Consultancy Centralis has deployed a Citrix environment for the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) to provide staff with access to core business applications.

In the summer of 2008 Centralis carried out a discovery exercise to establish the firm’s business requirements. The existing infrastructure was reviewed to determine what was fit for purpose.

Centralis built a solution scalable up to 1,000 users, based on Citrix’s XenApp and Netscaler products. Initially 500 end users went live in December.

Ewen Anderson, managing director of Centralis, said: “The HCA reflects a new way of doing business and will transform how housing and regeneration is delivered across the UK. The approach it has adopted towards desktop delivery will be integral to its future success.

“We look forward to working with the HCA on the next phase of the project over the next year.”

The next phase of the project will be to migrate the remaining 500 users across to the new solution during 2009.

Tina Hughes, ICT Manager at HCA, said: “We see the flexibility and scalability provided by our Citrix environment as central to our ICT Strategy. The project’s fixed timescales meant that particularly close collaboration was required between the in-house team and Centralis.

“Excellent working relationships were established right from the off, and we look forward to continuing to work with Centralis in the future.”