27 February 2014

Virtualisation has enabled Hammersmith and Fulham Council (HFC) to cut the total cost of ownership of its desktop environment by one third. The deployment, carried out by Colt Technology Services, has led to a 20-25 per cent reduction in per-user seat cost and an 80 per cent reduction in power consumption thanks to thin clients that have replaced the council’s aging PC estate

HFC pioneered desktop virtualisation 10 years ago but the solution it had in place was limited in the number of users and services it supported. After scoping the technical, service and commercial requirements, Colt recommended a solution that addressed the different needs to virtualise and package the 300 applications HFC has to maintain. Paul Calvert, IT services solution director, says: “Colt worked with the council and its partners to conduct a virtualisation assessment of the applications and users before developing a proof of concept to allow them to experience how applications would perform in the new environment.

Colt worked with the Hammersmith and Fulham Bridge Partnership, a joint venture setup in 2006 between the council and Agilisys, utilising technology from Cisco and VMware. The VDI solution is hosted across two of Colt’s data centres for disaster recovery and delivered on a price per user basis, providing a transparent, opex-based cost model. The service is backed up with an end-to-end SLA for an all-inclusive flat monthly fee.

From a technology perspective, Colt says it’s offering HFC a complete IaaS platform that can support cloud-based telephony, video and collaboration services equally. It integrates with the council’s remote access service, enabling HFC’s 2,700 employees to work away from the office, securely accessing the information they need via laptops, smartphones or tablets. This will support the council in its bid to reduce office space and improve the way it provides services to its residents. Colt’s WAN encryption services ensure sensitive residential data is secure when an employee sends and receives data while working away from the office. The VDI rollout complies with government IL2 regulation that exists to ensure sensitive data is stored and protected appropriately.

“With data accessed from various devices, local authorities face a huge challenge to keep information safe,” says Calvert.“With a VDI environment, the data is not held locally, which addresses concerns around security. This becomes increasingly important as more and more council workers are now working remotely.”