Desktops on a virtual premium at HDFC Life

INDIA: It is virtualisation all across for this financial major. Post a successful PoC of 30 thin clients across 10 locations, HDFC Life decided to extend the benefits through an organisation wide roll-out. Completed in two phases, the company currently uses 2000 thin clients that run the virtualised desktop. 

The company ported all its business applications namely sales tracking system, sales data and reports and the learning management system on thin client. The deployment of Citrix XenDesktop has yielded a host of benefits for HDFC Life. The speed at which the user could access applications was, as shared here, phenomenally better than that in the desktop environment. Also, with 2000 thin clients being utilised in a coverage ratio of 1:3, employees don't require dedicated terminals, thereby optimising their terminal capacities.

Citrix has announced that it has powered HDFC Life's growth plans by deploying Citrix XenDesktop - a desktop virtualization solution.

While Citrix XenDesktop was initially deployed for the sales function, after witnessing the host of benefits, HDFC Life has decided that the desktops of other functions such as training and operations would also be replaced with the VDI platform, where most applications can be accessed faster as they don't run on a local PC. Citrix solution as claimed here, has enabled employees of HDFC Life to securely access business applications and data from their personal mobile devices, while offering better manageability of the IT services and reduction of real estate costs.

"Citrix's complete suite of platform and software enables virtualisation at any level - including XenDesktop for end point virtualization, XenServerfor server virtualization and XenApp for consolidating applications. This complemented with their ease of use made them the clear choice for this deployment. We believe that this futuristic virtualisation framework will be a cornerstone in our next phase of the company growth." said Thomson Thomas, Senior Vice President - IT (Head Business Systems and Technology) at HDFC Standard Life Insurance.

When HDFC Life decided to do away with legacy infrastructure, it came in the wake of a few challenges faced by the company, as added. With the proliferation of high-powered tablets and mobiles and improvement in connectivity, the company was looking for a powerful solution that could leverage the proliferation of connected mobile devices for customer engagement in addition to their branch offices. The other challenge that HDFC Life wanted to overcome was linked to information security, as it was proving difficult for the IT department to enforce security in a conventional desktop environment. In the context of enabling these business imperatives, HDFC Life chose Citrix as its desktop virtualisation partner and deployed XenDesktop.

As per Sanjay Deshmukh, Area Vice President, India Subcontinent, Citrix. "Increasingly, financial institutions are realising the value of adopting technologies such as desktop virtualisation and mobility to be more responsive to customer needs."