By Teresa Wingfield, Solutions Marketing Consultant, VMware
Here are some highlights of a new VMware Reference Implementation Case Study for Bank of Stockton. This was an easy blog to write as I decided to just let the customer do most of the talking.
What is it worth to the Bank of Stockton to have blazing-fast virtual desktops? “How do you put a dollar figure on the ability to serve customers instantly rather than in minutes or even hours?” asked Vincent Lo, Vice President Network Application and Support at Bank of Stockton. “Customer service is at the heart of everything we do from a technology perspective, and now our technology is enabling us to deliver superior service at a lower cost.”
The Bank of Stockton selected VMware Horizon with View as the software foundation for its VDI solution based on a thorough evaluation of multiple competitive products. It solved the performance challenges of VDI rollout with a hybrid storage solution from Tegile Systems.
“Even though we had already had a positive experience with VMware and trusted VMware, we did our due diligence and talked to Microsoft, Citrix, and others,” said Lo, “Frankly, [Microsoft] Virtual PC was out of the question—it simply was not an enterprise-class product. My team also evaluated Citrix, and in the end they recommended VMware Horizon with View. It was not a purely financial decision, despite the fact that cost savings was important to us. The decision was based on technical capabilities, the reputation of the vendor, price, roadmap, and several other factors. VMware simply had the best total package.”
Mr. Lo said he was particularly impressed by the security features of the View solution. “We wanted to lock down the user workstations as much as possible,” he said, “and View solved some of our most pressing security concerns.”
Another key advantage was View’s Linked Clone feature. “We saw that the Linked Clone capability could help us conserve disk space and actually improve collaboration among our support people,” said Lo, “and that translates to lower total cost and better support.”
When Tegile first contacted the Bank of Stockton with its proposal, the company was getting about 2,000 IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second) from its current VDI architecture. Tegile demonstrated that by incorporating a hybrid storage array and upgrading the core switch, the Bank of Stockton could increase the level of performance to 30,000 IOPS and cut costs in the process.
“We implemented the hybrid array, and now performance is great. Our people can serve customers with full confidence that the desktop systems will support them, not create delays or problems,” said Lo.
Read the case study for more details on architecture and lessons learned or get more details on Horizon with View and Tegile Systems.
