Powering an energy transition with a 10,000+ user rollout and 10% annual savings

Enabling a sustainable future through digital agility

Technology is the backbone of this transition. It is critical to the remote workforce and smart grid operations. The organization already has hundreds of business applications for tens of thousands of users across diverse environments.  

“Technology is a key lever in achieving the transition to renewable energy and the need for greater operational resilience,” says the virtual applications and desktop environments product owner.   

To protect its operations, the energy provider is adopting a zero-trust access model. Each user and device is verified before access to applications is granted. The control layer for this new approach is Citrix. Citrix Secure Private Access establishes a consistent approach to providing applications and remote access, securely and at scale. More, it is delivering an improved experience for app users while reining in licensing costs.  

Improving app performance for a remote, diverse digital workforce  

With a diverse and dynamic workforce using a multitude of applications, the challenge for the organization has always been complexity, from managing different user needs, to maintaining consistent performance and security across a sprawling digital environment. Standardizing its digital environments is seen as the ideal way to impact productivity while freeing resources for strategic initiatives that support the energy transition.  

The IT team already uses Citrix to centrally provision many applications, including SAP Graphical User Interface (GUI). However, a legal file transfer tool remained necessary for other apps. 

This anomaly goes against the desire for standardization.   

The vision is for a heterogeneous application delivery landscape - one that combines traditional VDI with the flexibility of running applications locally on endpoints. By shifting toward this hybrid approach, the organization aims to reduce pressure on its data centers, improve the user experience, and ultimately retire legacy tools. It’s a step toward a more efficient, resilient digital foundation that better supports the organization’s long-term strategic priorities.  

“Many of our users are not technical. They just want to get on with their work. Delays, additional clicks, waiting for an app to respond… this is not ideal.”  

To bridge the gap between endpoint and data center access, the energy provider launched a head-to-head evaluation between Citrix Secure Private Access and other leading secure access solutions.  “This approach not only simplifies secure access for users but also creates a scalable foundation for additional future use cases. By doing so, we enable further cost savings and ensure that our access strategy remains flexible and sustainable,” The spokesperson explains.

“We saw that the Citrix approach not only simplified secure access for users but also created a scalable foundation for additional use cases,” the spokesperson explains. “This would enable future cost savings and ensure that our access strategy remained flexible and sustainable.” The spokesperson explains.  

Supported by independent experts from its IT partner to ensure objectivity, the PoC prioritized performance, cost, and technical flexibility. Citrix Secure Private Access emerged as the clear winner, from a technical and financial perspective.   

"It was clear to us that Citrix was the more cost-effective option.”   

Deploying to thousands of users with zero disruption and maximum impact  

Up against an end-of-year deadline, the phased rollout maintained uninterrupted access to critical systems while scaling rapidly from a 10-user pilot to 4,000 users per week. Over just a few months, the organization successfully onboarded 10,000+ users to Citrix Secure Private Access via Intune, reaching almost 100% adoption.

Throughout the migration, Citrix’s dedication was evident. In the event of an issue, the IT team had access to Citrix engineers, with management on call to talk through solutions. “There was a consistent approach toward timely resolutions,” the spokesperson notes. “This close collaboration accelerated troubleshooting and helped us steadily refine the solution.”;

For the employees, the improvement was tangible. Technicians in the field now download files in the morning and work offline with seamless security. Energy traders benefit from 24/7 high-availability connections where sub-second latency counts.

Establishing a scalable foundation for energy transition  

The switch to Citrix Secure Private Access enables the organization to drive its standardization strategy. The move to Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) transitions IT from a maintenance-heavy cost center to a driver of infrastructure efficiency.

This is projected to reduce secure access and file transfer costs by 10% - with vendor consolidation a contributing factor. Licensing costs for one legacy tool alone were $250,000 each year, a figure that was expected to rise to $400,000 in the coming years. Leveraging the existing Citrix Platform licenses allows the organization to bring additional departments onto the ZTNA framework without incremental costs.

Furthermore, by moving applications such as SAP GUI from the data center to local clients via Citrix Secure Private Access, the energy provider expects to retire hundreds of servers. This will significantly reduce data centre power consumption, maintenance overhead, and software licensing requirements. 

From a sustainability perspective, secure remote working reduces travel costs and infrastructure consolidation lowers the business’ carbon footprint.

Looking ahead, the partnership is only deepening. The organization is preparing for a proof of concept with uberAgent to gain end-to-end visibility into user experience and performance across tens of thousands of endpoints. The intention is to end the blame-game between IT silos; by enabling faster root-cause analysis across network, endpoint, and application layers, IT can quickly determine if a lag is due to a user’s home internet, the data center, or the database.  

“Citrix enables us to operate on a modern, cloud-based foundation that is quick to adapt to new requirements.”

The result is one of the largest SPA deployments globally, supporting secure access at energy-sector scale as it leads the charge toward a climate-neutral future.