Liquidware ProfileUnity Treats Hospital's VDI Implementation Pain
Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust is the principal healthcare provider to 258,000 people across Southport, Formby and West Lancashire, UK. Employing 3,300 staff, the Trust treated nearly 248,000 outpatients and more than 60,000 inpatients in 2012/13. In 2013 the Trust’s Development Office Lead, responsible for delivering IT services, faced the challenge of migrating away from Windows XP. With a mixed environment of Windows 2003 Terminal Server and Windows XP desktops, the Lead wanted to replace the old environment with something more advantageous to Terminal Services and, with his experience of VDI from a previous NHS role, he chose VMware Horizon View 5.3 as part of his migration to Windows 7.
Having already deployed thin clients connecting to Terminal Services, the Lead wanted to increase efficiency and mobility for the staff, and he knew that a non-persistent model would provide the most efficiency. A previous AppSense proof of concept revealed the need for additional infrastructure to support the hospital's database and, having chosen VMware Horizon View, the Lead checked VMware’s reddit and found many positive mentions of the Liquidware ProfileUnity solution. He installed ProfileUnity and was up and running in less than one day, with ProfileUnity doing exactly what the Trust’s Lead needed: it provided a consistent user environment and simplified profile troubleshooting.
The Trust’s Development Office Lead constructed an environment that has become a model for other NHS Trusts across the UK. VMware Horizon 5.3 combined with Liquidware ProfileUnity running on Dell servers provides highly efficient IT service for the healthcare provider. With ProfileUnity, login times have been reduced from the previous duration of up to 10 minutes to less than 7 seconds for a reconnect and 20 seconds for a full login; speedier login times go a long way in fostering enthusiastic adoption of the virtual desktop platform. And, ProfileUnity significantly reduced support calls, making the Trust’s IT team much more efficient and productive.
