ADMB has operated as a nonprofit, social services organization in Belgium for more than 85 years. The organization provides assistance and support for companies and self-employed and private individuals in all fields of social regulations and human resource management, such as special insurance, accident prevention and protection on the work floor, environment and security, child benefits, leave of absence registration and more. ADMB has 22 business units and 55 offices in Belgium. Half of the 1,100 employees are headquartered in Brugge.

The Challenge: Guaranteed Performance for Business-critical Applications

Six years ago, the Sociaal Bureau –- a social services agency within ADMB — decided to develop a new client/server-application called HORA (HRM Organization & Registration Application) for human resource management and to centralize and deliver it from the headquarters location to all local offices. Only Citrix Presentation Server™ had sufficient features and simple administration, as well as the ability to deliver applications with the required performance using a connection with limited bandwidth. Initially, the Citrix product was included in the design as a tactical solution. However, after HORA was put into production two years ago, the environment gradually scaled up to support more internal offices and external companies that use this application as a service. Also, additional accounting and office applications were added to the network.

“The consequence of this growth was that some users complained about slow response of the HORA application, and it was impossible to pinpoint an exact cause,” said Koen Van Loo, IT director at ADMB. “HORA is a mission-critical application for our employees as well as more than 800 customers using it over the Internet. We started looking for a solution to improve the user experience and proactively monitor and assess the application’s performance.”

Implementing Citrix Presentation Server, Platinum Edition

During the search for a solution, Silver Citrix® Solution Advisor Kamodata suggested Citrix EdgeSight™ for Presentation Server to fulfill the needs for monitoring and analyzing the performance issues associated with HORA. After evaluating EdgeSight, the agency found this solution perfectly fitted their needs. “It made sense to upgrade to Citrix Presentation Server, Platinum Edition, because this edition includes not only EdgeSight functionality for better performance monitoring, but also EasyCall, the Access Gateway licenses for SSL VPN connectivity and single sign-on from Password Manager,” continued Van Loo. “ADMB will add these Citrix products and components to the IT infrastructure in the near future, so we are already prepared for it. The addition of EdgeSight is simply the first step.”

The complete redesign process was to improve on quality and not on quantity. ADMB has finished the first phase of the upgrade with 30 servers in the farm running Citrix Presentation Server on Windows Server® 2003, including the functionalities of monitoring application performance at the headquarters and 37 satellite offices. The data store was scaled up from Microsoft® Access to Microsoft® SQL Server®, and an HP Storage Area Network (SAN) was installed for centralizing storage. The virtualized accounting and office applications are delivered with the Citrix Program Neighborhood Agent. Some employees with explicit authorization use a redundant Web interface and Secure Gateway environment to securely work from home or to give a demonstration at a customer’s location. Kamodata was responsible for the upgrade and is still involved in the day-to-day administration.

Smooth Application Delivery Results in Satisfied Employees and Customers

Ever since the upgrade there have been no more complaints about the slow response of the HORA application, and the company has even received positive feedback from users. Thanks to virtualization technology, users connecting over the network experience faster application launch times, and even when there is occasional high latency there are fewer connection delays. Even when it´s busier during wage-processing periods, when the Citrix servers and all back-end servers have to handle heavy user load, everything runs much smoother. According to Van Loo: “Without the Citrix solution it would not be possible to deliver our multitier client/server application over the Internet to our external customers on a large scale.”

He continued, “Previously, the complexity of the HORA architecture made it difficult to analyze and solve problems. Citrix EdgeSight functionality enables us to find and solve problems very fast and saves valuable time. Thanks to proactive monitoring, the complete environment is more stable and applications run faster and more efficiently with the best user experience. An immediate result is satisfied customers.”

In addition, applications virtualized with Presentation Server are much easier to maintain because administration is centralized and there is less pressure to expand the capacity needed for operational administration. The focus of activities has changed from problem solving to structural optimization and further expansion of the architecture. The size of the IT staff is the same, but time is spent much more efficiently and on more-strategic work.

Ready for Growth and Expansion

ADMB has big plans for its Citrix solution. In the near future, Web interface –- already used to deliver applications to more than 800 customers over the Internet –- will be extended with Citrix Access Gateway™ appliances to increase availability and redundancy. The electronic identity card (eID) that each citizen in Belgium should have by the end of 2009 will be used for authentication. The organization has also investigated the use of single sign-on capability powered by Citrix Password Manager™. To reduce the number of passwords employees need to remember and lower the number of calls to the helpdesk for resetting passwords, especially on Mondays and after holidays, Password Manager will deliver an enormous improvement.

ADMB also sees advantages in using EasyCall, which will allow users to call a customer with a mouse click from the HORA application when tracking cases. Finally, ADMB is very interested in the application streaming functionality of Presentation Server, as well as Citrix® EdgeSight™ for Endpoints for monitoring applications running on the local desktop.

“We thoroughly calculated the investment and selected Presentation Server, Platinum Edition anticipating future plans. We now have the freedom to implement the necessary components and products when they are needed, without undertaking a laborious selection and purchasing process,” concluded Van Loo.

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