Perfetti Van Melle India (PVM India) Pvt. Ltd. is a US$170 million multinational with three factories, 38 depots and four branch offices in India. In India, it is a market leader in confectionery products such as gums, candies and chewies; and globally, the group is ranked among the top five confectionery groups. PVM India is the manufacturer of world-class brands such as Alpenliebe, Center Fresh, Chlor-mint, Cofitos, Center Shock, Mentos and Happydent White. The company is known for its innovation in products, advertisement and trade. Since its inception in India, PVM India has been selling products for Rs.0.50/ Re. 1.0 only (despite inflationary trends and price rises of other products in the market). Its critical unit price point of US $ 0.01 has remained the same for more than a decade.

The challenge: faster application delivery and optimized bandwidth utilization

PVM India’s goal was to maintain its leadership status in the burgeoning Indian confectionery marketplace. To ensure high levels of information optimization that result in solid business intelligence, PVM invested in SAP R/3 4.7 in 2003. However, over time and with the rollout of more SAP modules in 2005, application availability became a concern for different sets of professionals within the organization - including PVM India’s nationwide sales force while in the field. Specifically, bandwidth constraints were impacting application performance, and mobile workers who did not have access to laptops were unable to carry on their work while traveling.

Explained Basant K. Chaturvedi, senior manager-IT, Perfetti Van Melle India Pvt. Ltd., “On many levels, information was not available anywhere, anytime. While the Cisco VPN client that we were using was effective in securing the data transmission, slow speed and unavailability of applications were becoming major concerns. For example, decision making was hampered because company professionals did not have access to laptops all the time. Local users had to contend with machine upgrades. Due to opening of multiple sessions and use of the graphical interface, SAP screens were getting loaded on local machines. Users in remote locations complained about slow response times. At times, corruption of SAP GUI due to virus issues required the complete re-installation of Windows, SAP GUI and anti-virus software, and at times even printing operations were disrupted due to driver corruption as we had no direct control over remote environments. And so IT staff or engineers had to travel to different locations to address these issues and application access problems. There was a clear requirement for higher and quicker availability of core business applications and optimized bandwidth performance.”

A secondary sales application was also a major issue for the 150 sales people of PVM India. This application provided important sales data, including sales figures for a particular location and the latest all-India sales updates. Many decisions were based on availability of this critical information. But slow and cumbersome access delayed report generation, thus hampering business agility and decision making.

Similarly, with SAP serving as a mission-critical application for PVM India, any disruptions resulted in discontinuation of various key business activities related to production booking, logistics (stock movement/transfer) and sales. This situation created a significant threat to the company’s leadership position and negatively impacted customer service levels.

Added Chaturvedi, “While scoping the market, we discerned that Citrix technologies could help us address the myriad issues affecting our organization’s access to core applications and overall business productivity. Thus, we embarked on a well-planned and three-phased implementation process of deploying relevant Citrix technologies to address specific enterprise-wide issues.”

Implementing a Citrix solution for centralized application delivery

In 2007, PVM India partnered with PC Solutions (a Silver Citrix Solution Advisor) to implement a solution comprising Citrix Presentation Server™ and Microsoft® Windows Server® 2003 running on three HP BL460C blade servers. According to Chaturvedi, Citrix Systems India was also involved with many aspects of the implementation process and provided critical inputs at all stages. Now the organization is delivering a number of Windows®- and Web-based applications to approximately 110  users; these include SAP, Microsoft® Outlook® and Office, the customized secondary sales application and Track-IT (an IT help desk application). Internet connectivity is through MPLS leased lines with Dell DSL and Sify.

In the first phase, PVM India concentrated on meeting the requirements of internal users. Applications were published through Citrix Program Neighborhood® with requests being received on Citrix Presentation Server. The intent was to improve application performance over the LAN and ensure high availability of applications through server load balancing.

Phase 2, which was completed in March 2007, involved enabling anywhere, anytime secure application delivery to sales users and top management users - who spend most of their time evaluating the market or travelling - over the WAN using Citrix Access Gateway™, Advanced Edition. This was to solve the issue of slow application performance via the erstwhile VPN client, and also to ensure adherence to corporate compliance regulations and procedures using SmartAccess policy-based control over user access and actions.

The Phase 3 implementation centered around enabling mobility, increasing productivity and improving organizational agility by delivering applications to a number of key business personnel and executives on smart phones. This phase was completed in June 2008.

Application virtualization boosts business productivity

Through its three-phased deployment of Citrix technologies to address concomitant enterprise-related challenges, PVM India has experienced a palette of core benefits.

Concurred Chaturvedi, “Citrix technologies have addressed most of the issues that we faced between 2005 and 2007. In the current environment, there is higher availability of applications through server load balancing, and optimization of bandwidth has improved application performance over existing networks. Through usage of Citrix, we have clearly eliminated delays in application delivery and achieved higher business productivity and better end-user satisfaction. We have also restricted and secured application delivery over the LAN and WAN.”

Flexible and secure application delivery improves decision making

In the previous environment, sales executives on the move throughout the country faced issues that restricted or prevented access to certain core business applications. Now, application delivery with Presentation Server and Access Gateway ensures efficient and secure delivery of applications over the WAN to users on laptops and Windows Mobile smart phones at any time and location.

According to Chaturvedi, faster report generation has given sales executives quick access to the latest sales data and figures, thus enabling immediate and well-informed decisions. “On any client-server architecture, if a remote client sends a request to the server environment to process and represent it in a desirable format, traffic has to go through a certain bandwidth. But if the request is processed in the local environment (where the server is located), there will be savings in both resources and time. That’s what we have achieved on SAP (GUI) and secondary sales (Web-based) applications. With the inherent enhanced security features of Citrix technologies, top management can also now access MIS reports and other SAP modules on demand. A demand or request can come from anywhere to access critical information – whether it’s through a file server or using various applications. The pertinent thing is to ensure secure access of those requirements through some channel, which Citrix has helped us to achieve.”

Centralization ensures ease of IT management

Chaturvedi also attested to the ease of administering the entire system infrastructure using the centralized management features of Presentation Server.

“From a central location (the datacenter), my team can easily define and control which users or groups can access specific applications. Access Gateway can be maintained easily from the datacenter thanks to its Web-deployed, auto-updating client. Services are delivered through the client environment only. Corporate compliance is also a breeze because of SmartAccess policy-based control. And we have raised the mobility and empowerment of certain key executives by delivering desired business applications to them on Windows Mobile-based smart phones.  User experiences have improved tremendously after the three-phased implementation process,” added Chaturvedi.

Substantial cost savings through centralized administration

Earlier, the challenge of deploying new applications and upgrades was a cumbersome process. IT engineers and staff had to be sent all over the country to address networking problems and other application access issues, and to support users. The centralization capabilities of Citrix Presentation Server, coupled with ease of management from a central location, have streamlined IT administration tremendously. Chaturvedi pointed out that while exact savings have not been computed, nonetheless savings in IT travel costs have been substantial.

“On the other hand, there have been some real, tangible benefits on some fronts. Savings on bandwidth costs at all locations is approximately Rs. 1.10 million (approx $25,000 per annum). Citrix has clearly enabled business delivery and addressed operational challenges. A one-day business loss can cost us dearly by Rs. 1 million (just under $25,000) per location, which we just cannot afford. Deploying relevant Citrix technologies has stabilized the IT environment, thereby leading to certain operational efficiencies and better and more streamlined management of business.”

About the Citrix Solution

Citrix Presentation Server™, part of the Citrix XenApp™ product family, the new name for Presentation Server, is the de facto standard for delivering Windows® applications at the lowest cost—to any user, anywhere. Citrix Access Gateway™ is the only SSL VPN to securely deliver any application with policy-based SmartAccess control. Users will have easy-to-use secure access to all of the enterprise applications and data they need to be productive and IT can cost effectively extend access to applications while maintaining security through SmartAccess application-level policies.

©2008 Citrix Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Citrix®, Program Neighborhood®, Citrix Presentation Server™, Citrix XenApp™ and Citrix Access Gateway™ are trademarks or registered trademarks of Citrix Systems, Inc. and/or one or more of its subsidiaries, and may be registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Microsoft®, Windows®, Windows Server®, Internet Explorer® and Outlook® are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.  All other trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.