Martin Selig Real Estate owns, develops and manages commercial buildings and properties in the Seattle, Washington, area. The company is headquartered in downtown Seattle with a staff of 35, and has about 130 employees who work off site in managed properties and the field.

The Challenge: Cost-effectively Delivering Applications to Remote Workers

Martin Selig Real Estate has many workers who maintain and manage its commercial properties. The company wanted to enable these remote employees to connect to corporate applications and resources when away from headquarters, including at home. “For example, we wanted to give the crew that works on air conditioning and heating units of the buildings the ability to access AutoCAD files on site so they could see how different floors have been built out,” said Matt Alisch, controller. “And each building manager would be able to connect to the network as well.”

However, with a small IT team who also handle other duties, the company needed a solution that was easy to administer. For that reason, Martin Selig engaged Gold Citrix® Solution Advisor Moose Logic to recommend, implement and support an application delivery solution.  

The Citrix partner was requested to keep several parameters in mind: minimize costs; maximize flexibility; and ensure resilience to optimize uptime and provide a foundation for business continuity.

Implementing a Citrix Application Delivery Infrastructure Solution

As a longstanding technical support provider for Martin Selig Real Estate, Moose Logic understood their business needs. “We recommended Citrix Presentation Server for application delivery to remote and headquarters staff, and we also recommended server virtualization using Citrix XenServer,” said Scott Gorcester, president, Moose Logic. “We architected the system to provide resilience. Currently, we are running five virtual servers and one PC on two physical servers. The two XenServers can host any of our current virtual servers, and we also take images of these systems. So in an emergency, if a server goes down to the point where a simple repair isn’t possible, we can restore an image on either of the XenServer platforms and have it back in a matter of hours. Server virtualization is far more flexible than traditional technology.”

In addition to server virtualization with Citrix XenServer™, Martin Selig leverages Citrix application virtualization by delivering all of its applications, including Microsoft® Office 2007, BudgeTrac for payroll and AssetKeeper for asset depreciation, with Citrix Presentation Server™. The Web Interface functionality enables employees to access their applications over the Internet simply by clicking on a desktop icon on the company Web site. The 35 headquarters employees use Citrix every day, and many are connecting from home. The company also plans to extend application delivery to all of its properties.

Application Delivery Anywhere

Citrix Presentation Server is enabling Martin Selig Real Estate to meet its original aim of providing fast, easy application delivery to users at home or other remote locations. “Before we adopted Citrix application delivery, we weren’t able to give employees the flexibility to work from home or on the road,” Alisch said. “Thanks to the Citrix solution, an employee who needed to be at her house during a major remodel, for example, could work from home. And not just work, but enjoy a great experience. This woman spent a week working remotely and said the connection was always stable and she loved being able to access all her native files.”

Alisch continued, “And I was able to log into the Citrix environment to do cash management on the day after Thanksgiving when our staff had a holiday. It saved me a drive to the office, and the connection was great.

“The ability to click on the icon we created and in a matter of seconds have my desktop in front of me with all my files, and be able to print to my home printer – it’s just amazing.”

Major Scalability with Minimal Investment

The use of server virtualization gives Martin Selig Real Estate the ability to quickly scale up its Citrix server farm without the time and cost of installing a lot of hardware. “We have already saved an estimated $20,000 in server hardware costs by using two XenServers instead of six physical servers,” said Alisch. “Given the capacity on the two XenServers, we can add a server very quickly by calling up one of the virtual servers and re-imaging it.”

Gorcester added, “There is lots of capacity with XenServer combined with Presentation Server. In essence, the customer can get more mileage out of the hardware. If Martin Selig needed twenty more servers, for example, we could add one XenServer and keep building on the foundation. As the company expands access to the branch offices, it is no problem to meet additional demand.”

Resilience from a Dynamic Datacenter

One of the main benefits of server virtualization is turning static servers into dynamic assets that can be repurposed quickly to meet changing needs. Such a datacenter makes it easier to ensure high server availability in case of an interruption or scheduled maintenance.

According to Gorcester, “Although we hope Martin Selig won’t have to use it much, it’s important to have the resiliency of the XenServer virtual environment. Grabbing an exact copy of one of these systems is a matter of a few clicks and an hour’s wait.” In contrast, said Alisch, “in our old network set-up, had a server gone down it would have taken us at least a day or two to get a new one up and running. With XenServer, we can have our users back to work faster.”

Future Plans

Moose Logic and Martin Selig Real Estate are considering Citrix XenDesktop™ to virtualize delivery of a desktop that includes resource-intensive AutoCAD applications.

Gorcester said, “One of the things that’s pretty wonderful about Citrix technology is the myriad of feature sets and functionality. We may not be tapping everything today, but these tools are available to work with in the future. In addition to addressing major pain points, we have a great platform that can advance Martin Selig’s IT infrastructure.”

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