With 40 years’ experience in IT services, LogicaCMG provides IT consultancy, system integration, project management and outsourcing services to clients across the telecommunications, financial services, energy and utilities, and distribution and transport industries, and the public sector. In addition, LogicaCMG calculates and processes the payroll of more than one million employees in the Netherlands. The company is based in many cities around the country and employs 6,000 people in the Netherlands.

The Challenge: Reducing Laptop Usage to Lower IT Costs

LogicaCMG has thousands of employees on the road advising customers, working on-site on projects, and involved in system management for varying periods. Most of these employees used a company-owned laptop to access client/server applications and data over the network. These laptops were very expensive to purchase and administer. The company was looking for a way to drastically reduce the number of laptops and their associated costs.

“We were looking for a solution that not only could reduce the number of laptops, but also make access to the company network easier and more convenient,” said Rob van der Stap, CIO at LogicaCMG Netherlands. “The employees used a call-in facility over a modem or ISDN connection. This was not the best performing or user-friendly solution and very inconvenient at a lot of customer sites or hotels. In addition, it was a very expensive solution that cost our company 1 million euros every year just for dial-in connectivity. We wanted a new solution that would use modern technology at much lower costs.”

Implementing a Citrix Access Platform for Workforce Mobility

At the time, LogicaCMG Netherlands was evaluating Citrix products. In addition, the Global Telecoms division, based in Dublin, was using Citrix software to solve its access challenges. These experiences led to the strategic decision to use Citrix access infrastructure as the foundation for a remote access initiative called RAP (Remote Access Portal). LogicaCMG did a lot of internal marketing research to determine if employees would be willing to turn in their laptops when RAP became available, and the reactions were very positive. The business case for RAP and the Citrix solution was defined as the reduction in the number of laptops and associated dial-in costs.

LogicaCMG, which is a Citrix System Integrator, had its internal Citrix Competence Center design and implement the access infrastructure solution based on Citrix Presentation Server™. Web Interface and Secure Gateway for Citrix® Presentation Server enable secure role-based access to generic published applications like Microsoft® Outlook or time registration and data via the portal using a Web browser and an Internet connection. The same published applications, augmented with published business applications that are not needed remotely, are accessed directly from Citrix servers from desktops on the LAN, using the Citrix ICA® client.

Access from Any Browser Replaces Expensive Laptops and Dial-in

“Many employees no longer have a need to use laptops to gain remote access to applications. They can use any desktop that is available at a customer site, at home or another location with an Internet connection and a browser,” continued van der Stap. “The Citrix solution is enabling us to save 400K euros on dial-in communication costs every year. In addition, we have already reduced the number of laptops from 5,000 to 4,000, while we only needed a reduction of 200 laptops to break even on the additional costs of centralized hardware and software.”

The introduction of RAP at LogicaCMG was very successful. In fact, RAP was the most successful project ever, with the project team receiving spontaneous words of thanks from employees. The Citrix access infrastructure solution enables easy and flexible access and faster application performance — especially in the remote subsidiaries. The company expects that even more employees will choose to move to the RAP solution, and will turn in their laptops during the next few years. Employees working from home without a laptop receive compensation for their broadband subscription.

Remote/mobile employee desktops are identical, because all applications are published on Presentation Server. There is only one desktop image that can be used for all PCs. This makes administration much easier than before. “Although not one of the main goals of the project, the system administration of the new environment is easier, so we had a reduction of the number of internal IT staff working on desktop management. For us, this means more IT people on the road helping customers.”

He continued, “Another very important benefit is that we can use the Citrix solution as a showcase for our customers. Customers almost expect us to internally use the products that we recommend for them. Because we are now not only a Citrix partner but also an end user of Citrix products, the company gained another proof point to use with customers.”

Future Plans

LogicaCMG looks forward to implementing Citrix Presentation Server 4 with Citrix® SmartAccess features that can detect the type of user scenario remotely and adjust the level of access automatically. In addition, the company plans to extend the access infrastructure solution with thin clients and tokens for two-factor authentication.

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