Università di Pordenone

VDI in education. The University of Pordenone project

Infonet Solutions and Citrix Italia lead the University of Pordenone into the world of Cloud Computing.
Working in partnership, they implemented a desktop virtualisation project to optimise the university’s IT infrastructure through the use of Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp.

The Pordenone University Consortium provides courses with a high IT content, requiring the use of numerous laboratories providing various different types of software: the large number of work stations (over 150, with laboratories in which more than 30 computers operate), with completely different hardware and software configurations, makes the university’s IT infrastructure very complex, with high operating costs. In addition, the presence of similar software by different producers in the same machine led to conflicts and system instabilities, requiring long and complex program re-installations.

The Pordenone University Consortium therefore needed to adopt a more agile and secure solution for its IT infrastructure, which would require less maintenance work, with lower costs.

After careful evaluation, the project was entrusted to Citrix and to the experience of Infonet Solutions, chosen as technological partner, for the implementation of a VDI project. The first step, in 2012, was the creation of a completely virtual IT laboratory, using Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp. The Consortium immediately noted a considerable reduction in the workload for the management and maintenance of the machines, with an estimated 60% savings in maintenance hours and 15% in costs already in the pilot project.

The aim over time is to achieve the virtualisation of all 150 IT workstations in the university’s laboratories.

>  Read the case histoy of the project
>  Read the article published on Technopolis