London - The Co-operative Group has selected Citrix XenDesktop® as part of a wider IT overhaul to achieve a greener status, allow its staff to work more flexibly, and save money on unused software licences.

The investment in Citrix technology underpins imminent plans for The Co-operative Group to move to a new state-of-the-art building in 2012. The new building will house 3,500 staff, and will be built with the environment central to its plans.

Traditionally, The Co-operative has used Citrix XenApp™ to deliver virtualised applications to colleagues in branch offices and their distribution centres. However, with 18,000 desktops, a growing laptop estate of 3,500, and the number of home workers projected to top 3,000 by the end of 2010, it was a natural choice for The Co-operative to migrate to XenDesktop.

Citrix XenDesktop has been trialled at Co-operative HQ in Manchester, with 250 virtual desktops initially being deployed. The roll out is set to reach 1,200 virtual desktops by December 2010, and 3,000 by December 2011.

The implementation was driven by the desire to align infrastructure technology with the varying needs of individual staff members, and further cut the organisation’s carbon footprint. In using XenDesktop, The Co-operative has projected licence fee savings of £1.5 million per year through not delivering unnecessary applications to its full user estate.

“Our colleagues needs are becoming more sophisticated, and our IT delivery and management increasingly needs more flexibility to tweak and personalise the desktop experience,” said David Murrell, Head of Servers, Storage and Desktops at The Co-operative Group. “We needed a reliable method to deliver this functionality, in a secure and efficient way, wherever they may be.”

“Citrix recognises that different types of workers across the business need different types of desktops,” said James Stevenson, area vice president in UK, Ireland and South Africa at Citrix. “Some require simplicity and standardisation, while others demand high performance and personalisation, and this is exactly what our FlexCast technology was designed to support.”

FlexCast™ can deliver every type of virtual desktop – each specifically tailored to meet the performance, security and flexibility requirements of each individual user.

By using a desktop virtualisation model, The Co-operative Group is also able to keep energy costs down, minimising its impact on the environment.

Citrix XenDesktop works on any device – be it a desktop, laptop, smartphone, or thin client – making it easy to rotate remote desktops to make the most of available power at the employees location, be it their office, out on the road on 3G, any outlet with wireless connectivity, or the individual’s home. With XenDesktop, devices can be automatically powered down when the office is closed. User desktop sessions still remain actively running on servers in the datacentre, while devices stand ready to power up during business hours, no matter their location.

“By 2011, The Co-operative will have deployed over 3,000 virtual desktops,” continued Stevenson. “The roll out aligns perfectly with the business’ plans for its new 2012 office – achieving ROI, employee flexibility and a reduction in its carbon footprint – making it a blueprint office of the future.”