Sometimes there are easy solutions to big problems, and Citrix’s VDI-in-a-Box proves this. Cushman & Wakefield is a real estate firm with 231 offices in 58 countries, but it was from within the offices in the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region where an epiphany led to an experiment that would change the future of business for the company on a global scale.
In a matter of two days, Cushman & Wakefield found a secure solution for third-party contractors to access proprietary applications using Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, a software that takes only a couple of hours to install and operate.
“It was not very much effort,” said Vinit Khandelway, “but it delivered a lot of value.”
Vinit Khandelwal, the IT architect from Cushman & Wakefield’s EMEA region, was cautious when he first set about this experiment to test the versatility of Citrix’s VDI-in-a-Box to resolve a number of issues. He was cautious in the beginning, wanting to keep the integrity of security systems intact, so he conducted the study using two separate environments.
Khandelwal was amazed by the results and said, “Within literally a matter of days, we went from no virtualization to virtualization. And it was easy to do.”
A roadblock in Dubai presented the first opportunity for the IT team to put their idea for implementing VDI-in-a-Box to use. When Cushman & Wakefield needed access to financial systems from their desktops in Dubai and security protocols prevented direct access, IT created a VDI template. Soon after, VDI-in-a-Box allowed offices in Dubai access to corporate SSL VPN connection and everything else they needed to conduct business.
Cushman & Wakefield then decided to deploy VDI-in-a-Box to offices in Belgium and Spain where the new solution proved to resolve issues there, as well. Gradually, VDI-in-a-Box began to replace many solutions in satellite offices, proving to be easily scalable with off-the-shelf- servers.
Eventually, Cushman & Wakefield eliminated latency between London and Dubai, was able to provide remote access of corporate applications including customized SQL software to contractors anywhere, and was even able to deliver Microsoft (News - Alert) Office and Exchange to contractors as well.
Edited by Amanda Ciccatelli