In the past, the experience of work has often been constrained by complex, rigid systems that are managed and maintained for IT efficiency and security at the expense of people’s ability to use them effectively. At Citrix, we’ve been striving to help drive business value by enhancing employee experience and delivering simplified management and security across diverse technologies. We also understand that flexibility to adapt to rapidly changing business needs has become an imperative, especially in the current times.

Optimizing IT Operations to Support COVID-19 Emergency Plans

When one NHS hospital wanted to optimize its operations to support COVID-19 emergency plans, they turned to Citrix and Flexxible IT. As part of the UK’s National Health Service, acute hospitals are on the front line of the government’s COVID-19 response. In parallel with the rapid ramp-up of intensive care clinical delivery, IT teams are just as focused on quickly expanding work-from-home (WFH) capabilities to enable clinical and administrative staff to gain secure, remote access to critical systems.

When the need was to deploy remote work infrastructure as quickly as possible, teams from Citrix and Flexxible IT stepped up to the challenge. The immediate requirement was to support its COVID-19 emergency response and provide remote access to about 3,500 users across various departments. This turned out to be especially useful when clinical and administrative staff required quick and secure access to data.

Citrix and Flexxible IT: A Winning Combination

The challenge was met by using the combination of Flexxible IT’s SmartWorkspaces hyperconverged appliances and Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops. Flexxible SmartWorkspaces for Citrix Cloud has been validated as Citrix Ready. This provided a solution that could meet their tight timescales while delivering a long-term, cost-effective platform that can be easily adapted for future post-pandemic requirements. Flexxible IT’s modular and highly scalable solution was set up in a matter of hours without the need for on-site engineers or complex configurations. It encompassed Citrix pre-certified, pre-built, modular scale-out hyperconverged appliances. Furthermore, Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops now provides NHS staff with their familiar app and desktop experience, no matter the device or network.

Remote Deployment for Remote Work

Given the situation and the restriction of people’s movement, the team used Flexxible IT’s Smartworkspaces SUITE to carry out automated remote deployment and configuration of all systems. This significantly reduced the time to deploy and, to satisfy security and health protocols during the pandemic, enabled the solution to be implemented 100 percent remotely.

This also facilitated rapid delivery of IT services to enable staff to manage all aspects of the new WFH solution, all through an intuitive single pane of glass management platform for on-premises and cloud deployments. Plus, this was done in a timeframe of just 40 days, from procurement to deployment of all hardware, software, training to having all users up and running.

Join us for a webinar on Thursday, July 9, at 12 p.m. ET, where we’ll go over the complete details of the deployment and how the hospital was able to adapt to the quickly changing situation. Register today!

How an NHS hospital quickly expanded its remote access capabilities
Date: Thursday, July 9
Time: 12 p.m. ET
Register now!