Thin is in for better management and efficiencies

Businesses are realizing that the hidden costs of maintaining PCs in their business can be drastically cut by reviewing their IT desktop strategy. Switching from traditional PCs to a thin client solution using Server-Based Computing or desktop virtualization can save IT teams hundreds of hours of maintenance time and thousands of Euros in running costs.

“IGEL ticked all the boxes, coming out on top for feature set, performance, functionality, remote management and price.”
-By Paul Morgan, Nippon Express Assistant IS Manager for Operations and Infrastructure

One such company is Nippon Express, the world’s leading logistics provider. Since opening its first overseas office in New York in 1958, the Nippon Express global network has spread to over 382 locations in 37 countries with 15,376 personnel committed to supporting its customers’ daily business processes. (As of Dec. 2007）

The company’s own technology infrastructure is the backbone of its success in the global logistics business and when Paul Morgan, Assistant IS Manager for Operations and Infrastructure, joined the firm in 2006 the company was being run on a traditional PC and server-based network.

The goal was to reduce IT complexity

“The main driver to moving to a thin client environment was the distributed nature of our business,” explained Paul. “With 23 individual locations to support across the UK, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and France, our daily challenge was maintaining branch servers and a very distributed wide area network environment. If a server in Madrid went down, it could take some time to get it back up and working and that delay can be very costly in our industry.”

The IT team’s goal was to reduce IT complexity at the outlying locations and to bring that complexity to the centre where is could be managed more efficiently and effectively. Based on Paul’s previous experience, he understood that server-based computing was the required approach.

Having chosen Citrix software, the IT team then began to consider which thin client to use. “Our IT teams in Germany, the UK and the Netherlands carried out independent tests on all the major thin client manufacturers and IGEL blew the competition out of the water,” said Paul. “With a thin client there are just a few key questions to ask: Does it do the job? Does it do it quickly? And is it cheap enough? IGEL ticked all the boxes, coming out on top for feature set, performance, functionality, remote management and price.”

Nippon Express began rolling out the IGEL Smart 3210 LX model but quickly found it to be over qualified for the job and moved to the cheaper IGEL Smart 2110 LX. “As we were simply connecting to a Citrix server farm, the simpler model had all the functionality we required,” explained Paul. “We just kept the more expensive model on the few occasions when terminal emulation was required.”

When IGEL launched its new Universal Desktop range the Nippon Express IT team chose the UD2 with Standard Digital package. The IGEL devices are supplied by certified IGEL resellers EACS and Insight. Nippon Express runs an 18 server farm running Citrix XenDesktop v5, which supports a total workstation base of up to 700 with users in warehouses through to the finance department. Over the next 3 years, the IT team expects an almost 100% conversion to IGEL thin clients.

IGEL thin clients are up and running in minutes

Each department within the organisation has a tailored desktop image to meet its needs and the IT team roll-out the thin clients using the IGEL Universal Management Software (UMS). Using the UMS, which comes bundled free with every IGEL Universal Desktop, Nippon Express has a simple to use management tool which can have thin clients up and running in minutes. Intuitive to use, secure and scalable to up to 100,000 thin clients, the IGEL UMS drastically reduces management time for IT administrators, eliminating the need for the majority of site visits. “We use it for the total management of our thin clients,” said Paul. “It’s there for maintenance, management, auditing and updates. We pretty much use every feature of the management suite.”

The benefits are clear

The benefits of the thin client are very clear for Paul and his team. Desktop maintenance time has been greatly reduced. “With PCs and remote branch servers, it was a very time consuming support operation but with server-based computing and the thin clients we can concentrate on providing a good quality, resilient server farm and all the benefits that can deliver to our user base.”

Another support benefit is the remote thin client management capability which allows the support team to shadow and take control of the user’s thin client remotely when they need assistance.

And the final obvious benefit is cost savings, explained Paul. The organisation no longer needs to buy branch servers and PCs at regular intervals. The IGEL thin client desktops last longer and are more reliable, with no moving parts.

At Nippon Express this cost saving opportunity is even more valued because of the way the technology is bought. Each Branch Manager has responsibility for their IT budget. Therefore the ability for the IT team to be very specific on the advantages and cost savings of the new IGEL thin clients is key to convincing Branch Managers to upgrade their desktops at the right time.

“Instead of suggesting to a Branch manager that they should be spending £800 on new PCs, I can now say that with a £170 investment in a new IGEL thin client they can have better performance, reliability and security at a significantly reduced cost,” said Paul.

And for those Branch Managers that want to sweat their existing PC assets even further, Paul and his team are also now using the IGEL Desktop Converter solution to convert old PCs into IGEL thin clients. By installing the IGEL’s Universal Firmware from a USB stick, Nippon Express can have a smooth transition to a server-based computing or desktop virtualization environment without the expense of replacing the entire client hardware. This enables the department to extend the lifecycle of their existing infrastructure, reduce the cost of investing in new hardware and eliminate client maintenance costs.  “We are using this temporary solution when the Branch Manager is suffering from the current PC performance but has little budget at that particular time to spend on new equipment,” explained Paul.

With the IGEL roll-out continuing, the Nippon Express team believes they now have the perfect IT platform to meet the growing needs of their business in Europe. “From an IT perspective, the IGEL thin clients are an ideal solution and the users have also accepted them quickly,” commented Paul. “There was some suspicion at first from users because they perceived that we were taking something with lots of functionality away and replacing it with a little black box but that quickly changed when they noticed the speed of log-in times and the response times of the system. The first users became evangelists for the transition from PCs to IGEL thin clients and we have never looked back.”