City of Armadale rolls out virtual desktop environment

Program includes upgrade to Windows 7

The City of Armadale in Western Australia has a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) program underway to upgrade 450 PCs.

City of Armadale ICT manager, Adam Holthouse, told Computerworld Australia that it had been running the virtual desktop program for the past 12 months.

So far, 190 desktops have been deployed running on the VMware View suite. By the end of the program in late 2014, the council will be running 450 virtual desktops.

“We’re still running Windows XP and transitioning to Windows 7 as we roll out the virtual desktops,” Holthouse said.

The council has deployed 15 iPads for staff and also allows the use of personal tablets at work.

“The good thing about a VDI is that when people bring their own tablets in, we don’t have to worry as much about the security aspect,” he said. “We install the View client on the tablet and they can log in to our system.”

The City of Armadale is one of 28 WA councils to reduce IT costs through the deployment of a whole of government enterprise licensing agreement.

VMware and system integrator Data#3 (ASX:DTL) created three software bundle options incorporating vSphere, vCentre, site recovery manager, vCloud director and View. Data #3 helped each council to determine the most suitable bundle.

Holthouse said that it had saved approximately $130,000 by using the enterprise licensing agreement.

“We’ve been able to use unlimited licensing over three years which has been a big benefit."

Data#3 also provided councils with software asset management practices including an audit of the entire software environment.

According to Holthouse, the agreement has led to a simplification of IT administration as issues can be resolved in a central location.

Follow Hamish Barwick on Twitter: @HamishBarwick

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Tags Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)virtual desktopArmadale

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