through web based “portal” access);
• Increasing availability of ICT in the community (provision of computing resources in libraries, schools, community centres etc.)
• Promoting homeworking and other forms of ICT 'remote access' for Council staff

On the infrastructure and support side, Bracknell Forest Borough Council have a diverse environment to manage. Combining a wide range of application software with a mixture of PC operating systems with a distributed workforce produces a support workload and application delivery challenge familiar to many organisations. Adding to their issues, the Borough Council have a busy WAN infrastructure, and a growing need to offer their full suite of applications to remote working and home based employees.

Bracknell Forest Borough Council are also keen to build on their existing investment in Novell technologies, which includes, eDirectory, ZENworks and Novell Portal Services.

Overall, the Council were looking for a solution which provided the centralised management and delivery of applications via the directory, with a client independent solution which allowed them to retain and standardise their existing hardware.

Defining the Solution

In November 2000, Bracknell Forest Borough Council attended a solutions seminar hosted by Centralis, where an integrated Novell and Citrix solution was demonstrated. Ian Slee, Assistant Borough IT Services Manager comments "The Council had been in discussion with various suppliers of Citrix implementation consultancy services but were unhappy with the proposals submitted, as these did not address the requirement of ZENworks for Desktops & NDS integration. The solution demonstrated by Centralis did address this requirement and the Council was impressed with the Company’s understanding of both Citrix and Novell environments".

Following the seminar, Centralis undertook a number of preparatory consultancy projects, working with the Borough Council IT staff to define exact requirements and deliverables, and set up proof of concept environments to demonstrate the proposed solution to Borough Council staff. Based on the feedback from these exercises, Bracknell Forest Borough Council were able to provide Centralis with a firm list of deliverables, and Centralis were able to commit to a project price for the work.

The solution designed by the Borough Council and Centralis staff was based on the following components:

• Management - eDirectory and ConsoleOne with Centralis Contex for NT snapin
• Application Delivery - ZENworks for Desktops 3.2 with Centralis AXE
• Client Independence - Citrix MetaFrame XPe on Windows 2000 Terminal Servers
   

Delivering the Solution

Centralis undertook an implementation project beginning in June 2002 to build two Windows 2000 based Citrix MetaFrame XPe farms, one for production, and one for development and testing.

A range of applications were captured using the ZENworks “snapshot” technology, and deployed, from standard office applications such as Microsoft Office and Novell’s GroupWise 6 to specialist planning and environmental health systems. The snapshot was used to capture each application installation and these were then processed for use in the Citrix MetaFrame environment using Centralis AXE software.

Centralis and Bracknell Forest Borough Council IT staff worked together to create an automated, pre-configured Citrix client installation, which installed the software onto the client PCs, configured to provide pass-through authentication, ensuring that users only had a single login to reach the point where they can load their applications.

The initial project provided server capacity for up to 300 users with a likely concurrent access in excess of 100 users. The servers in the farm were configured in line with Centralis and Citrix current ‘Best Practices’. This configuration was designed to give the required resilience and capacity to allow for one server to be removed from the farm for maintenance, upgrades and testing purposes without adversely affecting the ‘production’ service to users. The servers were also locked down using Novell and Microsoft security policies to deliver best practice security and supportability.

In line with Bracknell Forest Borough Council’s policy of skills transfer to the public sector, Centralis involved the technical staff at all stages of the server build and production of the application delivery mechanism. Centralis also produced documentation to cover these processes and provided training in the use of the Centralis Toolset used to create the application objects.

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Benefits to the Customer

The integrated solution provides Bracknell Forest Borough Council with significant benefits across the full range of their requirements.

At the client level, delivering applications via Citrix MetaFrame has removed the need to install applications locally, and to upgrade any client PCs to provide compatibility. The resulting “simplified” client PC is simple to deploy, support and maintain, with the automated ICA client install developed during the project helping to keep deployment costs to a minimum. Removing the dependence of the application on the client has also allowed Bracknell Forest Borough Council to continue to use their older, lower specification PCs, avoiding the need for costly upgrades.

For the applications, a single snapshot based install is now deployed to the server farm for use by all users, regardless of client configuration. This “standardised” application is quicker to deploy and update, and far easier to support and troubleshoot than local installs. Combining ZENworks for Desktops and Centralis AXE means that snapshot based installs are quick to produce, processed to Bracknell Forest Borough Councils standards, and optimised for Citrix MetaFrame delivery.

	The Council’s ICT Services support team are now able to rapidly deploy access to any back office application, independent of the end client desktop version or location.
	Ian Slee, Assistant Borough IT Services Manager, Bracknell Forest Borough Council

The eDirectory enabled management tools then allow the Council to easily allocate applications to users via groups and template users, with ZENworks taking care of the personalisation and installation. Creating new accounts and deploying new applications becomes a simple administration process, rather than a support overhead. Centralis Contex for NT is used to extend the scope of the Novell management console, allowing all the user fields for the Terminal Server and Citrix MetaFrame to be managed from a single console, and also allowing these to be added into the user templates.

For the support staff, they now have only server based installations to support, allowing them to significantly improve the service they can offer to their end users. They can also support and manage the solution remotely, using the combined technologies to make themselves more flexible and effective.

"The implementation of an integrated Citrix/ZENworks for Desktops environment has enabled the Council to introduce hot desking and home working services. The approach taken provides a standard method for the delivery of access to all back office systems. Previously we were restricted to where certain applications could be installed. This was due to conflict with other applications installed on PCs or network bandwidth restrictions. The Council’s ICT Services support team are now able to rapidly deploy access to any back office application, independent of the end client desktop version or location. This environment also enables the team to rapidly rollout upgrades of back office applications without the need to modify any client workstation configuration." states Ian Slee, Assistant Borough IT Services Manager at Bracknell Forest Borough Council.

Rodger Olive, Public Sector Business Manager at Centralis comments "This is a great example of where a long term partnership between customer and partner delivers real benefits for both parties. Combining Centralis AXE software with ZENworks and Citrix MetaFrame offers unique benefits to organisations like Bracknell Forest Borough Council who are looking to extend the flexibility of their IT solutions."

Follow-on benefits

The customer now has a flexible delivery mechanism for their IT solutions, however the benefits are not limited to where solutions can be accessed from. Using high specification servers in the farm has significantly improved the performance of the back office applications, delivering an enhanced service to the users.

Mobility of users has also been improved, allowing them to connect from any standard device in any office to pick up their full range of applications and data. In turn this mobility increases the opportunity for more flexible working practices, allowing staff to work from home, or from local offices, with significant implications for accommodation costs.

Future

Having proven the benefits with this implementation, Bracknell Forest Borough Council are now planning to expand their Citrix farm to deliver applications across the Borough Council. With the standard back office applications already deployed to the Citrix server farm using ZENworks, increasing the scope of the server farm will only require the deployment of any additional applications, and will quickly allow additional departments to be brought into the directory enabled, client independent infrastructure.

Conclusions

Bracknell Forest Borough Councils joined up approach to ICT provision to both citizens and employees has positioned them as one of the flagship councils in the UK. This project has combined the centralisation and management benefits of eDirectory with the cost savings of both Citrix MetaFrame and ZENworks, delivering a highly flexible and cost effective solution.

Over the last two years, Centralis have been able to help Bracknell Forest Borough Council develop and then deliver their strategic solution through a combination of consultancy, implementation and integration software. Overall, the project provides an excellent example of how Bracknell Forest Borough Council and Centralis have worked as long term technology partners, and also shows how the IT industry and public sectors can work together to deliver innovative and cost effective solutions.

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