Blue Chip gets flexible with Winchester Council

VAR implements a trial Citrix virtualisation solution to help councillors work from home

Integrator Blue Chip has won a contract with Winchester City Council to help the local government body make its flexible working dream a reality.

As a result of the deal, the Citrix Gold Partner has implemented a full-scale trial of Citrix XenApp desktop virtualisation, which will enable a selected 50 council staff members to work from any location with a broadband connection that securely accesses email, council applications and files.

Shiela Davidge, head of information and management technology at the council, said: “We offer a variety of flexible working options – we have people doing nine-day fortnights, four-day weeks, part time people and people working full time at home.

“Our flexible workers have a broadband connection and they seem to be able to work on that very well. We have 57 councillors who can work at home when they need access to emails and committee papers,” she added.

Anthony Green, director at Blue Chip, said: “We are seeing more councils and other public sector organisations embracing virtualisation technologies as they can deliver so many benefits in one go – reducing power consumption; enabling Government Connect compliance; delivering flexible working and operational cost savings. By working with the team at Winchester we can see why many more organisations will take this approach to managing their desktops.”