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El Camino reduces Windows logon times by 78% and drives the success of their VDI program with AppSense
Technology Category
- Functional Applications - Remote Monitoring & Control Systems
Applicable Industries
- Healthcare & Hospitals
Applicable Functions
- Facility Management
- Business Operation
Use Cases
- Remote Asset Management
- Remote Control
Services
- System Integration
- Software Design & Engineering Services
The Challenge
James Brummett, Technical Director, and Greg Lubben, Desktop Engineer, were in the process of implementing a VDI project with VMware Horizon View 5.2. The primary objective of their VDI project was to provide a consistent and reliable desktop experience where users can access everything they need, anywhere they are, and from any device. “First and foremost it was about significantly rethinking and improving the care provider experience,” said James. “Centralizing our desktop delivery also allowed us to securely manage company data from within the data center and ensure adherence to standards.” Delivering secure and managed desktops in the hospital environment has unique challenges: staff use machines interchangeably, travel throughout and between campuses, and multiple logins were required within a single clinical workflow. In the midst of their VDI implementation, James and Greg found that Windows logon times were excessively long, which would create frustration and reduce the productivity of their clinical staff. “We knew that long logon times are unacceptable in a hospital setting,” said James, “In our VDI sandbox we found that initial Windows logons were taking as a long as one minute and thirty seconds - which would have derailed the success of our VDI project.” With clinicians traveling in and out of the hospital on a daily basis, it was critical to manage application variables based on location. Controlling printing is a particular challenge in the healthcare environment. As nurses travel throughout floors, for example, their printer settings must adjust with them, ensuring documents are printed at the nearest printer rather than the last printer used. When mistakes were made, confidential patient information could print somewhere else in the organization.
About The Customer
El Camino Hospital is a nonprofit healthcare organization with hospital campuses in Mountain View and Los Gatos, California. El Camino Hospital’s IT team supports a staff of over 3,200 employees, as well as close to 1,500 physicians that roam between the two hospital campuses, offsite clinical offices, and also work remotely. The company’s hospitals have served communities in the South San Francisco Bay Area for more than 50 years. They strive to provide superlative care by focusing on patients’ needs, rather than on shareholders’ demands, and by incorporating the latest, proven medical technology and attracting the best medical staff and affiliated physicians.
The Solution
AppSense Environment Manager was recommended by Kovarus, a leading systems integrator assisting in the VDI project, to complement El Camino’s deployment of VMware Horizon View. By applying policy at the point of application execution, rather than at startup, Environment Manager reduced El Camino’s Windows logon times from one minute and thirty seconds to twenty seconds on average - an improvement of 78%. AppSense Environment Manager allows El Camino to centralize the security and delivery of desktops while maintaining the personalization of each user. “With Environment Manager, staff get that ‘new computer smell’ every morning,” said James. “We can ensure applications are secure and up-to-date on the back end, but the user experience and icons stay exactly the same. Even after we’ve performed a global update, when a user logs in, any personalization they’ve done to their desktop is right as they had left it.” In addition to the benefits for the end user, El Camino saw significant IT savings. “From an admin perspective, Environment Manager has dramatically reduced the complexity of our virtualization project,” said Greg. “El Camino has been able to reduce the number of images and pools we maintain, and the need for custom scripting to support policy configuration has declined 75%.” In particular, he reports tremendous ease of use in setting and configuring policies. “AppSense Environment Manager really drove the success of our VDI program,” said Greg, “we didn’t encounter a problem that it couldn’t handle.”
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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