SDV International Logistics is a worldwide leader in international freight forwarding, transportation and logistics.

Of French origin and now operating in 88 countries with 26,000 employees, SDV International Logistics belongs to the Bolloré Group, which employs 31,000 people worldwide.

Specialist in all areas of transportation and logistics, SDV International Logistics provides customized solutions using the most advanced technologies.

SDV expertise relies on an in-house, efficient IT system, a reactive and reliable international network and a close relationship with the major operators of international transportation.

The challenge – Fast, secure delivery of business applications to branches

Previously, SDV International Logistics’ China network of 18 branches was supported by a client-server architecture. Key business applications were accessed from shared drives on the file servers in each branch office. Data for all business applications was stored on three Microsoft® SQL Server® databases, with one located in Shanghai and two located in Hong Kong. The database server in Shanghai supported 13 offices in North China while one server in Hong Kong supported five offices in South China.

Users in branch offices across China accessed core business applications via clients in each office. Queries from the clients to the database servers in Shanghai and Hong Kong were executed over an internal private network consisting of MPLS and IP-VPN technologies.

Under this arrangement, responsiveness to users’ needs in all the branch offices was not optimal, which impacted productivity. Connection to servers and databases was slow and impeded front-line executives from responding promptly and efficiently to customers’ needs.

In addition, application management and administration of the infrastructure, such as regular software updates, were tedious and time-consuming, as they had to be done manually in each office by system administrators who had to travel to the sites.

Implementing Citrix XenApp application virtualization

After an initial assessment of SDV International Logistics’ needs, TechniCom, a Citrix Solution Advisor based in Singapore, successfully delivered a proof of concept and detailed architectural design for implementation of Citrix® XenApp™, Enterprise Edition. TechniCom also supported the rollout of XenApp with Microsoft Windows Server® 2003 as a project adviser and quality assurance expert.

Under this new configuration, a regional Asia Pacific server farm was set up, with five XenApp servers residing in Hong Kong and two in Singapore. The database servers for China were also centralized in Hong Kong. This infrastructure supports more than 300 users in China and 40 in other locations in the Asia Pacific region.

Enhanced performance and management of business applications with XenApp

XenApp, an application virtualization solution, effectively meets the application delivery and management requirements for SDV in Asia Pacific.  XenApp delivers business applications to a large number of branches dispersed over a wide geographic area in China and Hong Kong using the same internal network but with better performance and stability.

As a result, users at the branch offices across China experience improved productivity and speed in accessing business applications. Systems administration is also enhanced because application updates can be done quickly on the centralized XenApp servers, and all branch offices can receive the latest updates within a very short period of time.

“XenApp has greatly enhanced the efficiency of our application delivery capability for staff across all business functions in all our branches,” said Mr. Laurent Karoly, Regional Director, M.I.S., SDV Asia Pacific Corporate Pte Ltd. “Additionally, the centralized server infrastructure has increased the ease of administration of our network systems, including simplifying application updates and providing better visibility of remote sites.”

With XenApp, SDV is able to improve its services to customers by providing faster responses to queries. In some cases, XenApp users can provide responses to the customer immediately, by connecting from the customer site.

The potential strategic benefits of XenApp to SDV International Logistics’ business in Asia Pacific are significant. The current infrastructure can support up to 500 users. This provides ample capacity for SDV to scale up operations quickly when a new branch is opened, as the applications can be published from the XenApp server farm without the necessity to install them at the remote site.

About Citrix XenApp

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).

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