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  • Welcome to the 2010 Citrix Innovation Award site. Now in its fifth year, the Innovation Award highlights customers that are using Citrix solutions for business transformation and IT efficiency.

    On October 6, 2010 we announced the Innovation Award winner at Citrix Synergy Berlin. Congratulations to The Co-operative Group! Even if you didn't get a chance to vote online, you can still learn more about our award finalists and get inspired by their stories of innovation.

  • On-Demand Desktops and IT Services Support Global Competitiveness and Profitability

    • Virtualized application delivery, from Microsoft Office to SAP, to any device, anywhere in the world
    • On-demand desktop provisioning improves flexibility, speeds application time to user base across entire distributed workforce
    • Centralized management streamlines manageability, security and disaster recovery

    With approximately 4,500 employees spread across over 100 countries in the world, Chemtura Corporation can’t afford to let a rigid infrastructure constrain its global performance. To support competitiveness and profitability, the company must be able to deliver the tools its users need, when and how they need them—and provide real-time support even when the nearest IT professional is hundreds of miles away. Chemtura used Citrix solutions to transform its physical PC-based infrastructure into a highly agile, dynamic environment in which virtual desktops and support are delivered as on-demand services—enabling its widely distributed workforce to support performance and profitability no matter where their work takes them.

    Chemtura users around the globe can access virtual desktops in their language of choice to tap into as many as 60 applications, from core business productivity tools to high-end industrial systems. Whether working at home, on the road, or in any of the company’s offices—and even when they change locations and devices—users always access the same consistent user environment. Citrix network optimization solutions ensure a high-quality experience for the most remote workers. Support is delivered with equal agility and efficiency, with an infrastructure and support services team of only 70 responsible for every user in every corner of the globe. Major application implementations and upgrades can be performed centrally and made available globally overnight, giving users the latest tools without the disruptions of traditional update processes. Centralized monitoring helps optimize performance and reliability while providing the foundation for tight security and streamlined backup. The implementation of application streaming will soon provide even greater flexibility for users and enhanced manageability for IT.

    By using Citrix to deliver IT on-demand, Chemtura has proved that even the most widely distributed workforce can operate as seamlessly, efficiently, and productively as if all its users—and IT personnel—were in a single location.

    Chemtura uses the following Citrix solutions: Citrix XenDesktop, Citrix XenApp, Citrix XenServer, Citrix NetScaler

  • A Non-Profit Health Care Organization Enables Work-shifting While Cutting Costs

    • Work-shifting increases flexibility, productivity, and satisfaction
    • Delivers 400+ virtualized applications via WAN, LAN, broadband and wireless to any device
    • IT cost savings of 600,000 euro per year

    One of the largest non-profit health care organizations in the Netherlands, CZ strives to provide fast, high-quality service at affordable rates to its more than 3.3 million insured customers. To control its operating costs, the company needed to support more than 3,000 employees in dozens of fixed, mobile, and home offices as efficiently as possible. CZ uses Citrix virtualization solutions to deliver a full-featured desktop to any device, making it possible to replace legacy PCs with low-cost thin clients, while easily moving workloads from one location to another—a growing industry trend known as work-shifting—to improve both productivity and employee satisfaction.

    The Citrix desktop virtualization initiative will enable CZ to completely eliminate its PC infrastructure and deliver a simplified, centrally managed environment—including more than 400 virtualized applications—to any type of device. Employees enjoy PC-like performance over any type of connection, including local and wide-area networks at company offices; broadband for more than 1,500 teleworkers; and wireless UTMS on the road. A VoIP phone, integrated with the local PBX system, completes the anywhere-anytime work station. CZ has reduced IT staff for help desk and local support, while providing a higher level of service due to centralized management of the applications.

    Freed from the need to maintain operating systems and installed software on PCs, the company’s IT department has greatly reduced its cost structure and improved its efficiency. CZ estimates it will save 600,000 euro every year over the next five years as a result of its Citrix implementation. From the customer’s perspective, there is no difference between speaking to an employee working at the office, at home, or elsewhere—but for the user, this flexibility makes a tremendous difference. The ability to dynamically shift workloads helps employees find a better work-life balance—while achieving better results for the company.

    CZ uses the following Citrix solutions: Citrix XenDesktop, Citrix XenApp

  • Making Education Modern, Mobile, and Cost-Efficient with Desktop Virtualization

    • Anywhere, any time access to learning tools expands education beyond the classroom
    • Students can use the device of their choice, improving utilization and satisfaction
    • Desktop refresh costs reduced by 50 percent

    Derby Public Schools, in Derby, Kansas, faced a challenge familiar to many educational institutions: preparing students for success in today’s highly competitive world despite reductions in state funding. Derby Schools chose Citrix virtualization solutions to replace a complex, outdated, and expensive IT infrastructure that was increasingly out of touch with the needs of its 6,000 students. Derby Schools now has the ability to provide virtual desktops to students who are ill or unable to come to class, as well as quickly offering anytime, anywhere access to school resources when budget cuts forced the cancellation of summer school.

    Although Derby’s students were accustomed to a world of anywhere, anytime connectivity, with sophisticated technology woven into their daily lives, they could previously access their school’s learning resources only on-site during school hours, and only on standard-issue, often out-of-date PCs. Desktop virtualization enabled Derby Schools to provide a high-quality user experience throughout each PC’s four-year lifetime, then replace it with an inexpensive laptop, netbook, or iPad—a change which has cut desktop refresh costs in half. Students prefer the new, more mobile devices, and can now access the school desktop and applications from any location, on any device—even their own home computer—to stay current when they can’t make it to school.

    The transition from a distributed computing environment to end-to-end virtualization gives the IT department unprecedented flexibility while greatly simplifying and reducing the cost of support. Providing educational resources in a way that better fits student lifestyles and expectations enables Derby School’s faculty and staff to better prepare its students for admission to college or entry into the job market.

    Derby Public Schools uses the following Citrix solutions: Citrix XenDesktop, Citrix XenServer, Citrix XenApp, Citrix NetScaler

  • Global Manufacturer Implements Flexible, Dynamic Virtual Desktop Environment

    • Cloud computing services provide virtual desktops for all employees
    • IT services delivered on a 24x7, real-time basis
    • Integrated management and monitoring improve service reliability

      • LG CNS is the IT services provider for South Korean-based manufacturer LG Corporation. The company faced a two-pronged challenge: deploying diverse development environments quickly and efficiently to its widely distributed global employee base while ensuring the highest levels of data security. Now, LG CNS uses Citrix desktop virtualization to power a cloud-based service for the delivery of desktops to more than 10,000 staff members around the world.

      Providing and maintaining individual PCs for a large user base had become a laborious process of physical assembly, software installation, and delivery, as each physical desktop had to be built to the unique specifications required for a given project. Even then, hardware failures caused further downtime, delays, and data loss. By implementing a streamlined, optimized virtualization solution from Citrix, LG CNS can now deliver new, custom-built desktops to users across the organization in a matter of minutes while making sure sensitive information never leaves the datacenter.

      The initiative—the largest of its kind in South Korea—lets employees enjoy a network-optimized, high-quality user experience from any location, whether on a net book, terminal, or other thin client. Should a hardware failure arise, users can simply switch to another device to access their personalized desktop and applications, without interrupting productivity. As for security—all data remains centralized within the company’s secure data center.

      The dramatic business value realized through cloud service desktop delivery has led LG CNS to offer similar virtual desktop and cloud services initiatives to its external clients, further leveraging the benefits of its investment in innovation.

      LG CNS uses the following Citrix solutions: Citrix XenDesktop

  • “Training in a Cloud” Revolutionizes Professional Development While Reducing Costs

    • Delivers complete virtual infrastructure for self-service training to students anywhere, using any device
    • Speeds training provider response time for new orders and an unlimited number of students
    • Dramatically improves the economics of professional development with accelerated courseware development, reduced server requirements

    MATERNA, an IT service provider, helps companies retain skilled employees and build their internal expertise by offering customized professional development courses and workshops. To expand the diversity of courses offered and extend access to a growing number of students, the company needed a cost-efficient way to accelerate delivery of complex courseware and enable on-demand access to training resources—not just from an office location or MATERNA facility, but from anywhere. By using Citrix solutions to develop its fully virtualized “Training in a Cloud” platform, MATERNA has revolutionized the delivery of professional development courses increasing educational opportunities and broadening student participation.

    MATERNA’s “Training in a Cloud” platform streams applications to a virtual desktop to create modular, customized training environments in one-tenth the time previously required, for faster fulfillment of new orders. Following self-service registration, students can access their personal training environment from any device in any location—at the office, in a MATERNA seminar room, or from their PC at home. No longer restricted to on-site attendance and fixed capacity rooms, an unlimited number of students can participate in any course. At MATERNA training facilities, PCs have been replaced by cost-effective, maintenance-free and energy-saving thin clients having a service life lasting up to four times longer. Highly specialized training configurations that might not have been economical in conventional form can now be created and delivered cost-effectively, giving students a more diverse range of opportunities to advance their careers. Once a course is no longer required, it is returned to a shared resource pool for re-use by other students. Freed from the constraints of physical desktops and locations, MATERNA can now provide virtually unlimited training opportunities.

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    Materna uses the following Citrix solutions: Citrix XenDesktop, Citrix XenServer

  • US-based Teaching Hospital Expands Access to Medical Education and Services in Tough Economic Times

    • Dramatic IT cost reductions enable service expansion even as state funding is slashed
    • Anywhere, anytime access to virtualized applications at the ‘point of care’
    • Virtualization provides 99.9 percent uptime while cutting power consumption 73 percent

    The Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) is dedicated to providing community healthcare services to patients across the state while supporting doctors and research efforts around the world. Faced with huge reductions in state funding, the university had two choices: to reduce the scope of its mission—or transform how its mission is fulfilled. By using Citrix to virtualize its infrastructure, MUSC found a way to improve delivery of IT services to doctors and researchers while achieving the efficiency and cost savings to live comfortably within its budget.

    MUSC has used Citrix to help more patients in more places benefit from its high standards of excellence. Clinicians can access their complete desktop environment, patient records, data, and medical images using any device, anywhere they go, improving their mobility and helping them deliver more timely care. MUSC delivers more than 300 virtualized applications to doctors serving patients in urban and rural communities, making it possible for all patients to benefit from the latest advances in medical knowledge—a dramatic improvement for historically underserved communities.

    Meanwhile, Citrix has also helped MUSC meet the needs of the taxpayers of South Carolina. Server virtualization has shrunk the university’s IT footprint and capital costs, and reduced power costs by 73 percent while meeting its goal of 99.9 percent uptime to ensure uninterrupted service availability for doctors and researchers. By embracing innovation, MUSC has ensured that its commitment to excellence in healthcare will survive and thrive even under the most challenging conditions.

    The Medical University of South Carolina uses the following Citrix solutions: Citrix XenDesktop, Citrix XenServer, Citrix NetScaler, and Citrix XenApp.

  • Virtualized Supply Chain Helps Retailer Extend Global Brand

    • Centrally managed, fully virtualized global supply chain ensures faster responses to changing consumer needs and tastes
    • High-availability networking ensures always-on reliability for users in every location
    • Improved application performance and user experience 10x using existing bandwidth

    Based in the Netherlands, O’Neill Europe strives to remain true to the origins of its brand and iconic founder, Jack O’Neill, inventor of the first neoprene wet suit. With a culture built around harnessing the spirit of innovation to drive the company forward, O’Neill seeks to provide its global customer base with leading-edge products by optimizing its global supply chain. The company chose Citrix virtualization solutions to connect its virtual workforce including employees, distributors, and contract manufacturers in more than 30 countries—from the Middle East to India to South Africa—and bring its products to market with the agility and performance that have established O’Neill as one of the world’s leading youth lifestyle brands.

    O’Neill uses Citrix to deliver centrally managed workplaces to its global user base, with on-demand access to applications including product lifecycle management, product data management, and enterprise management. New applications can be implemented quickly, giving the company the agility to stay on top of a dynamic consumer marketplace. Citrix solutions for high-availability load balancing and Web optimization have accelerated the performance of key applications by a factor of eight, and have improved user experience tenfold. Additionally, Citrix desktop virtualization ensures a high-definition user experience for O’Neill’s ERP system across its network of independent retail stores worldwide. Meanwhile, reduced maintenance, system administration, and user support requirements help the company’s IT group stay lean and responsive. O’Neill has come a long way from its first surf shop in San Francisco—but with help from Citrix, the company is a model of innovation in both style and technology.

    O'Neill uses the following Citrix solutions: Citrix XenDesktop, Citrix NetScaler, Citrix XenApp, Citrix XenServer, and Citrix Branch Repeater

  • Confectioner Goes Green for Low-Carbon, Low-Cost Growth

    • Virtual desktops significantly reduced carbon emissions
    • CapEx and OpEx costs reduced by up to 60 percent
    • Improved application performance more than 40 percent

    With a youth-focused product line, Perfetti Van Melle India (PVM) works to keep its business in sync with the values of its customers. As India’s sugar confectionery market leader, with the largest distribution network in its industry, the company’s green IT efforts play an important role in reducing carbon emissions. Using Citrix virtualization solutions to streamline its IT operations, PVM makes an important statement about sustainability—while bringing new efficiency and cost control to the aggressive company expansion already underway.

    To improve its IT efficiency, PVM needed to streamline desktop management across operating units located throughout India. The company implemented Citrix desktop virtualization to deliver a high-definition user experience via thin clients to all its locations, cutting hardware costs in half as well as reducing power consumption, improving mobility and strengthening regulatory compliance. Citrix solutions also provide the foundation for PVM’s business continuity strategy, including mobile access to SAP via smart phones. These benefits are further complemented by even more dramatic cost savings: PVM expects total savings in capital and operating expenses of up to 60 percent per user, or more than Rs 26 million . At the same time, this new IT services delivery model has actually improved application performance for the company’s employees by 40 percent through bandwidth optimization.

    Moving forward, the company’s virtual desktop architecture will scale effortlessly to keep pace with its expansion, providing the ability to bring new users on board in only five minutes and deliver a state-of-the-art desktop anywhere it’s needed in a matter of seconds. As a result, India’s largest candy company has created the perfect recipe for success, combining rapid growth with energy efficiency for a greener planet.

    Perfetti van Melle India uses the following Citrix solutions: Citrix XenDesktop, Citrix XenApp, Citrix NetScaler, and Citrix Branch Repeater

  • Transforming Operations to Deliver More Competitive Service—While Saving Millions

    • Virtualized desktops speed customer responsiveness in a competitive marketplace
    • New desktops provisioned in one-fifth the time previously required
    • Millions saved on desktop hardware, maintenance, field support, and power consumption

    Even Telecom Italia, Italy’s largest telecommunications provider, can’t take its customers for granted. In the dynamic and competitive telecommunications marketplace, poor quality of service can send subscribers elsewhere in the time it takes to place a call. When 20,000 aging desktops used by its call center and network operators began negatively affecting responsiveness and performance, the company took quick action. Citrix-powered virtual desktops enabled its customer-facing personnel—as well as third-party dealers—to deliver superior service across its network while dramatically simplifying desktop maintenance and saving millions of dollars.

    Desktop virtualization has freed Telecom Italia’s subscribers from the hold times and delays of the past. Employees report that their virtual desktops perform even better than the old PCs they replaced, including a high-definition user experience for the video teleconferencing used for employee communications. Software updates can now be applied overnight to support peak productivity with no disruption to ongoing work. In a true win-win, this upgraded service comes at a much lower cost to the provider: energy efficient thin clients will save an anticipated $3 million in hardware costs by the end of 2010, with additional savings of $221 per computer each year as a result of centralized management. Net desktop-related power costs will be cut in half. Dealers will no longer be provided with computers, but will use their own devices to access virtual desktops, saving Telecom Italia more than $3.7 million annually.

    Both internal users and dealers enjoy far more responsive support, with new virtual desktops provisioned in minutes. Further, centralized single-image management will streamline the company’s migration to Windows 7 later this year. Delivering an outstanding experience for its customers and its employees alike, Telecom Italia shows that market leadership and innovation go hand-in-hand.

    Telecom Italia uses the following Citrix solutions: Citrix XenDesktop, Citrix XenApp, Citrix NetScaler

  • Virtualization Expands Capacity, Speeds Time-to-Market for New Enterprise IT Offerings

    • Virtualized desktops and servers speed time-to-market and reduce costs for customized IT solutions
    • Higher performance, stability, and compatibility means better, more predictable quality of service for customers
    • More efficient use of resources increases scalability to grow with a booming cloud services market

        • Norway-based TeleComputing has grown to become Europe’s largest shared IT operations platform provider, serving more than 800 companies and 50,000 users. As the cloud revolution continues to transform IT, TeleComputing saw the opportunity to offer flexible, reliable, high-performance IT services to its customers—at prices that make enterprise-class infrastructure affordable for even the smallest businesses. The latest Citrix solutions for desktop and server virtualization help TeleComputing deliver products and services more quickly and cost-efficiently in both new and existing markets. As a result, the company’s centrally managed and delivered, ‘one-to-many’ IT offerings are helping more customers tap into the managed services they need, when they need them, to support their growing businesses.

        TeleComputing’s enterprise IT cloud service offerings provide customers with the flexibility to work the way they want to, where they want to, while maintaining levels of control, performance, and reliability formerly available only through in-house infrastructure. Stable, predictable operations provide consistent business support, while new resources and capacity can be implemented simply and efficiently. Centralized IT operations and on-demand resources provide all the scalability and cost advantages of the shared services model. TeleComputing customers retain complete control over security and access rights while outsourcing most IT operations and maintenance, enabling them to do far more with their small-business budgets. When customers need new capabilities to keep pace with competitive demands, TeleComputing can quickly establish a new test environment to speed the implementation of customized solutions with no need to maintain a permanent, dedicated test environment for each customer. This flexibility, combined with dramatic improvements in the efficiency with which its resources are allocated, helps TeleComputing expand quickly into new markets while broadening its offerings in all the markets it serves.

        TeleComputing uses the following Citrix solutions: Citrix XenDesktop, Citrix XenServer, Citrix XenApp, Citrix NetScaler.

  • Retail Co-operative Slashes Carbon Emissions, While Improving Work-Life Balance…and Profits

    • Desktop virtualisation enables greater work flexibility, improving employee satisfaction and productivity while reducing costs
    • Millions saved on hardware, licensing, support, and energy means higher profits for members
    • Virtualised servers and desktops help reduce the Group’s carbon footprint

    Owned and controlled by its 4.5 million members, The Co-operative Group—the U.K.’s largest consumer cooperative—focuses on providing its customers with both good value and good values. Sustainability is now a key priority, as is support for creating greater flexibility and agility for its 123,000 employees. The Co-operative is using Citrix virtualisation solutions to slash its carbon emissions and create a more flexible, employee-friendly workplace—while achieving dramatic cost reductions to boost profits for its members. Increasing both satisfaction and productivity helps the Co-operative demonstrate its commitment to employee-friendly work practices and attract the kind of young, savvy workers who can contribute to its growth and competitive advantage.

    The Co-operative has used Citrix application virtualisation for years to support distribution centres, branch offices, third party access and mobile workers. Citrix-powered desktop virtualisation is now delivering even greater flexibility for Co-operative employees, enabling them to work from any location on any device and leading the company to explore the commercial benefits of mobile devices and bring-your-own-computer (BYOC) initiatives. Workloads can also be shifted easily from location to location to meet the dynamic needs of the Co-operative’s diversified family of businesses.

    The shift from physical desktops to standardised, centrally managed virtual desktops will deliver considerable savings on desktop support. At the same time, the replacement of 3,000 virtual desktops with low-power thin client devices in the coming two years will save up to £1.53 million per year on desktop PC upgrade costs. In the data centres, water-cooled racks and overhead and cold aisle containment technology has been implemented to house HP Blade and Citrix server virtualisation. This will help the Co-operative save up to £459,000 per year on lower server, storage, and desktop PC energy bills. In this light, the goal of the Co-operative to reduce its total carbon emissions against 2006 levels by 35 percent by 2017 seems as realistic as it is visionary. Taken as a whole, the initiatives undertaken by The Co-operative Group are proving that social responsibility and profitability can go hand in hand—with the help of Citrix.

    The Co-operative Group uses the following Citrix solutions: Citrix XenDesktop, Citrix XenApp, Citrix Dazzle, Citrix XenServer

  • End-to-End Virtualization Delivers Flexibility—and Dramatically Greener Operations

    • Vastly improved organization’s flexibility to respond to insurance policyholders anytime, anywhere
    • Better network performance across distributed subsidiaries dramatically improves client service
    • Power consumption per employee slashed by 85 percent, saving millions

    TRYGG-Hansa/Codan is part of RSA Scandinavia with subsidiaries in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. As a member of one of the world’s leading insurance groups, Trygg-Hansa prides itself on its responsiveness to policyholders, whenever and wherever support is needed, whether to file a claim, answer policy questions, or increase insurance coverage. When poor network performance and an inflexible infrastructure began hampering the company’s response time, Trygg-Hansa launched a Citrix-powered initiative for end-to-end virtualization and network optimization. The results: the company achieved both the flexibility its business demands—and dramatic power savings in support of its new Green IT program.

    Trygg-Hansa had already taken the step of virtualizing its servers on another vendor’s platform, but quickly realized it needed to go further to provide excellent customer service and improve its energy efficiency across IT operations. By implementing a Citrix desktop virtualization solution, employees were now able to access a complete, high-definition desktop, anytime, anywhere, on any device—even a smart phone or airport kiosk—to research and respond to client claims and inquiries. Citrix network optimization technologies helped optimize Web applications over any type of connection, eliminating performance problems that might impair customer service. Centralized hosting and management of virtual desktops and applications has accelerated support response time and implementation for IT services. Best of all, the company was able to decrease its power consumption per employee by 85 percent —saving millions of Danish kroners (DKK) and putting it on a greener platform moving forward. The success of its Citrix initiative has inspired Trygg-Hansa to make desktop and application virtualization a core strategy for the entire organization.

    TRYGG-Hansa/Codan uses the following Citrix solutions: Citrix XenDesktop, Citrix XenServer, Citrix NetScaler, Citrix XenApp.