Scott County: Modernizing Application Delivery to Improve Employee Experience
Scott County is part of the Quad Cities Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), located in eastern Iowa and western Illinois on the Mississippi River, 165 miles west of Chicago. The county’s technology team recognized that its aging Citrix environment impacted government workers with delayed login times, image update processes, and other production concerns. The IT team serving Iowa’s third-most populous county turned to Burwood Group for a new virtual desktop and application delivery platform that would improve stability and the user experience, while optimizing the budget.
The Challenge: Modernization for Stronger Performance and Better Value
Scott County’s Citrix data center environment was causing downtime and frequent complaints. In addition, the county’s IT team had inherited the environment with little to no documentation and was considering transitioning to an entirely different platform rather than risk further maintenance to the existing, unstable environment. However, to take advantage of an upcoming Citrix license renewal option, Scott County enlisted Burwood Group to develop a virtualized end user environment that would restore confidence and sidestep users’ burgeoning interest in shadow IT.
The Solution: Next-Generation Citrix, Strategic Licensing, and Phased Migration
Burwood Group budgeted the project into assessment, design, and implementation phases to accommodate the IT team’s planning preferences. After assessing the data center’s current state, Burwood recommended a phased parallel migration to Citrix’s XenApp and XenDesktop 7.6 for desktop virtualization. Using the XenApp platform would support data center performance and provide the ability to support new productivity-enhancing tools.
Leveraging its preferred vendor relationship with Citrix, Burwood negotiated Scott County’s new licenses and repurposed the savings into Citrix Workplace Suite tools and benefits. After designing and building the new parallel infrastructure and Citrix environment, Burwood implemented a phased migration to minimize downtime and end user dissatisfaction.
“Burwood Group was the dependable guide we needed to establish a modernized, reliable virtual desktop and application delivery infrastructure that exceeds user expectations. Not only is the virtualized environment highly stable but it is also cost-effective—and we appreciate Burwood’s deep understanding of our budgeting process. We are now positioned for the future and able to offer our users new tools and products that can improve their effectiveness.”
The Outcome: Highly Equipped IT Team, for Highly Equipped End Users
Today, Scott County’s technology team has the tools and infrastructure to address new use cases and the capacity to serve additional departments. Its new strategic licensing agreements optimize the county’s IT budget and position it for future technology opportunities. Also critical, the Scott County IT team is now equipped to manage the new environment with detailed documentation and training from Burwood Group in best practices for virtual desktop and application delivery management.
Burwood Group Services:
Data Center Assessment
Citrix Virtualization
Application Delivery Infrastructure
Technology Strategy