Virtual computing allows county to add new services, creating new revenue stream

Fairfax County, Virginia is one of the three largest counties in the United States with over 35,000 employees serving more than one million residents. While county tax revenues took a dramatic downturn due to the economy, Fairfax County was able save millions of dollars in operational expenses and avoid costs by implementing a virtual computing solution to deliver IT services to county employees and residents. Additionally, its virtual computing model allowed Fairfax County to create a new revenue stream by introducing a revolutionary cloud computing solution to host services for cities and townships within the county.

Facing a business-critical SAP rollout, Fairfax County introduced Citrix technologies to create a virtual computing infrastructure and make the rollout simple, however they found the flexibility the solution provided enabled much more. The county has moved away from spending money on operational expenses, such as refreshing PCs at a cost of $2.5 million each year. Now, with virtualization they can extend the life of PCs, only replacing them as they fail, and reallocate the savings to fund creation of innovative new services for county residents.

Fairfax County´s virtualization solution delivers virtual desktops, applications and services to all county employees using any device, whether they work from home during inclement weather, in the field or in county buildings and call centers. The virtual IT environment has saved millions of taxpayer dollars by reducing expenses and increasing efficiencies across all County services, including police and emergency services, utilities, libraries, GIS mapping and surveying and all administrative functions.