Everyone has heard of The Salvation Army. But behind the Christmas brass bands is an international organisation with more than 100,000 employees in over 120 countries dedicated to “the advancement of the Christian religion… of education, the relief of poverty, and other charitable objects beneficial to society or the community of mankind as a whole.”
William Booth founded The Salvation Army in London in 1865. Today, its UK and Republic of Ireland Territory has more than 600 community churches that support people and families who struggle financially, who face loneliness or need employment advice; its “Lifehouses” are located across the country and provide more than 3,000 places every night for people experiencing homelessness; and in the last year alone, The Salvation Army has supported more than 2,000 potential victims of modern slavery.
UK and Ireland IT Operations Manager Neil Edmonds explains that the Territory has a small 30-member IT team responsible for supporting 5,500 officers (the Salvation Army’s ministers of religion), employees, and volunteers.
“It’s a big challenge,” he says. “We need to minimise the number of support incidents. Reliability is very important.”
The charity’s previous PC-based network was expensive to maintain and update, and was also restricting flexibility. “PCs tend to get tethered to the individual,” Edmonds says. And, in turn, users can become tethered to their desks.
Having experimented with other models of centralised desktop services, The Salvation Army selected Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops to reduce desktop cost of ownership and increase flexibility for officers, employees, and volunteers.
Better performance at lower cost
“We started with a small proof of concept, and people loved it,” Edmonds explains. “From there, it just grew and grew until we made a high-level decision to buy no more PCs.”
Within The Salvation Army’s UK and Republic of Ireland premises, staff now use Dell Wyse thin-client terminals to access a virtual Windows desktop with all their apps and information. When out of the office, people can access the same desktop from any device.
“PCs degrade over time. Discs become fragmented, people manage to install unauthorised software, and the PC just gets slower and slower,” Edmonds explains. “But with Citrix, you get a clean desktop every day, and logon times stay consistent. With PCs, it could range from a couple of minutes to 10 minutes. On Citrix, it is just under 60 seconds every time.”
Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops delivers the reliability that The Salvation Army requires.
“With Citrix, you know that when you come to work, your computer’s going to work. And that’s how it should be,” Edmonds says.
Desktop management is simpler, too. “When Windows XP reached end of life, we switched all our users to Windows 7 overnight. That was a real wow factor for them,” Edmonds says.
“The biggest benefit for the organisation is total cost of ownership. PCs need regular, desk-side maintenance, and potentially, they need refreshing every three years. With thin clients, there’s no desk-side maintenance—it’s almost as simple as a man in a van to deliver them—and you can extend their life to seven or even 10 years.”
“Overall,” he continues, “we have a lower total cost of ownership, less reimaging, and a better performance.”
Secure working for home visits or helping the homeless
The Salvation Army’s officers, employees, and volunteers are devoted to helping others wherever required. That could be providing comfort at disaster sites, helping people who are homeless on the street, or supporting older people in their homes. Wherever it’s required, the charity prides itself on being a “connected army.”
“Officers, volunteers, and staff can now connect to applications during home visits or when working on the streets and more quickly provide people with the services they need,” Edmonds says. “Being able to connect remotely and securely means there’s no need to retype handwritten notes later. And by reducing paper and keeping data on our central servers, we also reduce the risk of data leakage.”The Citrix desktop not only reduces IT costs and allows staff and volunteers to help people more quickly and securely, it also supports staff in working more flexibly.
“Citrix has helped us to increase home and flexible working,” Edmonds says. “The charity encourages staff to use their own devices, if they prefer, and this makes it quicker and easier to connect volunteers to the resources they require. Anyone with an authorised user account and a device using Citrix Receiver can connect securely to their desktop apps and information. Staff can easily work wherever they are. Overall, remote access and flexible working has been one of the great benefits of Citrix for us.”
