“We wanted a technology partner with design and planning expertise that would be comfortable letting us take on the deployment. Covisia offered the flexibility to meet this need.”
Ben Doyle,
Senior Business Analyst; Aprisma
Monster Worldwide, Inc.
Case Study
Case Study
“The primary benefit we receive from Covisia’s (previously DeVA Systems Group) Citrix deployment is that it allows us to centrally manage and roll-out CRM and our Microsoft Office applications quickly to new locations. With our company growing so quickly during the past several years, and with our expected future growth, this is critical because it allows customer service and telesales to keep pace.”
In 1999, when Monster Worldwide, Inc. continued to expand rapidly through acquisitions, the company realized it needed an efficient method to deploy key applications while maintaining control over the desktop environment.
“As we began to operate in remote offices across the globe, it became impracticable to distribute these applications and their associated databases at each location,” said Thomas Arcand, Vice President of Technology Services for Monster Worldwide. “We also wanted to maintain full control over all of our applications and our data.”
Monster thus sought an end-to-end application delivery system that would allow any remote user, with any device, to securely access Monster’s centralized applications and data in their data center. This approach would reduce the costs of management and support while increasing data security and ensuring fast, reliable performance.
THE SOLUTION
To meet the dual challenges of office expansion while maintaining control over applications and data, Monster created a central Citrix farm that provided the functionality needed to meet these challenges.
With Citrix Presentation Server, Monster users can access applications from their remote offices while the applications and data reside centrally in the Maynard, MA data center. This provides Monster with the ability to centrally manage and deliver applications.
With Citrix Remote Desktop, remote users can log-on to any computer with an Internet connection to remotely access their Monster PC and all their applications just as if they were at their own desktop. This provides the same functionality of a VPN connection, but with the same physical look and feel of each user’s desktop.
“Citrix allows remote users to access their desktop so that their screen looks exactly the same as it does in the office,” Arcand said. “This is particularly beneficial for users that divide their time working from the office, at home, and on the road. No matter where they are, they experience the same look and feel from their desktop, making it easier to work.”
In addition to choosing Citrix technology, Monster turned to DeVA as the solution provider to deploy and support the technology.
Arcand added that several other factors helped convince Monster that Covisia was the best company to handle the Citrix deployment, including Covisia’s willingness to provide after-hours services and how well Monster knows Covisia’s personnel. “Covisia is truly an extension of our company,” Arcand said. “They are like another department within our company, and whether we need to talk to a systems engineer or the company president, we can access whomever we need right away.”
Covisia also brings new ideas to the table so that Monster can consider the latest technologies. For example, Covisia recently upgraded Monster to Citrix Presentation Server 4.0, which improved features in areas such as security, printing, advanced remote-office connectivity and performance.
Covisia has also deployed and supported Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office and Monster’s primary CRM application. Initially, the Citrix solution supported 900 users, but now almost 2000 Monster employees access the solution, with as many as 1300 concurrent users. The solution runs on 60 servers and the Microsoft Windows operating systems.
THE BENEFITS
“The primary benefit we receive from Covisia’s Citrix deployment is that it allows us to continue to roll-out our CRM and Microsoft Office applications quickly to new locations,” Arcand said. “With our company growing so quickly during the past several years, and with our expected future growth, this is critical because it allows customer service and telesales to keep pace.”
Arcand added that the Citrix approach also syncs with Monster’s philosophy of managing applications centrally. “We can add and delete users from our corporate headquarters, and we can deploy application updates very quickly,” Arcand said. “There’s no need to visit remote locations and individual users.”
This proves particularly beneficial to Monster when it comes to offshore locations. Using Citrix, the company can quickly set-up offshore telesales and customer service operations in countries such as India. The Citrix solution deployed by DeVA also allows offshore employees to work and service customers 7x24 – just as though they were sitting in the Monster headquarters in Maynard, Massachusetts.
Arcand is now looking into incorporating Citrix into Monster’s disaster recovery planning. “If something happened to our Maynard facility where we have 1200 employees, Citrix could be one of the components that would allow our staff to work from home in an emergency,” Arcand said. “Covisia has the expertise to design a business continuity solution so our users can connect to a remote data center via Citrix.”
Covisia has consistently provided steady, on-going support to Monster over the past several years as the company has grown, and that has been the key to this successful partnership. “We envision that Covisia will continue to help us with our Citrix road map and provide other IT resources when needed so that we can continue to grow efficiently,” Arcand said.
Covisia Solutions, Inc.
1440 Main Street
Waltham, MA 02451
phone: (781) 895-5200
fax: (781) 895-5100
1440 Main Street
Waltham, MA 02451
phone: (781) 895-5200
fax: (781) 895-5100