Wednesday, 28 August 2013

Fleet management firm LeasePlan embraces private cloud for BYOD


Fleet management company LeasePlan is implementing private cloud services to create a flexible and cost-efficient IT infrastructure and a centralised virtual desktop to support its bring your own device (BYOD) programme.

LeasePlan Information Services – a subsidiary of LeasePlan that operates as an internal shared service provider to all LeasePlan Group companies globally – is aiming to create a centralised, virtual desktop that can be delivered to a variety of workers in LeasePlan offices across Europe, accessible via any device.

The IT wants to create a true enterprise mobility solution to increase the company's staff’s productivity, providing employees the opportunity to work from anywhere on any device at any time.

To this effect, the IT team decided to deploy Citrix cloud services technology globally. According to the company, the private cloud setup will help it save more than €40,000 per group company per year as it will help remove duplicate and unwarranted IT costs

LeasePlan Information Services has begun the work with Citrix’s platinum partner Zinopy to deliver a private cloud service, based on Citrix XenApp, Citrix Netscaler, NetScaler Gateway and Citrix Receiver.

Citrix Receiver allows devices running on Windows, Windows Mobile, Mac OS X, iPad, iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Blackberry Playbook, Linux, Google Chromebook, thin clients, zero clients and embedded operating systems to connect to desktop virtualisation services.

The IT team selected Citrix’s cloud services as it already has around 2,900 users in the company running on Citrix desktop infrastructure and is planning to roll it out to an additional 1,200 users in 2013 and 2014.

Citrix technology has enabled LeasePlan’s global strategy and has allowed the company to consolidate data and applications from across the business into its central datacentres in Dublin and deliver it back out to almost 3,000 users as a service, said Ronan Murray, infrastructure manager at LeasePlan Information Services.

“We now have an IT team of six supporting thousands of users all over Europe," said Murray.

“We’ve seen significant efficiencies by transitioning to this model and the deployment and management of applications is far easier. Our users see a benefit because they can work whenever and however they like.”

The company plans to bolster its desktop infrastructure and BYOD policy with private cloud.

By creating a centralised cloud service, duplicated IT costs such as manually updating PCs with new software can be removed and the life of hardware can be extended, saving LeasePlan an estimated €40,000 per hosted organisation every year.

Among the other benefits of a cloud-enabled BYOD programme, LeasePlan can allow employees to work even if their local office is inaccessible to them because the data and applications are centralised. It also means employees can access work data and apps on the devices of their choice – tablet, smartphone or a personal laptop – and increase their productivity.

“LeasePlan’s decision to transform its workplace environment will invariably have a positive impact on employees and the business,” said Grace O’Rourke Veitch, Ireland country manager for Citrix.

Implementing a cloud infrastructure to break the shackles of office life, the fleet management company can increase its staff’s efficiency, whilst helping the business reap the rewards of a flexible, secure and cost-effective IT operation, O’Rourke Veitch said.

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