Tiny Team Manage International IT

FPDSavills is the principal property services subsidiary of Savills plc. Founded in 1855, Savills plc is now listed on the London Stock Exchange and is one of the leading firms of international property consultants and agents in the world.

The council recognises the importance of ensuring the local community is served in a sustainable and effective manner. It strives to deliver best practice and value to its citizens, always looking for innovation and developments in technology that can contribute to this goal.

The Challenge : Reduce Network Management And Downtime

With a traditional client/server architecture and users in 56 locations across three continents, FPDSavills was finding network management and international support problematic. The company needed to ensure that its systems were always functioning during core working hours, which is a difficult task considering the geographical spread of its workforce. FPDSavills needed a centralised application access infrastructure to deliver a standard desktop environment and to allow remote access for its agents.

Implementing A Citrix Solution For Remote Connectivity And Workforce Mobility

FPDSavills first installed Citrix^® MetaFrame^® Presentation Server in 1998. In 2003, the company worked with Intercept IT Ltd., a Gold-level Citrix Solution Advisor, to upgrade to Citrix MetaFrame Presentation Server to take advantage of the extra features and functionality. The access infrastructure solution allows 1,100 concurrent users and 1,800 total users to access applications from central servers on a mixture of legacy PCs, over a frame relay and leased line WAN. Citrix MetaFrame Presentation Server delivers FPDSavills’ employees with Pivotal’s Pivotal Relationship CRM application along with the Microsoft^® Office suite. With Citrix MetaFrame Presentation Server, FPDSavills’ IT team can now centrally manage the network, which reduces administration time dramatically.

Upgrading The Citrix Infrastructure For Easy Administration

The Citrix solution enables FPDSavills to manage its UK network of 35 servers from just three locations in the UK.

“The centralisation that results from an access infrastructure solution enables FPDSavills to ensure that support costs are kept lower without compromising up-time,” said Steve Brooks, IT Manager. “Another benefit of implementing Citrix MetaFrame Presentation Server is the hardware cost savings. We did not need to replace legacy clients, and we can replace workstations as they come to the end of their lifecycle.”

Brooks continued: “FPDSavills has seen major benefits from its upgrade to Citrix MetaFrame Presentation Server. The management console component is a major improvement in terms of managing the servers. It’s very easy to use the graphical interface, and we’ve also seen improvements in load balancing with the new version. Upgrading the Citrix application access infrastructure was definitely a worthwhile investment.”

FPDSavills employees can also access applications remotely, which is a helpful tool for the real estate industry. Staff can access up-to-date information about a site on laptops over dial-up connections, while meeting with prospective buyers or at the locations in question. “We can serve our customers more effectively by enabling our employees to have all the property information at their fingertips, even if they are out and about,” noted Brooks.

Central network management means that additional software purchases and other system changes need only be implemented at the server, and not on every client device.“Over the Christmas period in 2000, the IT department had the challenge of upgrading all of the company’s computers from Microsoft Office 97 to Office 2000. With Citrix MetaFrame Presentation Server, it took two people just two hours to upgrade every UK PC, across 56 offices. This would have been unrealistic without Citrix MetaFrame Presentation Server,” concluded Brooks.