Virtual Desktop Infrastructure for Achieving Better Efficiency

October 13, 2012 8:07 am

“Our decision to adopt desktop virtualisation was based purely on the need for business expansion, and reduction of operational costs and carbon footprint,” says Maheshwar Singh, Manager – IT Infrastructure at The Sona Group
The Sona Group was founded in 1987 to manufacture components for the automotive industry. Today, it is an $ 800-million multinational with around 20 plants across India, Germany and the US. The group also has a strategic position in Fuji Autotec, Europe, which has subsidiaries in Brazil, France, Sweden and the Czech Republic.
Starting out as a “Manufacture to Print” organisation, the group today boasts of having created its own IPR, particularly in the areas of power steering for off highway applications and precision forging.
The Sona Group has engineering capabilities in the areas of machining and assembly, precision forging, cold and hot forging and heat treatment. The Group’s range of products primarily consists of steering and driveline components for the automotive OEM segment namely passenger cars, utility vehicles, commercial vehicles and specialty vehicles.
The Challenges: Reducing Costs, Improving ManageabilityWith several manufacturing units spread across the country, the traditional desktop environment was posing a great deal of challenge for the IT team at The Sona Group.
“The desktops were a huge drain on the operating expenditure,” says Maheshwar Singh, Manager – IT Infrastructure at The Sona Group, as he laments the huge cost attached to the conventional desktop infrastructure. “One desktop consumes 150-250 watt of power, whereas a thin client consumes only 8-20 watts. From a business point of view, it made sense to deploy virtual desktop infrastructure,” he adds.
Maintenance and management of 700 desktops also posed a formidable challenge, as the Group had to deploy a large team of maintenance engineers. It was difficult to get complete back up of data from each desktop. Rolling out patches and software updates was also cumbersome and time consuming.
Put together, these challenges not only restricted the growth of IT infrastructure but also hampered the overall expansion of the Group.“Our decision to adopt desktop virtualisation was based purely on the need for business expansion, and reduction of operational costs and carbon footprint,” says Mr. Singh.
Citrix XenDesktop at New FacilityThe Sona Group set up a new manufacturing facility near Dharuhera in Haryana last year. With the management’s nod to roll out the IT infrastructure at the new facility, the company decided to set up a virtualised desktop infrastructure.
“There were very limited options available at the technology evaluation stage. There were two vendors in the race – Citrix and VMware. Citrix proved to be a better choice. It not only helped us enable application virtualisation but also had security features. Besides, it supported shared hosted desktops,” says Mr. Singh.
Citrix is one of the leading providers of virtual computing solutions that help companies deliver IT as an on-demand service. Founded in 1989, Citrix combines virtualisation, networking and cloud computing technologies into a full portfolio of products that enable virtual workstyles for users and virtual data centres for IT.

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