The London Borough of Merton is to deploy cloud and networking firm Citrix's virtualisation technology in a bid to cut costs and provide a flexible working environment to 2,000 of its employees.
The Citrix solution will be implemented by IT consultancy Thintech and the Borough hopes that it will allow staff access to critical applications on the go from any device, in addition to enabling the council to become a shared desktop provider to other London councils.
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Merton Council is deploying Ciritix XenApp and XenDesktop technology which between them offer a range of desktop virtualisation technologies via the Citrix FlexCast model, including hosted shared desktops and client-side virtualisation.
It will combine these technologies will Citrix Receiver to enable Merton staff to opt in for the council's bring your own device (BYOD) scheme using Android or iOS devices to access work applications and documents on the move. Citrix NetScaler will allow employees to access a cloud-based internal network where they can find server-based resources.
The solution is being deployed across a PC estate of 1,750 users. Merton Council is currently in the advanced stages of the project, and eventually the solution will extend to 2,000 users. Thereafter, the council hopes to become a shared services provider; sharing IT infrastructure with other councils.
Richard Warren, head of IT service delivery at the London Borough of Merton said that a key benefit of the Citrix implementation was the cost savings that council had accrued.
"Since implementing Citrix solutions through Thintech, we've been able to ensure that our staff have access to the information they need wherever they are, whatever the device they use. We have also achieved significant efficiency savings through the initiative by consolidating office resources, meaning we now need fewer office buildings available for our staff to hot desk from. By consolidating our sites, not only have we saved money on office space, we've also been able to reduce the management overheads associated with running the PC estate," he said.
"The flexibility this technology provides truly allows Merton to become a forward-looking local authority at the forefront of innovation, and allows us to subsequently share our technology with other authorities," he added.
