This year, the start of school will be different for faculty and staff of a private Catholic school in the southern United States. In the fall, they will be piloting and load testing the school’s new implementation of Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops to prepare for rollout to students.

It’s giving “back-to-school orientation” a new meaning.

The Citrix Cloud service, which will deliver Google Suite and other applications to iPad tablets in classrooms and thin clients in the computer labs, replaces an on-premises virtualization environment that was approaching end of life. Migrating to the cloud will reduce day-to-day maintenance chores for the school’s sole IT administrator. More importantly, it will also offer opportunities for expanding application access to support educational goals.

Cloud Success earns top marks

The school’s cloud project has been a collaborative effort. The Citrix partner that sold and implemented the service worked closely with the Citrix Cloud Success team throughout the process, from the initial statement of work (SOW) through configuration and deployment.

Cloud Success is a complimentary offering, led by a dedicated Cloud Success Manager (CSM), that helps to guide customers through their journey with Citrix Cloud services. In this case, the CSM and a Cloud Success Engineer assisted both the partner and the school’s IT administrator by:

  • Providing resources, guidance, and leading practices on cloud tailored to their needs
  • Completing the Technical Configuration Assessment (TCA), an architectural blueprint that the partner used as the basis for the SOW
  • Recommending ways to increase the value of their cloud services in the future
  • Suggesting Citrix Consulting Managed Services as an option for supporting the cloud service post deployment to further offload long-term management

Planning for the future

With the goal of maximizing customer value from the cloud service, the Cloud Success team has discussed ideas for future expansion of the project with the IT administrator. As an alumnus, he is committed to helping the school leverage this technology as an educational enabler.

Key recommendations from the Cloud Success team include:

  • Expand access beyond students to include faculty and staff
  • Provide resource access to students at home or other off-campus locations
  • Deliver materials and testing for enrichment or accelerated learning programs
  • Add other cloud services such as Citrix Content Collaboration, which provides secure file sharing, sync, and storage

ABCs of Citrix Cloud

Citrix Cloud is an attractive alternative for organizations, such as this small, private school, which have limited IT budgets and staffing. Instead of installing, maintaining, and upgrading on-premises Citrix solutions, such as Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, Citrix Gateway, Citrix Endpoint Management, and Citrix Content Collaboration customers simply access the hosted software over the network for a predictable fee.

Benefits include:

  • Minimizing IT infrastructure costs so budgets can be redirected to new projects
  • Offloading management and upgrade tasks, which are handled by Citrix
  • Protecting against security threats with software that is always up-to-date
  • Increasing scalability and flexibility to meet changing needs

To learn more about how our team can support your cloud journey, talk to your Citrix representative or email us at cloudsuccess@citrix.com.