Case Study

Strategic Access, Designed to Support Creative Excellence

Covers Citrix Access Solution & Managed Services.

Overview

Working with Citrix Managed Consulting Partner Centralis, The University of the Arts London has deployed a Citrix Access solution which delivers administration systems and personal productivity software to six hundred users across multiple sites in central London.

The University has invested not just in Citrix software, but in methodology and best practice, resulting in an Access Solution which has been carefully engineered to meet the University’s exact requirements, from architecture design through to how the system is managed on a daily and long-term basis.

This initial strategic IT investment provides the foundation for a new way of accessing systems and information which is more flexible, scalable and cost-effective – important factors to consider when you have a potential end-user population of over 20,000 staff and students.

	It was clear that Centralis had a profound understanding of both the Citrix technology and the experience of how it should be deployed and managed.
	Malcolm Johnston, Chair of the Working Party, University of the Arts London

The Customer

The University of the Arts London brings together five of the world's most prestigious Colleges across six main campus sites to make up Europe's largest university for art, design, fashion, communication an media. With an annual income of around £120m the University was recently rated by the 'Sunday Times University Guide' as the UK's 'Best Higher Education College'.

The achievements of the University’s students, staff and over 200,000 alumni are the true measure of the University’s success, having been responsible for a wide-range of achievements from receiving awards such as the Saatchi Scholarship and the Turner Prize to designing the true London icons of red buses and black cabs.

The Access Challenge

The University needed to deliver access to information systems consistently throughout the many locations of the five colleges which make up the University. In particular the University wanted to give the College administration staff access to a management application, however the system needed frequent updates. Pushing the  updates out to so many client PCs at different locations was both costly and time consuming.

In addition there were limitations on where the systems could be accessed from, with an increasing requirement to support students using their own laptop PCs and administration and academic staff logging in from home and from remote locations.

In late 2002 the University founded a working party to look into the feasibility of making their centralised administration systems available at the main college sites. Malcolm Johnston, Chair of the Working Party, used information from Citrix and other customers’ deployments to develop a fully costed model to examine the costs and benefits of delivering the administration systems using a Citrix Access solution, a PC based solution and a mixture of the two.

Based on analysis of these figures, the University went out to tender to find a partner who could provide a complete solution, from requirement analysis through to design, deployment and remote management service. From the responses the University selected Centralis and the project commenced.

Malcolm comments "It was clear that Centralis had a profound understanding of both the Citrix technology and the experience of how it should be deployed and managed. They were able to bring the highest levels of documentation and control to the project, ensuring that we met our objectives. Crucially, we were able to take on board the concerns of our own IT staff and produce the evidence that their needs would be met."

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The Centralis Solution

The University wanted a solution which was designed professionally and delivered to the highest standards. Centralis works to a structured methodology that takes advantage of industry best practice for project management, systems design and long-term systems management. This meant that Centralis not only looked at the applications to be deployed and the infrastructure that would support it – they looked at the procedures and systems in place which would determine whether it could be a long-term success.

	We engaged Centralis because of their understanding of our needs and reputation for delivering on their promises.
	Nick Atkins, Head of IT&T, University of the Arts London

The Head of IT&T, Nick Atkins comments "We engaged Centralis because of their understanding of our needs and reputation for delivering on their promises. Their project met all our expectations, and we were confident enough in the quality of service provided to award Centralis the contract to manage the Citrix environment as an outsourced service."

The structured approach used by Centralis is based on that used by Citrix Consulting Services themselves. A comprehensive "infrastructure assessment" is undertaken, which is then developed into a formal design document. Rigorous testing of applications and architecture follows as the design moves from paper to a fully resilient and secure deployment.

Working closely with Centralis throughout the process, Malcolm was ideally placed to see how the process led to the deployment of a solution which was designed to meet the University’s needs exactly.

When the first users trialled the new access solution, it was clear that the investment had been worthwhile. Take up was steady, but the ability to access the real-time administration systems was a significant improvement in delegating administrative tasks and responsibility out to the individual colleges.

"Final fit of solution to customer is one of the areas that Centralis specialise in. We were able to provide the University with a compiled help file which replaced the standard Windows help and provided specific information relevant to their environment. We also provided training to their helpdesk, both on how the solution was put together and on the sorts of calls to expect – and how to answer them. This process of getting the user experience right and the front-line teams fully clued-up is essential in our experience." said Ewen Anderson, Account Manager for the University at Centralis.

The solution also took advantage of the advantage of cross-farm licensing introduced in later versions of Citrix Presentation Server, with Citrix farms based on IBM Blade servers located at each college site, but managed and licensed as a single installation. This gave all of the performance benefits and flexibility of the local server farm for each college, while still retaining centralised application delivery.

Benefits

The Citrix Access solution now provides a single point of change for delivering a critical system to a critical group of users. It also opens up the possibility of providing a secure remote-access solution that can be used by staff and students across the University.

The last word goes to the customer "The Citrix project was driven by a business model which promised both support cost and infrastructure savings and the opportunity to expand access for staff and students. We have now met all our main project objectives and now have the added confidence that the Citrix environment is maintained by Centralis as a managed service, backed by the prompt response from their helpdesk."

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