South Carolina Farm Bureau Insurance Delivers a Better Desktop Experience to its Users
eGroup collaborates to replace SC Farm Bureau’s clunky and costly desktop PC environment with VMware View
MT. PLEASANT, S.C. – January 16, 2013 – eGroup, the Southeast’s leading provider of cloud, application and end-user computing services, today announced the South Carolina Farm Bureau Insurance Companies (SCFB Insurance) have successfully deployed their virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) program across the enterprise, saving time and money.
Given the initial success of the project and positive feedback from the first 100 users, SCFB Insurance plans to roll out its VDI program to the remainder of the company’s user base in 2013.
Facing the prospect of having to refresh several hundred desktops at an estimated cost of $300,000, SCFB Insurance’s information technology (IT) department decided it was finally time to adopt a VDI strategy.
With the consultation of eGroup’s End-User Computing team, SCFB Insurance identified administrative personnel and QuickBooks™ users as a good target group to replace their clunky desktops with Dell Wyse P20s. The benefits were instantaneous, according to Dave Riberdy, Infrastructure Architect, SCFB Insurance.
“Our administrative personnel were severely burdened by 30 minute log in times to QuickBooks and chronic latency issues given the amount of staff using the application. Moving QuickBooks to the cloud and having staff access through View on their Wyse P20s improved log in times to mere minutes and significantly improved application performance,” commented Riberdy.
The IT department also experienced immediate productivity benefits. For example, using View they no longer had to audit each and every machine for software versioning, nor did they have to push Adobe Reader updates out individually to each machine. Riberdy now has a golden version of the desktop that can be delivered with a press of a button.
“We were fortunate we had a few idle servers and some extra SAN space to get the pilot off the ground. Once we did, management witnessed just how powerful VDI can be and the impressive time and cost results that are realized almost immediately,” said Riberdy. “We were thrilled to have eGroup support us. Given View’s complexity, we needed experts to get it up and running quickly and successfully. There really was no margin for error in the eyes of management.”
SCFB Insurance even captured non-tangible metrics over the course of the project, such as a 90 percent reduction in help desk calls related to specific desktop PC hardware issues, or having to waste time removing harmful, non-business related software from individuals’ machines.
“One of the key validations that our VDI strategy is working is that employees who have yet to be converted keep asking when we’ll get to them,” commented Riberdy. “What IT team doesn’t like happy, productive and content users?”
The next phase of SCFB Insurance’s VDI strategy involves its field agents. In the near future, agents will be able to use View on their iPads to access claims applications while consulting with a client.
Mike Carter, Principal, eGroup, said: “Working with SCFB Insurance on their VDI transformation has been a wonderful experience. Living and breathing technology all day long, we understand the impact that comes from the deployment of innovative end user computing strategies that guarantee a defined outcome. Many times, customer leadership does not recognize the immediate value of enabling technologies like this until it’s ‘in production’, which is why we’re thrilled to ensure the project’s success from pre-planning, to rollout, to end-user education, and ultimately in the hands of the users and being effectively utilized.”
To hear Dave Riberdy detail the project in depth, you can listen to this recent eGroup Roundtable Webinar.
