ReSource Pro Increases Productivity 10% with Desktop Virtualization Acceleration™
New York City-based ReSource Pro (www.resourcepro.com), a leading provider of business process outsourcing for the insurance industry, increased productivity ten percent by implementing FastSoft’s Desktop Virtualization Acceleration solution at its main processing center in Qingdao, China. ReSource Pro has over 600 employees in Qingdao and another 50 in Jinan. These centers serve the company’s 100 U.S.-based clients.
“We maximize our clients’ profitability by taking over the routine and mundane tasks that prevent employees from fully utilizing their core talents to grow the business,” says Chris Watkins, ReSource Pro’s IT Manager in charge of infrastructure. “We provide knowledge workers who connect remotely into their systems and get the work done during the evening hours.”
Watkins, focused on improving service quality and employee productivity, searched for an easier and more efficient way for his remote staff to work with their clients. Secure and efficient downloading and uploading of files was a critical issue since the staff in China accessed and managed customer data and applications. Also, working with the most up-to-date version of any given file was essential.
Watkins initially met these requirements by having his China-based colleagues connect to their U.S. customers using desktop virtualization technology, either Citrix or Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Services. (Also known as “thin-client computing”, desktop virtualization is where a specific application – or even the entire desktop of a computer – is made accessible to a remote client machine.) The thin-client connection ran over a VPN tunnel, giving the overseas workforce secure remote control over any number of software applications and files. This arrangement enabled ReSource Pro to engage quickly with new clients because they didn’t have to waste time installing customer applications and transferring files back and forth.
Desktop Virtualization Too Slow
Despite the advantages of this setup, Watkins struggled with performance and speed issues. Due to latency and congestion inherent in the Internet, the screen refresh of the virtualized desktop was painfully slow at times. Particularly frustrating for the China-based staff was working with the many scanned documents and PDF files – policies, certificates, and so on – that often took 4–5 seconds each to display on their screens. This delay significantly affected their ability to process work quickly.
“Virtualized desktop performance was slow and unacceptable by our company standards,” Watkins recalls, “particularly since we are dedicated to driving efficiency and productivity, as well as providing our employees the tools they need to get their work done accurately and quickly. We knew that we had to find a solution in order to maintain high levels of employee motivation and productivity rates.”
Watkins tried several solutions, none of which scaled well. First, he rented a private Ethernet Leased Circuit from U.S. to China. Unfortunately, it was expensive and only improved thin-client performance for the first twenty employees, after which it provided no benefit. Second, he tried deploying WAN optimization appliances, which required installing hardware at the client site. Third, he tried WAN optimization software, which required software at the client site. In both cases, low client adoption and high price tags proved too big a barrier to company-wide roll out.
Finally, he tested and compared the leading desktop virtualization solutions to pinpoint the one with the best performance. Unfortunately, even the one that performed the best was only slightly more usable than the worst.
Simple, Scalable, 5x Faster
Watkins had heard about FastSoft’s Desktop Virtualization Acceleration solution from a former employee. He contacted FastSoft for a NoTouch™ trial which gave him a quick gauge of the acceleration he could expect with a full deployment but without having to install any hardware or software in his own datacenter.
The Qingdao-based staff did a side-by-side comparison of their thin-client sessions with and without acceleration, and the results were dramatic. Responsiveness of the remote sessions went from sluggish to snappy and PDF documents that had previously taken 4–5 seconds to display now took less than a second.
At Watkins’ recommendation, ReSource Pro subsequently purchased and deployed a FastSoft E Series™ web accelerator in a hosted facility in San Jose, and another in a hosted facility in New York. ReSource Pro’s remote workers connected to their West coast clients via the West coast accelerator and to the East coast clients via the East coast accelerator.
Happier Employees, 10% Productivity Gain
Several months after deploying the FastSoft solution, Watkins estimates his overseas team has gained 10% in productivity. And with a group of over 600 employees, that’s equivalent to adding five dozen employees. Employee satisfaction increased noticeably due to a less tedious work environment, with each person now having more time to help their clients with other tasks.
Watkins was pleased to find a secure, scalable solution that allows ReSource Pro to work remotely without sacrificing performance. His colleagues in China are also pleased.
“Employees know when they’re on the accelerator,” observed Watkins. “When they have a new client and are not on the accelerator yet, they get a ticket to the help desk that says, ‘Make sure I’m on the accelerator by end of day!’”.