Hampshire County Council is responsible for delivering essential services -– ranging from social care and libraries to trading standards and countryside rangers –- to 1.25 million people in the county of Hampshire in the south of England. A recent government review judged the council excellent for its delivery of local public services.

The Challenge: Building a Cost-effective New Desktop Environment

Hampshire County Council was looking for a fast and cost-effective way to create a single, easily administered desktop environment. The existing environment was complex, difficult to manage and time-consuming to support. Because individual departments ran their own PCs, the council as a whole was running a proliferation of different applications and software versions. In addition, a considerable amount of ageing green-screen technology was still in use. “The challenge was to update and simplify this environment,” said Dave Reynolds, IT manager at Hampshire County Council. “We wanted to enable all applications and information to be centrally administered and supported by the council’s IT team -– and delivered to a wide-ranging user base across hundreds of locations.”

The IT department needed to find an affordable and effective answer that would win the approval of the council as a whole. The focus was on minimising up-front hardware costs and ongoing costs of management by using thin-client technology where possible, as part of a wider emphasis on keeping IT support costs to a minimum. For Hampshire County Council, Citrix software provided the ideal solution.

Implementing a Citrix Application Delivery Infrastructure Solution

Hampshire County Council rolled out Citrix Presentation Server™ with Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Server to provide the core desktop service to 11,000 users on 8,000 desktops across 400 sites. All applications are delivered via Citrix Presentation Server; they range from Microsoft® Office to specialist social care and highway management software. Around 4,500 of the desktops are thin clients, including Wyse terminals, and the rest are Dell PCs. The council uses 120 Dell PowerEdge servers in the main server farm, which deliver applications and information across a broadband IP-based VPN.

Saving a Minimum of £2 Million a Year in Total Cost of Ownership

By adopting a Citrix solution, Hampshire County Council significantly cut the cost of upgrading to its new desktop environment –- as well as ongoing ownership costs. “The expense of buying 8,000 PCs and installing applications on every one would have been prohibitive,” said Reynolds. Because Citrix software demands little functionality of the desktop itself, the council was able to reduce its outlay on hardware by investing in thin-client technology for over half its desktops. The affordability of this technology meant the council could extend the new desktop environment to all users.

As for the ongoing total cost of ownership of the IT network, Hampshire County Council calculates that it is saving a minimum of £2 million a year. “Supporting and upgrading applications on thousands of desktops in hundreds of locations would have been expensive and time-consuming,” said Reynolds. “Instead, all applications are administered and supported centrally, and delivered to users over the network.”

The council is currently planning to roll out a Microsoft Office upgrade to all users. “Thanks to our Citrix application delivery infrastructure, it will only take a weekend rather than the weeks we would need if we had to visit every desktop,” Reynolds said. The reliability of the desktop environment –- and the speed with which applications can be upgraded –- mean users always have the information and applications they need to deliver critical frontline council services.

Enabling Key Service Arrangements with External Partners

Originally developed for Hampshire County Council desktop users, the application architecture is flexible and scaleable enough to enable the council to provide IT services to other local government organisations. For example, the council has an agreement to deliver SAP to 540 local schools from a separate server farm using Presentation Server. “Without Citrix software, such an agreement would be impossible to deliver because of the time and costs involved in visiting every PC to install and upgrade software,” explained Reynolds. “Now, it is simply a case of pointing users at the right URL.” The council also provides outsourced IT services to Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service, delivering what is effectively a copy of the service enjoyed by internal council users.

For the IT department, these partnerships support the provision of joined-up public services and further improve economies of scale. The trend in local government is towards joint arrangements that bring together a number of agencies to provide consistent, integrated services. “Being able to hold data in one place, and share it using Citrix software, is good for the integrity of the data and for the quality of the services provided to the people of Hampshire and beyond,” concluded Reynolds.

©2007 Citrix Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Citrix® and Citrix Presentation Server™ are trademarks or registered trademarks of Citrix Systems, Inc. and/or one or more of its subsidiaries, and may be registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Microsoft® and Windows® are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.  All other trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.