Food and beverage firm Quaker has implemented a centrally
managed software application to turn its old PCs into thin clients
and facilitate the roll out of Citrix and Microsoft Windows and
Office 2000.
The company had 250 PCs running Windows 95 in remote sites across
Europe with no on-site IT support. Using the Wyse Alcatraz
management tool, Quaker said it was able to make use of its old
PCs.
Stuart Riches, IT manager at Quaker, famous for its porridge oats,
said the move saved the firm from having to replace half of its
PCs, which would have cost £125,000. "We reckon we could add two to
three years to the life of our PCs," he said.
Quaker used a beta version of Wyse Alcatraz, which was officially
launched on 2 June. Alcatraz enables IT departments to "lock down"
old PCs and turn them into thin client terminals that can be
managed remotely. Quaker now uses three distributed servers and one
central server to manage its terminals. Migrating local
applications off PCs and onto servers is helping to cut costs and
make software roll-outs easier.
"It reduced the cost and timescale for the Citrix and Windows 2000
roll-out quite considerably," said Riches, who estimated that it
had cut the roll-out time from up to one day per PC to about 30
minutes. "It has also removed all the problems with trying to
manage the PCs remotely."
Security has improved as users can no longer change settings, and
the firm has more control over its desktops. "It has enabled us to
turn the PC s into fairly dumb terminals," said Riches.
The company will now gradually replace PCs with Wyse Winterms.
"Where PCs are broken we put Winterms in - they are much more
plug-and-play," said Riches.