This organisation is a group of further education colleges that was created in 2017, following the merger of two of London’s leading colleges. They offer education and training in almost all vocational areas at a variety of levels for a wide range of learners.
The situation
The merger of two colleges was placing pressure on the current desktop estate due to the combining of the two infrastructures
Running Windows 7 Desktop, the existing desktop estate was end of life and unsupportable
The 2,000 end points were becoming increasingly difficult to manage and adapt to the changing requirements of the various faculties
Future expansion was constrained as the current infrastructure was not scalable
Essential requirements of a new solution included providing active site availability, remote access and scalability
Our approach
Xtravirt consultants led the assessment, design and implementation of a complete desktop transformation across both campus sites to unify and modernise the infrastructure
Technical solutions designed and implemented included:
Design and implementation of VMware Horizon View and supporting infrastructure
Design and implementation of VMware vSAN storage solution
Design of new IP network architecture for existing sites and planned expansion
Outcomes achieved
Unified, modernised, scalable desktop solution across both campus sites
Reduced risk and cost savings: Legacy applications brought up to date, improving business continuity and reducing maintenance costs
Improved interoperability: a fully integrated and VMware® validated EUC solution has enabled a highly optimised environment
Scalability: the new workspace platform enables significantly increased expansion capability for relatively little additional cost
Modernised infrastructure: New virtual infrastructure for EUC on a modern hyperconverged environment with end user workload upgraded to Windows 10 VDI environment utilising features from VMware Horizon Enterprise Edition