Providing scalability for a growing online presence

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1 Case study Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles Citrix Application Delivery for Government Since implementing our Citrix NetScaler solution, we haven t had to change or modify anything. It works beautifully, and that means we can focus on further enhancements to the Web sites and other customer service initiatives. Rich Karakoudas Server Group Supervisor, Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles Key benefits Enhanced IT efficiency and reduced costs with centralized architecture Allows use of low-power, low-cost thin clients Improved customer service with real-time online transactions Provides scalability to accommodate system expansion Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles moves into the fast lane with Citrix The Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles (RMV), part of the Executive Office of Transportation, handles licensing, registration and other services at 37 branches throughout the state. The organization employs about 900 people at these branches and at its headquarters in Boston. The Challenge: Secure application delivery to branch offices In 2001, the Massachusetts RMV replaced its green screen terminals with Neoware thin-client devices. Not only were the green-screen terminals seriously outdated, but the organization also wanted to deliver Windows -based applications, including Microsoft Office and Outlook, in addition to the mission-critical Automobile Licensing and Registration (ALR) mainframe application. With our mainframe and terminals we already had a centralized IT architecture, and we wanted to retain that concept for security and ease of administration, said Rich Karakoudas, server group supervisor. So we looked for a way to deliver the Windows applications that would enable centralized administration and support. Although we were running terminal emulation software on a Terminal Services farm, it became clear that only Citrix offered a Windows application delivery solution robust enough for the enterprise. Another challenge facing the RMV involved its public Web site. To reduce customer waiting lines at the branches without having to add staff, in late 2006 the organization created a site where users can conduct many different transactions, such as changing addresses, ordering special license plates, paying tickets, and renewing vehicle registrations and driver licenses. Anticipating the popularity of this Web site, Karakoudas and his team recognized the need for a server load-balancing solution to provide high availability and fast response for the public. We took a lot of the branch activities that you might wait in line for and put them on the Web so people can do business with us more quickly and easily, he said. It s important to have the Web application servers perform even under heavy traffic loads. Implementing a Citrix Application Delivery Infrastructure solution Working with IntraSystems, a Platinum Citrix Solution Advisor, the RMV implemented Citrix Presentation Server with Microsoft Windows 2000 Server, and recently upgraded to a later version of the Citrix software with Windows Server Currently, the solution runs on 22 HP C-class blade servers. Employees at the branches use HP thin-client devices, connecting over a variety of connections. In addition, some supervisors and managers connect over a VPN to Presentation Server when they are traveling or at home. In addition to Microsoft applications, the registry delivers many different proprietary legacy applications relating to motor vehicle business.

2 Networking environment Citrix Presentation Server running on 22 HP C-class blade servers Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Citrix NetScaler running on two 7000-series appliances HP thin clients, laptops In addition, the RMV implemented a pair of Citrix NetScaler appliances to provide load balancing, high availability and SSL offloading for its six Web servers. These servers host not only the applications for the public Web site but also the internal driver license testing solution, which is delivered via 140 touch-screen kiosks in the branches. Karakoudas said, As a Citrix customer, we naturally turned to Citrix s Web optimization solution. We liked the robustness and great feature set of NetScaler, plus its integration with Presentation Server. Reducing TCO and maximizing ROI with centralized administration Citrix Presentation Server has enabled the RMV to retain the cost and efficiency benefits of a centralized IT architecture. Being centralized makes it so much easier to do minor and even major software upgrades, said Karakoudas. For instance, if I just wanted to change the version of Adobe Reader, as simple as that may sound, we would have to go around to every workstation, and that takes a lot of time. With centralized application delivery, it takes a half-hour. Citrix also allows us to keep a lean IT staff of just four people. We d need four times as many employees if we were maintaining applications on the desktop. The savings over the past two or three years have far outweighed the cost of our investment in the solution. The shadowing capability of Presentation Server has helped the IT team virtually eliminate on-site service calls. For the most part, tech support calls are resolved in five minutes or so by viewing the user s screen, which also helps reduce our workload. Still another source of cost savings is the reduced power consumption of thin-client devices. It was mandated by the state that we try to cut back on power usage, he continued. Thin clients use only about 20 percent of the power required by a PC, and that adds up with 37 branches. And of course, Citrix is what makes application delivery to thin clients possible. Providing scalability for a growing online presence The Citrix NetScaler solution is providing the Registry with the ability to handle current and future peak loads on its Web servers, ensuring real-time transactions for the public. Currently, we receive between 3,000 and 5,000 hits a day, with surges occurring at the end of the month and in the late evening, said Karakoudas. With NetScaler providing SSL offload, our CPU utilization is extremely low around three percent so we haven t even begun to maximize server capacity. And with load balancing, we can configure the servers based on the applications we want to deliver, not on performance, because we know NetScaler will handle any load with ease. The implementation of the public Web site and the online auto license testing system has helped mitigate a steady increase in business at the branches and provided a convenient alternative to visiting an RMV office. We ve seen a slowdown in the volume increases that have occurred each month for quite awhile. It s clear people like the ability to conduct transactions online in real time, he noted. Future plans The Executive Office of Transportation is currently expanding the Registry s Citrix Presentation Server implementation to Mass Highway, a sister agency. When that project is completed, the server count will rise to about 50, and total users will increase to about 2, Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles

3 In addition, the RMV is planning to upgrade to the Platinum Edition of Citrix NetScaler, primarily to leverage the Citrix Access Gateway SSL VPN functionality included with the product. We plan to use the Access Gateway SSL VPN for secure application delivery to insurance companies, vehicle inspection stations and other outside users, replacing proprietary dial-up connections, Karakoudas explained. We found that the Citrix SSL VPN is the only product authorized by Massachusetts as an alternative to the state s own VPN solution. He concluded, Since implementing our NetScaler solution, we haven t had to change or modify anything. It works beautifully, and that means we can focus on further enhancements to the Web sites and other customer service initiatives. Applications delivered Microsoft Office, Outlook, Visio and Project Auto Licensing and Registration System Automobile Testing System Proprietary applications About the Citrix Solution Citrix Presentation Server is the de facto standard for delivering Windows applications at the lowest cost to any user, anywhere. It offers both application virtualization and application streaming delivery methods to enable the best access experience for any user, with any device, working over any network. Citrix NetScaler is an application networking solution that optimizes the delivery of Web applications increasing security and improving performance and Web server capacity. Citrix Access Gateway is the only SSL VPN to securely deliver any application with policy-based SmartAccess control Citrix Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Citrix, NetScaler, Citrix Presentation Server and Citrix Access Gateway are trademarks or registered trademarks of Citrix Systems, Inc. and/or one or more of its subsidiaries, and may be registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Microsoft, Windows, Outlook, Visio and Windows Server are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners. MassRMV.1207.pdf

4 Case study Welch s Citrix Application Delivery for Manufacturing Our number-one project is implementing the Oracle ERP. Giving brokers and comanufacturers secure access to the system is imperative. Citrix NetScaler was the best solution for delivering Oracle with reliability, speed and cost-effectiveness. George Scangas IT Infrastructure Manager, Welch Foods, Inc. Key benefits Provided high availability and performance of Web and Microsoft Windows applications Extended Oracle ERP to external partners to streamline business processes Ensured security without cost and complexity of a traditional VPN Added 250 new users without expanding IT staff Welch s delivers Oracle E-Business securely and reliably with Citrix NetScaler A 138-year-old company headquartered in Concord, Massachusetts, Welch Foods, Inc., is the food processing and marketing arm of The National Grape Cooperative Association, Inc., a grower-owned agricultural cooperative. Welch s is the world s leading producer of juices, jams and jellies made from Concord and Niagara grapes. The company has 1,200 employees and a number of processing plants and offices across the United States. The Challenge: Securely delivering Oracle to brokers and co-manufacturers Welch s originally implemented Citrix Presentation Server for application delivery to remote employees. However, when the company embarked on a four-year project to replace its existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution with Oracle s E-Business 11i Web application suite, it became clear that an expanded application delivery solution was needed. Our vision was to enable our 250 external brokers and co-manufacturers to work directly with the Oracle system to put in an order, get a packing list or print an invoice, explained George Scangas, IT infrastructure manager. We were concerned about data security and also efficiency, since we have a very small infrastructure staff of three. We wanted to avoid having to create VPN tunnels for all these users or having to publish Oracle externally. Welch s IT staff also wanted to ensure exceptionally high availability, speed and reliability of the Oracle suite. The company was looking for a replacement to its outdated server load-balancing solution that could offer compression, caching, TCP offload and other sophisticated optimization technologies. Implementing a Citrix Application Delivery Infrastructure solution Welch s upgraded to Citrix Presentation Server, Platinum Edition with Microsoft Windows Server 2003 on three Dell servers to deliver a number of applications, including business intelligence, call center and sales forecasting software, to employees at headquarters and remote locations. To load-balance its four Web servers running the Oracle E-Business application, the IT team considered three different solutions, including Citrix NetScaler, Enterprise Edition. Scangas said,

5 Networking environment Citrix Presentation Server, Platinum Edition running on three Dell blade servers Citrix NetScaler, Enterprise Edition (with Citrix Access Gateway module) Microsoft Windows Server 2003 MPLS and Internet connectivity Dell PCs and laptops NetScaler was the best solution because it integrates nicely with the new Presentation Server farm. The way it s licensed and put together is far superior to the competition. Welch s also valued the SSL VPN functionality of Citrix Access Gateway that is integrated with NetScaler as an optional module. Working with DeVa Systems Group, a Platinum Citrix Solution Advisor, Welch s implemented four NetScaler appliances to load-balance the Oracle application servers. Two appliances sit in the DMZ to handle external traffic coming in via the SSL VPN, and two sit on the LAN to handle traffic from users at Welch s processing plants, which comes in on a private MPLS network. The NetScaler appliances are also used to load-balance Welch s other Web applications, including its intranet portal. The granularity and flexibility of the NetScaler solution helped Scangas and his team quickly optimize performance with Oracle. He explained, NetScaler was caching some objects Oracle didn t like. We were able to put in a special expression to bypass those features. Streamlining secure application delivery to external business partners Previously, Welch s brokers and co-manufacturers had to use a clumsy, paper-based process to obtain information from the legacy ERP system. We used to print out information and fax it to them, recalled Scangas. Faxes would get lost, and of course, any manual system takes a long time. We wanted them to be able to access the Oracle system directly to speed up business processes, get rid of duplication and improve accuracy. Citrix s load-balancing and optimization technology gives our brokers and co-manufacturers high-performance, high-availability access to Oracle. Citrix also protects our corporate network with end-to-end security. Citrix enables the three-person team to manage this influx of new users without requiring additional staff. We considered setting up VPN tunnels to connect all the different broker and co-manufacturer locations with the Oracle system, but it would have been a nightmare and very expensive. Citrix SSL VPN technology provides a high level of security without all that cost and complexity. Improving Performance From the beginning, Welch s has benefited from improved application performance with Citrix Presentation Server. Scangas said, Our sales team in Arkansas uses an application called Shiloh to do business with Wal-Mart. Formerly, we had to have a client/server architecture between the Arkansas office and Concord, and it was very slow. When we published Shiloh using Citrix, it sped things up considerably. Now the new Citrix solution is delivering additional benefits. The Citrix Presentation Server farm is providing up to a 50-percent improvement in performance over our old farm, he said. And the NetScaler solution is optimizing performance of Web applications through compression and caching technology. For example, people at remote sites are commenting that their portal pages are loading much faster. To monitor application performance, the IT team will implement the application performance monitoring capability included in Presentation Server, Platinum Edition. Our old farm experienced issues such as session disconnections and we had no visibility to actual user experience. Nor did we have a baseline of performance metrics from which to derive system health and availability. We re planning to begin proactively monitoring performance and troubleshooting issues from the datacenter. 2 Welch s

6 Simplifying Licensing According to Scangas, one of the impressive features of Citrix NetScaler is its simple licensing. With the competitive solutions we considered, if I needed extra functionality I would not only have to get the right license, but also upgrade the hardware and install a special module. There was no way I could figure it out because there were so many different variables. With NetScaler, I get everything with one license, and if I need an upgrade I just purchase a license for it no hardware changes. He concluded, Our number-one project is implementing the Oracle ERP and giving brokers and comanufacturers secure access to the system. Citrix NetScaler with the integrated SSL VPN functionality was the best solution for delivering Oracle with reliability, speed and cost-effectiveness. Applications delivered Oracle E-Business 11i Enterprise Resource Planning solution Demantra sales forecasting software Oracle Discoverer business intelligence software Shiloh data warehouse and retail management software Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer About the Citrix Solution Citrix Presentation Server is the de facto standard for delivering Windows applications at the lowest cost to any user, anywhere. It offers both application virtualization and application streaming delivery methods to enable the best access experience for any user, with any device, working over any network. Citrix NetScaler is an application networking solution that optimizes the delivery of Web applications increasing security and improving performance and Web server capacity Citrix Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Citrix, NetScaler, Citrix Presentation Server and Citrix Access Gateway are trademarks or registered trademarks of Citrix Systems, Inc. and/or one or more of its subsidiaries, and may be registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Microsoft, Windows, Internet Explorer and Windows Server are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners. Welch s.1107.pdf

7 O Neill Europe Case Study Citrix Branch Repeater has enabled us to accelerate the performance of key applications by up to eight times. By providing 65 percent compression, Branch Repeater also helps us to better use and provision the existing bandwidth. Peter Maljaars, Global IT Service and Infrastructure Manager, O Neill Europe High speed and guaranteed sportswear supported by Citrix solutions O Neill, the original Californian surf, snow and lifestyle brand, was founded in 1952 when a young man named Jack O Neill opened the first surf shop in Santa Cruz. O Neill Europe is a privately held company with 300 employees worldwide that designs, develops and distributes O Neill sports clothing and footwear. The headquarters of O Neill Europe is located in Warmond, the Netherlands. O Neill has distributors in more than 30 countries that sell the products to many independent retail stores worldwide. The challenge Ensure highly available and fast business applications all over the world O Neill Europe has used Citrix XenApp since 2004 to create a standardized remote workplace, which is used in Warmond as well at all distributor locations around the world. This published virtualized desktop running on XenApp enables all employees to be able to use all applications including the product lifecycle software PDM Quest. Two Citrix Access Gateway appliances provided off-site subsidiaries on-demand access to the XenApp-based remote workplace. The expanding organization was looking for a way to increase availability and provide full redundant solutions to remote users of the Citrix environment, web servers and web applications. The Citrix environment already proved to be a very efficient way to deliver virtual desktops and individual applications, and was very stable, but we started looking for a way to increase availability on a global scale and for all web-based applications, said Peter Maljaars, Global IT Service and Infrastructure Manager at O Neill Europe. In addition, more recently, we started experiencing performance issues with the connection from the datacenter in the Netherlands to Hong Kong. We needed a solution to increase the performance of the remote workplace and for regular file transfers for our Hong Kong employees.

8 Implementing NetScaler and Branch Repeater Key benefits Enables a centralized virtual workplace that is available all over the world Enables load balancing for web applications and the remote workplace All applications and the remote workplace remain available even when no IT staff is in the building Reduces maintenance and system administration effort Increases performance of applications using WAN connections with high latency Higher user satisfaction with increased performance Applications delivered Infor Quest PDM Product data management suite Microsoft SharePoint IBM Cognos Business intelligence application Microsoft Outlook Web Access Lawson software M3 Enterprise Management system Web front end Networking environment Citrix XenApp 4.5, Platinum Edition running on 5 IBM blade servers Citrix NetScaler 7000 Enterprise Edition HA cluster Citrix Branch Repeater 8500 series The IT department at O Neill narrowed the shortlist to Citrix NetScaler and a product from another manufacturer. A proof of concept with both solutions was done to evaluate the effect of global load balancing technology on the performance and availability of the infrastructure. NetScaler was selected because it was integrated with the XenApp environment and could be used as a replacement upgrade for Access Gateway. The NetScaler setup and deployment was a very intuitive process with a minimal learning curve and was done by the O Neill IT staff. The NetScaler 7000 HA active-passive cluster load balances and accelerates the XenApp-based remote workplace and numerous web applications. To improve the performance issues with Hong Kong, the Citrix Branch Repeater was extensively tested during a four month timeframe. Again, the solution was compared to devices from other manufacturers. Branch Repeater proved best suited for accelerating the Citrix ICA -protocol used by XenApp. Installing and configuring the device in the production environment took O Neill only a few days. The device for Hong Kong was configured in the Netherlands and sent to Hong Kong where it only needed to be switched on to be in production. The device is managed remotely. Now, two Branch Repeaters accelerate the high latency WAN connection to Hong Kong. The always available remote workplace The company especially needed a high availability solution to make sure the remote workplace is always-on. Before we used NetScaler, there were incidents were the environment was not available four times a week. When there is no IT personnel available at the moment of occurrence for example at night during weekends it means unacceptable downtime of our external application for all remote offices like Hong Kong and remote users at contract companies that manufacture O Neill s clothing all over the world, from the Middle East to India to South Africa, Maljaars continued. With NetScaler, we not only have a remote workplace with XenApp that is load balanced and always available, also important web applications like our product focus system application used for BI information and planning now have a failover function that was previously impossible without manual intervention by the IT staff. In addition to global load balancing, the NetScaler provides web application acceleration and secure application delivery services. Because the NetScaler offloads SSL encryption and decryption, it frees the web servers of this workload, resulting in improved user response times. Acceleration and optimization for web applications is a very nice feature. We add more and more applications to be accelerated to the NetScaler configuration, added Maljaars. Now we also accelerate Outlook Web Access, for example, and our BCS application for DHL (software to track and trace our distribution), and the Microsoft SharePoint web site for the worldwide organization (WWO) project. The system administration of the NetScaler devices is very easy and takes almost no additional time. O Neill replaced Access Gateway and upgraded the solution to NetScaler. The same device that load balances, accelerates and optimizes is used for application deliver using SSL VPN. O Neill integrated Safeword tokens with the NetScaler for additional authentication. 2

9 O Neill Europe Case Study Fast application performance to Hong Kong Branch Repeater is less expensive than upgrading a leased line connection, although upgrading the connection would probably not solve for the latency problem completely. O Neill calculated a maximum Return On Investment of a year and a half. The user experience for the virtual workplace from Hong Kong was becoming terrible but Branch Repeater solved this problem. With extensive support for the ICA protocol, the virtual workplace with Quest PDM is now running smoothly in Hong Kong from the datacenter in Warmond. O Neill uses the Quest PDM application for handling the complete creative and production processes, from designing and drawing clothes to generating bills of material and quality control in factories. Good performance is extremely important for our business, concluded Maljaars. Citrix Branch Repeater has enabled us to accelerate the performance of key applications by up to eight times. By providing 65 percent compression, Branch Repeater also helps us to better use and provision the existing bandwidth. Best of all, the user experience has improved by a factor of 10. Branch Repeater adds the final touch to NetScaler and XenApp in giving the best possible application performance, for employees anywhere in the world. In addition, O Neill accelerates file transfer traffic with FTP from the Netherlands to the factories in Hong Kong. Measurements show that only 20 percent of the initial file size needs to be transferred over the connection. Worldwide Headquarters Citrix Systems, Inc. 851 West Cypress Creek Road Fort Lauderdale, FL 33309, USA T T Americas Citrix Silicon Valley 4988 Great America Parkway Santa Clara, CA 95054, USA T Europe Citrix Systems International GmbH Rheinweg Schaffhausen, Switzerland T Asia Pacific Citrix Systems Hong Kong Ltd. Suite , 63rd Floor One Island East 18 Westlands Road Island East, Hong Kong, China T Citrix Online Division 6500 Hollister Avenue Goleta, CA 93117, USA T About Citrix Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CTXS) is the leading provider of virtualization, networking and software as a service technologies for more than 230,000 organizations worldwide. Its Citrix Delivery Center, Citrix Cloud Center (C3) and Citrix Online Services product families radically simplify computing for millions of users, delivering applications as an on-demand service to any user, in any location on any device. Citrix customers include the world s largest Internet companies, 99 percent of Fortune Global 500 enterprises, and hundreds of thousands of small businesses and prosumers worldwide. Citrix partners with over 10,000 companies worldwide in more than 100 countries. Founded in 1989, annual revenue in 2008 was $1.6 billion Citrix Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Citrix, NetScaler, Access Gateway, Branch Repeater, XenApp, ICA and Citrix Delivery Center are trademarks of Citrix Systems, Inc. and/or one or more of its subsidiaries, and may be registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners. 0110