Citrix

IGEL Technology, a global provider of innovative and powerful thin client solutions, was looking to transition from a hardware manufacturer to a software provider. The company aimed to deliver complete solutions for software-defined endpoints, facilitating secure access to virtual and cloud-based working environments. IGEL's IT Manager, Tim-Oliver Felsen, believed that the future of IT workstations would be heavily reliant on cloud services due to their user-friendliness, flexibility, cost benefits, and efficient management. The company had previously relied on an external service provider that operated a Citrix infrastructure for most of its IT users. However, IGEL wanted to take the next step and transform its virtual workplaces into real Cloud Workspaces.

Xenit, a renowned IT services provider based in Sweden, assists companies in executing their digital transformation initiatives, with a primary focus on modernizing application deployment and delivery infrastructure. However, the Xenit DevOps team faced challenges in application delivery at scale. The team was manually configuring the application delivery infrastructure, which was not only time-consuming but also prone to errors. They had to constantly balance between scaling up to ensure enough capacity for estimated demand and scaling down when demand decreased. The tools they were using were not always delivering as promised, leading to inefficiencies. Xenit needed an automated and consistent way to provide services to its customers and to scale its own service deployment and delivery.

Because Xenit used Amazon Web Services (AWS), Gottschlag wanted a solution for application delivery that worked seamlessly with AWS and that was extensible to give Xenit customers an option for incorporating other public cloud solutions into their cloud portfolios. The solution also needed to make application delivery easier to manage and more cost effective.

IGEL Technology has decided to move towards cloud-based workplaces from the early stages. The company previously had an external service provider that operated a Citrix infrastructure for the majority of its IT users.

EBSCO Industries, a global corporation with over 40 unique businesses, faced a complex IT landscape due to the diverse technology needs across each business unit. The company's IT team had to support a broad application portfolio and multiple cloud vendors. The challenge was to manage legacy applications while expanding into cloud platforms, which presented significant management and security challenges. Any lapse in application availability could result in substantial financial losses due to lost productivity. EBSCO needed a solution that would simplify application management across business units and allow each team to choose the applications they wanted to use.

In order to empower field employees to access the information they need at any time, LG&E and KU have steadily moved toward mobile-powered workforces and paperless operations. In a power plant, mobile connections can be challenging. Wireless network connections aren’t always available in power plants, and when they are, they often suffer from interference. To combat the unreliable nature of wireless connections, the LG&E and KU development group turned to cellular connectivity and developed several internal-facing mobile applications that employees use on Apple iPad devices. In the early stages of the move to a cellular-based approach, employees were sometimes unable to connect to the mobile applications due to LG&E and KU’s previous load balancing solution ineffectively handling traffic. The solution couldn’t consistently deliver the needed capacity and reliability—which meant that employees couldn’t consistently access critical apps and data. To support more secure, reliable mobile-application access in the field and on employees’ personal devices, in 2012, LG&E and KU deployed Citrix XenMobile. Citrix NetScaler was already deployed to provide remote access to a small, internal virtual-desktop-infrastructure (VDI) environment. The companies also used a different load-balancing solution to support other critical application workloads, such as their existing SAP solution–based customer portal, Microsoft Exchange, and Oracle Financials. The addition of XenMobile, and the pending end-of-life of the existing load-balancing appliance, provided the opportunity for LG&E and KU to consolidate all their load-balancing requirements onto a single vendor platform—a move that could meet application delivery needs and lower overall operational costs.

ABB Schweiz AG faced the challenge of provisioning remote CAD workstations within existing network capacity. The company needed to provide its users in India with access to applications like Siemens Solid Edge and Autodesk E3.series CAD applications within a tight seven-month project schedule. The internal network infrastructure posed a bottleneck for the central engineering databases hosted in Switzerland, as the WAN links were not designed to support remote processing for extensive construction plans. Building a local database in India would have taken too long and generated significant data traffic on the WAN.

Clark Builders faced significant challenges in managing its ultra-mobile workforce across three offices and up to 60 remote sites, often in challenging locations such as north of the Arctic Circle. The company needed to set up job sites quickly and ensure reliable connectivity and data access. The existing technology infrastructure was outdated, and there was a pressing need to centralize information and consolidate into a single datacenter. The company partnered with Long View Systems to modernize its infrastructure and support its mobile workforce effectively.

Initially, Globus faced significant challenges with their existing web conferencing solution, which was complicated and unreliable. The system was not user-friendly for either the webinar leaders or the attendees, leading to numerous complaints from travel agents about poor audio quality, static lines, and connectivity issues. These webinars were crucial for educating travel agents about the company's latest travel offerings, and the ineffective communication was potentially harming revenues and the company's reputation. Additionally, the previous solution lacked the ability to synchronize audio and video recordings for online posting, which was essential for agents who could not attend live events. Globus needed a service with integrated audio, improved ease of use, high reliability, and excellent audio quality to address these issues.