The State of Mississippi Department of Transportation (MDOT) is responsible for providing a safe transportation network, including building and maintaining roads, bridges, ports, airports and public transit facilities. The administrative offices in Jackson provide a variety of support services to the department, including finance, payroll and IT. Of the department’s 3,500 employees, about 1,000 are based in Jackson.

The Challenge: Improving Delivery of Applications across the State

With many employees scattered across the state in small project offices or out in the field, MDOT had difficulty delivering the latest applications and updates to more than 100 locations in a timely manner. Beth Ann Hinds, senior systems specialist, said, “We have six district offices, each with 20 to 30 project offices. In the past, our IT team had to physically go out to these offices and install applications and updates on each local server and client device, or deliver them using Active Directory. Not everyone would get the updates.” Complicating the process, a number of MDOT employees are mobile, such as right-of-way agents who purchase property for transportation projects. Because these field workers use laptops and BlackBerry devices, IT staff members had to physically locate or recall the devices and then complete administration tasks.  

Another issue was poor performance of client/server applications. MDOT uses a variety of graphics-intensive geographic information systems (GIS) solutions and data-heavy construction applications that required a lot of information to be downloaded onto the client device over the network, causing slow performance.

Finally, there were inconsistencies across the various local servers. “The environment was not stable,” said Hinds. “All the servers were different, and often were running different versions of the same application. Additional time and resources were needed to support this heterogeneous architecture.”

Implementing a Citrix Application Delivery Infrastructure Solution

To streamline the existing IT system, speed up application response time for users and improve overall control, MDOT decided to implement Citrix Presentation Server™ for server centralization and enterprise-wide application delivery. Subsequently, the department upgraded to a newer version of the product with Microsoft® Windows Server® 2003 running on 16 HP servers, which are deployed at the Jackson datacenter and at a failover center about two hours away.  

Currently, MDOT’s IT team delivers a desktop of approximately 15 applications to about 1,000 employees across the state. These applications include Site Manager for construction and materials, the Performance Series financial management system, a contract administration solution, and Oracle and Sybase databases. About 10 employees access applications using BlackBerry devices, and some construction crew chiefs connect via wireless laptops.

Moving Application Delivery into the Fast Lane

One of the primary goals of the Citrix implementation was expediting and standardizing application delivery. “Without Presentation Server, we couldn’t deliver applications and updates across the whole State of Mississippi as easily as we do,” said Hinds. “It allows us to make changes very quickly. If one of the programmers needs to make an emergency change to an application, change management is simple. Once the change is documented, it takes me only a few minutes to set it up, make sure the update runs successfully, and I’m done. It’s an immediate change, and I don’t have to wait for a response from the users.”

Similarly, Presentation Server makes it easy to add new users. “When someone needs access to an application, I just add them to my Citrix group. Through Program Neighborhood Agent, they get their desktop folder, click on the icons and go,” she said.

The Citrix solution has enabled the department to centralize local servers, removing the need to assign IT staff in each district office. “Now we control everything centrally, which has improved control and standardization across the organization. All application changes are scheduled weekly at the same time on the same day.”

In fact, several other states have adopted Citrix Presentation Server to deliver Site Manager because of MDOT’s excellent results with the solution.

Giving Workers Enhanced Mobility

Citrix Presentation Server has given mobile workers greater freedom to do their jobs from anywhere with high-performance application access. Because Citrix technology enables applications to process on the server, only minimal data must be sent over the network between client and server. Further, Citrix can deliver applications to practically any type of device, allowing employees to use whatever computer is handy.

“Law enforcement officers who monitor trucks hauling cargo into or out of the state can check the status of permits on site using wireless remote access to the Citrix environment,” said Hinds. “And our right-of-way agents who negotiate access for new roads can do some work in one office and then go to another office and log into their desktop – so they don’t have to carry a laptop.” MDOT employees who travel to conferences or courses can log onto their Citrix desktop from a hotel or classroom, enhancing productivity. Further, the Citrix SmoothRoaming™ capability makes it easy to switch devices. “If a user logs out and then logs back in on another device, or loses the network connection, they come back into the application just where they left off.”

Preparing for Business Interruptions

With its location on the Gulf Coast, MDOT must anticipate interruptions from hurricanes and other weather events. Hinds said, “Using Citrix servers at our failover datacenter will allow us to continue accessing our financial management and payroll systems in the event of a disaster – so we can pay employees and procure supplies. And even though Site Manager isn’t designated as a mission-critical application, we delivered it in the failover center as well, for stability purposes.”

Also, because Citrix enables remote access from any Web browser, IT staff and other employees would be able to log into the system from home or a temporary location if they could not travel to the office. “This would be especially vital for our Oracle database staff, who have a server in the center that updates logs all day long,” she explained.

Hinds concluded, “Citrix has helped us save a lot of time and effort in application delivery while giving our users a better experience, whether they’re in the office, traveling or on a project site. Our system is consistent, reliable and easily administered.”

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