The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is the largest humanitarian agency in the world. For more than 40 years, WFP has sent food aid wherever there is a humanitarian crisis, including zones devastated by war, drought, earthquakes and floods. For millions of people, from Africa to Asia and Latin America, the speed of the actions of the World Food Programme represents the difference between life and death. Headquartered in Rome, WFP operates 90 offices in more than 80 countries in the world and has a total of approximately 8,000 employees, of whom 1,000 work at the main office.

The Challenge: Overcome IT Limitations for Better Funds Management

WFP needed to implement a computer system that would allow its resources to respond to requests with speed, in remote places, every day of the year, despite limited technological infrastructure and limited bandwidth availability.  Naturally, all this had to be established in a short period of time and with only a limited budget.

To obtain this result, in 1998 the organization decided to migrate from a mainframe solution managed through outsourcing to an internal deployment of SAP R/3. Consequently, WFP started to distribute the SAP application to all its offices, for use in the management of funds for the acquisition of food. While the new system provided better information to the WFP offices, however, the widely-dispersed deployment of the application proved difficult to manage by a limited IT support team.

“Our objective was not only to send food, but also data to our collaborators who help in emergency operations,” declared Ole Oftedal, Operation and System Integration Manager at the ITC division of WFP. “It was objectively impossible for my IT group to distribute, update and manage the SAP application in our offices spread throughout the world.”

Implementing a Citrix Solution for Application Deployment

After evaluating several alternatives, including SAP distribution via the Web, WFP decided to implement a Citrix® solution because it could be implemented quickly and for substantially more reasonable costs as compared to the other solutions available. The implementation relies on the functionalities of Citrix MetaFrame® Presentation Server, including the web interface component. Consulenza Attiva, a Gold Citrix accessPARTNER, helped WFP implement the Citrix software with Microsoft® Windows® 2000 operating system and Windows Server™ 2003.  

Thanks to the centralized management of the SAP front-end software, SAP GUI, running on Citrix MetaFrame Presentation Server, today more than 800 users throughout the world have quick and secure access to the key information through the Internet via a standard Web browser. “Choosing Citrix technology was a necessity for us: the choice allowed us to obtain all the simplicity, speed, security and savings necessary for our success,” Oftedal said.

The first phase of the project started in 1998, with SAP R/3 available to offices in 22 countries beginning in January 2001. When WFP’s management noticed the advantages and savings obtained, it decided to extend the project to the other subsidiary offices. Today, 80 of the organization’s 90 offices are equipped to use Citrix technology.

Providing Worldwide Access while Conserving Resources

The Citrix and SAP solutions help WFP to improve its services in saving human lives throughout the world. “We are pleasantly surprised by how quickly the distribution of the application has been to our offices spread throughout the world,” affirmed Oftedal.

Centralized deployment and management of SAP has meant significant savings in time and resources for WFP. “Thanks to Citrix MetaFrame Presentation Server, we have reached our objective to provide SAP without having to go to every foreign office to manage the application itself,” Oftedal said. “The application distributed throughout the world is managed centrally from Rome, and it was enough at the beginning of the project to offer a remote course about the workstation to the users who operate in the various offices, without forcing them to go to Rome. This offered significant savings since our organization operates in all five continents of the globe.”

Indeed, although it is not possible to quantify the savings obtained thanks to the Citrix technology, WFP enjoys tangible advantages in terms of the economy generated by the implementation.

Thanks to Citrix MetaFrame Presentation Server, users at offices far away from each other and from the main office, such as those in Panama and Egypt, can access SAP R/3 with any type of Web browser. And although in every country the users employ different types of computers, they can access the same applications at any time, saving and optimizing the existing IT infrastructure. The IT Department is able to manage the application updates directly from the main office in Rome, and the users located in the offices throughout the world have immediate access to the changes made. The Citrix solution allows WFP to manage the entire help desk service for the users of SAP and other corporate applications worldwide with a team of only five people.

In addition, the security features of MetaFrame Presentation Server allow WFP to safely manage the voice and data traffic on the Internet.

Future Plans

The solution adopted by WFP was designed to be scalable to allow even more complete usage of the Citrix technology in the future. Indeed, WFP intends to deploy additional applications to its worldwide users via Citrix technology, as well as to extend access to the users at its main office in Rome.

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