Height for Hire has invested €150,000 in a desktop virtualisation and managed services system that will enable it to streamline processes, provide mobile access and be more productive.
Trilogy Technologies began the project in July, which had been scheduled for completion at the end of September.
“With a significant growth in our business and with 11 geographically dispersed sites in four countries, we needed an efficient and cost-effective technology solution to orchestrate our information flow between our offices, manage application deployment and maintain our mobile users with the least effort and cost,” explained John Ball, managing director at Height for Hire.
Trilogy Technologies, a Citrix Partner, recommended and implemented the desktop virtualisation and managed services solution for Height for Hire. Trilogy installed a Citrix Xen Server in Ashbourne and connects users at the 11 remote sites via an Eircom bipReach network.
Trilogy also installed SonicWall firewalls at all remote sites, as well as a new consolidated firewall at head office. The solution virtualises Height for Hire’s existing infrastructure and consolidates the ERP system, all files and email accounts, Adobe and internet access.
The company is now able to roll out the latest platforms for users, such as Microsoft and Height for Hire’s own specific applications centrally.
Trilogy also implemented Citrix access gateway, which allows remote users and mobile workers to log on securely and quickly to the data at Ashbourne data centre. It also acts as a fail over – should any links go down from the bipReach perspective, users can log in over the Citrix access gateway.
Trilogy’s managed service solution remotely manages both the head office and remote site infrastructure.
Benefits of managed service solution
“Key benefits of the solution include efficient, centralised management, rapid scalability, instant web enablement of existing applications and flexible access to applications on demand,” Ball continued.
“All user files are located on our central servers in Ashbourne, so from an access, security and backup perspective, our users are totally PC independent”.
Centralised management and support relieves administrators from constant travel to the remote locations to configure a PC.
“Our people travel less often as staff can now access all required applications from anywhere using any device. By giving our staff in the field access to real-time information, we can gain a competitive advantage as an organisation.”
Applications and upgrades can be deployed on the central server and be made available immediately to all staff, thereby further increasing productivity and competitive advantage.
“This cutting-edge technology allows us to function as one office,” Ball concluded.
“It allows us to open up new offices very quickly anywhere in the world. It also allows us to control bandwidth usage”.
