Reed is a leading UK recruitment agency. With more than 3,500 users, including recruitment consultants and back office employees, across 300 branch locations in the UK and Ireland, the company is reliant on its IT team to maintain fluid communication between branches and to ensure client information is easily accessible in a secure environment.

The Challenge: A Centralised Solution to Reduce Support Costs

Reed’s division, Reed Managed Services, operates as a separate profit entity charging all branches a monthly fee to manage the IT infrastructure, which was a traditional client/server architecture. However, in 2005, the division was required to reduce its IT expenditure and provide a 20 percent discount to its internal customers, effectively reducing its own budget by a fifth over the next two years. Consequently, the team had to find innovative ways to do more with less. Flexibility had to be an integral part of the solution — allowing the business to grow rapidly where there were new contracts.

Sean Whetstone, head of IT services at Reed, said: “We ran through the usual procedures of negotiating better rates with suppliers and finding savings, but we really required a more fundamental approach. That’s when we decided to completely remodel our architecture.”

The biggest hurdle to a more cost-effective IT infrastructure came from maintaining 4,000 legacy desktops. The group spent approximately £500,000 annually on this area alone, while the further costs involved in powering the desktops added to the bill. “Each desktop requires up to 185 watts of power. As all our machines have to be left on constantly to ensure updates are automatically added, that adds another £250,000 to the cost of running and cooling them,” he continued.

Further to the financial cost of powering its desktop estate, Reed was also conscious of the cost on the environment. Because the company had become carbon-neutral in 2005, any IT strategy also needed to support Reed’s objective to reduce its carbon footprint.

Finally, as Reed expanded globally, supporting new office deployments was an increasing priority. Providing secure application delivery in new offices around the world was key to Reed’s strategy and central to Reed Managed Services’ objectives when assessing the IT infrastructure.

Implementing a Citrix Application Delivery Infrastructure Solution

Having considered a number of alternatives — including simply replacing its desktops with modern PCs and implementing a Microsoft® Windows® Terminal Services environment — Reed consulted trusted partner Teksys for guidance. Teksys, a Gold Citrix® Solution Advisor, recommended Reed invest in a Citrix-based solution.

“We were convinced that Citrix could offer superior security and cost-effectiveness over other alternatives,” said Whetstone. The group deployed Citrix Presentation Server™ with Microsoft® Windows Server® 2003, x64 Edition, on 30 64-bit HP blade servers, each provisioning up to 100 users. These blade servers are split across two physically separated datacentres to provide full redundancy. Secure Gateway for Citrix® Presentation Server provides universal SSL VPN access over ADSL and MPLS connections to the Presentation Server environment. More than 50 applications running on Presentation Server, such as Lotus Notes, Microsoft® Office 2003, CBT (a training package) and an Oracle-based CRM solution, are securely delivered to approximately 3,000 users.

Group Reduces IT Support Costs by 20 Percent

Using Citrix technology as part of the solution, the IT division achieved its ultimate goal of cutting costs by 20 percent. By moving to a centralised infrastructure and reducing the server count from 350 to just 50 blades, rather than a simple like-for-like replacement, the group saved £450,000. A further £250,000 was saved by accelerating the rollout of new applications and simplifying administration with the centralised management and application delivery capabilities of Citrix Presentation Server.

Whetstone explained: “Reducing costs by 20 percent was not an easy thing for a business unit like ours to do. But, using Citrix together with other industry-leading technologies, we were able to completely revise our architecture and put in place a more secure and function-rich environment for our employees. Not only have we saved costs ourselves, but the new Citrix environment lets the whole group reduce expenses while improving efficiency and contributing to improved productivity.”

Virtualised Application Delivery Improves User Experience

To upgrade 4,000 four-year-old desktops would have demanded huge resources and taken months. In the meantime, employees had to access client/server applications using slow and unreliable legacy technology.

However, once the group had centralised on the Citrix environment, it was able to roll out new applications quickly and with minimum effort. Because applications are hosted on central servers, and delivered using application virtualisation technology, their performance is no longer impacted by the capabilities of the desktop device. As a result, Reed has avoided the expense of replacing its desktop hardware while providing high performance for employees over any connection, such as the core gigabit pipe between its datacentres or the 2MB ADSL with MPLS backbone linking branches with the head office.

“To do what we have done without Citrix technology would have been unthinkable,” said Whetstone. “Now our employees are able to enjoy a computing experience that helps them be more productive.”

Flexible Infrastructure Accelerates International Expansion

While improving user experience and reducing cost were key areas of focus, the biggest objective for Sean’s team was supporting the aggressive rate of expansion the company was experiencing. “In one instance, we had just four weeks to open our Australian office. To make this happen we needed applications delivered securely to the Regus office infrastructure,” said Whetstone.

The existing 64-bit infrastructure allowed quick deployment internationally, which meant all deadlines for office rollouts were met. “Given Reed’s expansion strategy, it’s imperative that new and existing users have immediate access to the technology and information they need to do their jobs. As a people business, we know how important it is to give your employees the best tools to get work done securely and efficiently. Citrix allows us to do that.”

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