This blog series from the Citrix Customer Success Management team spotlights the business continuity stories of organizations in key industry sectors. While they share a common goal — maintaining operations during the COVID-19 pandemic — each vertical faces specific challenges. Our third installment describes how Citrix solutions made it possible for three government entities to continue providing critical services to the public. And check out our previous posts on healthcare and education.
During any kind of public emergency, citizens look to government agencies at all levels for information, essential services, and financial assistance such as unemployment benefits. In turn, governments that use outsourcing partners for services rely on them to step up during a crisis. The coronavirus pandemic not only increased demands on government employees and contractors, it forced them to make a rapid transition to working from home — often without previous experience. Keep reading to learn about about three government organizations that used Citrix technologies to continue serving the public during an unprecedented situation.
Earthquakes, Wildfires, and a Pandemic
A city in southern California launched its cloud-first strategy for business continuity well before the coronavirus. Because its location made the city vulnerable to earthquakes and wildfires, leaders took steps to ensure flexible, secure access to IT systems and data from anywhere. After adopting Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft Azure, the IT team began a pilot of Citrix Workspace with about 50 test users in IT, finance, administration, the library system, and water and power utilities. However, when COVID-19 hit, the city had not yet migrated all users over to the Citrix Cloud service.
Fortunately, the IT staff had been trained on Citrix Cloud and were able to quickly push out the Citrix Workspace app to the remaining 250 users. They delivered a single master image to a range of devices, including library kiosks, and used FSLogix application masking to hide apps that were not needed by individual users. Employees were enthusiastic about the remote access technology because it enabled them to keep their jobs — and paychecks — during the interruption. City leaders were happy to have this important piece of their cloud-first continuity plan in place and functioning smoothly to support services delivery.
On the Cutting Edge with Citrix Microapps
A department of transportation in one U.S. state rolled out Citrix Workspace and Citrix Content Collaboration to workers in offices and the field, including highway maintenance and construction staff, to enable a device-agnostic work experience. The agency was also planning to implement the Citrix Workspace microapps service to give users a streamlined workflow. At the time of the coronavirus crisis, the department did not have a work-from-home policy.
All that changed practically overnight, as the IT team pushed out 1,400 remote desktops using Citrix Workspace and expanded Citrix Content Collaboration access from 200 to 2,000 workers. The organization used the Featured Banners tab in Citrix StoreFront to supply all employees with their work resources.
Pivoting to Remote Work
In the United Kingdom, many local councils and other authorities outsource services ranging from revenue collection and benefit payment to operations and IT support. Outsourcing providers must quickly adapt to the changing requirements of government clients or risk loss of revenues and reputation.
When the COVID-19 shutdown ramped up service demands on local authorities, a leading outsourcing company with an on-prem Citrix infrastructure and no work-from-home plan needed a solution immediately to avoid service interruptions. Working through a Citrix system integrator (SI), the organization purchased 300 licenses of the Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktop service in Citrix Cloud. A number of Citrix teams expedited the cloud transition logistics to ensure the customer was up and running in only five days. The Citrix Customer Success Management team provided leading practices on cloud to the organization via the SI. Feedback from users has been so positive the organization may continue offering remote working as an option after the pandemic is over.
Business Continuity Planning Begins with Citrix
Disruptions can affect the ability of government organizations and contractors to deliver essential services that are desperately needed by the public. An effective business continuity plan needs to enable workers to stay productive from alternate sites, such as a home office, while maintaining security and control over their access to resources. Citrix Cloud services facilitate rapid, seamless scale-up for remote working and deliver apps, desktops and data with a high level of security and control.
Contact your Customer Success Manager (CSM) or email CSM@citrix.com to learn more about use cases for your Citrix solution or to get assistance building your business continuity planning strategy to ensure your employees can remain productive from anywhere, even if you’re beginning to transition back to the workplace.
