The Clore Duffield Foundation is a grant-making charity, chaired by Dame Vivien Duffield DBE. The foundation concentrates its support on cultural learning, social care, and enhancing Jewish life. The foundation’s IT system was a traditional client-server model of computing with a local server to run various applications, provide file and print access, and perform antivirus scanning and backup.
Although the Foundation was relatively happy with their current system, Netec suggested that they could significantly reduce costs and improve productivity by moving to a Citrix Hosted Virtual Desktop - where each user’s data is stored in the Cloud and users are able to access their desktops and all applications securely, on any internet-enabled device from any location.
Clore Duffield's costly capital expenditure was replaced by low monthly operating expenditure — a utility pricing model - which means that they now only pay for what they use. We also took advantage of the special Microsoft and Citrix charity-licensing models, to reduce costs even further. The Foundation now has a faster IT system, organised documents, consistent versions of application across all users, worry-free backup and a meaningful cost saving when compared to their previous system.
“We actually have been discussing moving to the Hosted Desktop for the past few years. The timing of our server hardware warranty expiration was the catalyst for our move. A hands-on demo and a Q&A session, together with Netec’s guarantee to revert back to a traditional IT system should Citrix not be suitable, helped us make the decision. We were surprised at how smooth the transition was and the minimal staff training that was required upon hand-over.”