Pagonom is a Hispano-American company and a pioneer in personnel administration solutions for optimizing salary management processes. Pagonom supplies its Picasso regional payroll application as a hosted service using the Software as a Service (SaaS) model to clients in Venezuela, Colombia and Costa Rica. The company has offices in Miami and Venezuela.

The challenge: fast application delivery to clients worldwide

Pagonom required a tool that would allow its clients to establish a connection with the company server from remote areas in order to carry out administration and execution of their salary processes using the Picasso application. Key requirements were high performance, security and availability.

Francisco Márquez, IT manager, Pagonom, said, “We needed to be sure that our clients would be able to process their salaries from remote locations with optimum response times and receive the latest updates and improvements to the Picasso program without any additional cost. To meet their needs, we had to be able to ensure continuity and security of the service.”

Implementing an Application Delivery Infrastructure solution from Citrix

Pagonom implemented Citrix XenApp™, Advanced Edition featuring Web Interface and Microsoft® Windows Server® 2003 with the support of Afin, a Citrix Solution Advisor, to deliver the Picasso product to more than 50 regular users such as oil and gas companies, mining companies, magazines, pharmaceutical companies and manufacturers. Clients connect to the Pagonom environment through the company’s Web portal, which serves as the gateway to the XenApp servers. XenApp delivers multiple versions of the Picasso product, each offering different functionalities tailored for each client company.

Application delivery drives business growth

Using Citrix XenApp, Pagonom was able to adapt a client-server application, which had been on the market for more than 15 years, as a Software as a Service offering for small and mid-size enterprises (SMEs) in the Latin American market. These smaller companies now have the option to use this payroll management tool as a Web-based service instead of having to license and maintain it internally.  “The up-front costs of the technological platform, including servers, operating system software, database software and application licensing have been eliminated for our clients,” said Márquez. “Also, there is no requirement for systems personnel to be dedicated to the maintenance of the Picasso application, or to provide technical support. Citrix XenApp was crucial to our ability to open up new lines of business through SaaS by offering our clients a cost-effective, reliable and customized service.”

Pagonom is currently creating a “light” version of the Picasso product to deliver its salary service to users on mobile devices such as BlackBerry, Motorola and Windows® Mobile. A special Citrix client is used to enable delivery to each of these platforms. In the short term, this will allow a new vision of the service, supporting the technological growth of services.

Virtualization ensures high performance and low IT costs

“The high performance levels and fast response times for salary processing have been among the great benefits that we have achieved by implementing Citrix XenApp as standard technology,” Márquez stated. Also, by hosting Picasso on Citrix XenApp, Pagamon’s IT team can easily maintain and update the application and technology platform. Clients are able to count on the latest updates on the Picasso program, without additional cost, therefore improving their experience with the service. Further, new features and functionality can be quickly rolled out to all clients.

Future plans

Pagonom plans to enhance its SaaS platform to include new Citrix technologies for improvement of services for the local and international markets.

About the Citrix Solution

Citrix XenApp™, a member of the Citrix Delivery Center™ product family, is the industry’s de facto standard for delivering Windows®-based applications with the best performance, security and cost savings. XenApp is the most complete application virtualization system available. It offers the ability to virtualize applications on both the client side and server side, delivering them on demand based on the user, the application or the location (online or offline).

©2009 Citrix Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Citrix®, Citrix Delivery Center™ and Citrix XenApp™ 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®, SQL Server® and Windows Server® are registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.