Five years ago, technology-intensive development company CEVT chose to give its staff increased flexibility through tunneled traffic and VDI solutions, providing them with remote access to the company’s IT applications. This early ambition to enable remote working has helped the company manage during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

“We have worked in much the same way as usual,” says Patrik Fredlund, Vice President EUS & Security Operations at CEVT. “All of our more than 2,000 employees, including personnel on expeditions and missions around the world, have full access to our systems and work normally even though they now work remotely or from home.”

CEVT is the Chinese industrial group Zhejiang Geely Holding Group’s innovation center in Gothenburg, Sweden, established in 2013. At the innovation center, advanced research in automotive technology is performed, which requires large computing capacity. Five years ago, it was decided to invest in a VDI solution, providing employees with virtual desktops that can be used on devices such as a regular laptop, tablet, or mobile phone. The user can use any device anywhere, and no data is sent back and forth without staying secure in the data center.

This means that users, wherever they are and whatever device they use, have access to the full power of CEVT’s IT systems.

“For CEVT, there were two important reasons for taking this step,” says Patrik Fredlund. “We wanted our heavy users, those who work with resource-intensive operations, to have an opportunity to work in different places but with maintained performance. The second reason was to secure our data when external consultants and partners work with us. Through VDI, our data never leaves our servers but is in our own secure IT environment.”

Partnering with Citrix

CEVT chose Citrix as its partner to deliver VDI. With Citrix’s solution, the virtual desktop of the user looks the same regardless of the device used.

Another benefit of the Citrix solution is increased flexibility. If an employee chooses to continue working on a tablet device at home, their screen will be identical to their work laptop, making it possible to continue to work seamlessly.

“This has been greatly appreciated by our staff,” Patrik Fredlund says. “They have been able to come to work and work during the hours that are most comfortable and work best with privacy. Then they can go home and solve their private tasks, and later easily continue to work at home under the same conditions. The job is still waiting and they can continue right where they left off, albeit on another unit but with the same access to the same information.”

VDI a Strength During the Pandemic

This idea of business continuity has shown its strength during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. When country after country was affected and employees were forced to work from home or from places in the world where they became stuck after air traffic ceased, many companies and organizations were subjected to difficult trials.

But for CEVT, adaptation to this new demanding situation has gone very smoothly.

“Our staff has been able to continue working just as usual, thanks to the Citrix solution we implemented a long time ago and which our staff is used to working with”, says Patrik Fredlund.

Few organizations are able to quickly adapt to a situation where, in principle, the entire workforce is working remotely. There is simply no capacity. At CEVT, this issue was solved by identifying the individuals with the greatest need for computer capacity. For them, capacity was scaled up, while users with small requirements were given more limited capacity. This could easily be adjusted in Citrix’s solution.

Close Cooperation for the Future

With the positive experience that CEVT gained from Citrix solutions, further, deeper collaboration is now planned.

“The next step will be to offer VR — virtual reality — over Citrix,” he says. “My colleague Mattias Brandt, who is driving within VDI with us, works on this together with our VR team. This is really exciting. We have many interesting applications that we want to be able to offer via telework so that our employees can be where they want.”

For Patrik Fredlund, CEVT’s experiences from the ongoing crisis have also provided new insights into the benefits of VDI.

“The journey during these years that we at CEVT together with Citrix and Andreas Rosendahl, our contact person there, shows how good this technology is,” he says. “It also presents Citrix as a full-fledged platform that can replace a great deal in day-to-day work, and not least let the staff avoid carrying around heavy computers.”