Formed in 1955, M&O Techniek is a leading supplier of electrical, water and heating installations to domestic and commercial customers throughout The Netherlands. With offices spread across five locations, M&O Techniek employs about 80 staff: half are office-based and the rest work as field engineers on site servicing customers.

The Challenge: Integrating Disparate Networks Acquired through Business Growth

As with any service organisation, maintaining a strong reputation is paramount to ongoing business success and this standing can only be gained and maintained by delivering high levels of customer satisfaction through reliability and quality of service delivery.

Having successfully grown its business through acquisition over the previous seven years, M&O Techniek faced the challenge of uniting separate networks and file servers across five branch office locations, each having its own isolated server running separate applications.

Using VPN technology, M&O Techniek was able to share small office files and e-mail, but with no wide area connectivity capabilities to share large amounts of data, staff physically had to visit each individual branch every Monday morning to get the information they needed to run the business.

This manual method of collecting and sharing information was far from efficient, and M&O Techniek needed a solution that enabled simple management of its applications and information from one central point.

Implementing Citrix Access Essentials for Mobile and Remote Application Access

M&O Techniek looked to one of its existing suppliers, A3 Business IT, for a solution to the information access challenges it was facing. Having provided M&O Techniek with IT support and solutions for several years, A3 Business IT was familiar with the company’s needs.

Four years previously, A3 Business IT had tested M&O Techniek’s applications with Windows® 2000 Terminal Server to improve the company’s information access, but at the time it did not work. With Citrix Access Essentials™ aimed specifically at small to medium-sized businesses like M&O Techniek, A3 Business IT quickly recommended the on-demand access solution as a newly available alternative.

Prior to the implementation of Citrix Access Essentials, M&O Techniek ran a Microsoft® Exchange server at its head office, along with several Microsoft® Office applications. In addition, M&O Techniek used a financial database package specifically designed for the installation market, enabling the efficient allocation of resources to its teams of electricians and plumbers. However, each branch office had a separate file server, all with individual Microsoft® Active Directory® software and separate versions of the applications the business used.

After an initial testing period, A3 Business IT was able to quickly and simply deploy Citrix Access Essentials into M&O Techniek’s head office and branches.

Firstly, A3 Business IT deployed Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 onto the main head office server, followed by Citrix Access Essentials onto the same server. After successfully testing both its vertical application and other Microsoft Office applications, A3 Business IT was able to roll out the solution and connect M&O Techniek’s four other branches.

Barry Hempenius, general/financial manager, said, “After the Citrix implementation, our users were presented with a new desktop when they logged in. It was fantastic; our people were then able to work straight away with very little guidance and without any formal training.”

Secure and Controlled Remote Access

With half of its workforce needing remote access to the vertical resource management application, security was a critical element of the project. Citrix Access Essentials was rolled out to M&O Techniek’s field-based workforce, giving its electricians and plumbers access to accurate, up-to-date information, which is protected by centrally managed security, centrally installed antivirus software and back-up facilities.

A3 Business IT deployed a completely secure remote access solution using Citrix Access Essentials and a SonicWall SSL firewall solution with digi tokens to verify user access. RES PowerFuse was also deployed, providing centralized management of the end-user desktop and application environment, and increasing productivity and security while addressing many compliance requirements.

Information Access Improves Customer Service and Productivity

As M&O Techniek’s resource allocation application is linked to a bandwidth-hungry Sequel database, it was very difficult for its teams to access the information they needed over the existing VPN.

Using Citrix Access Essentials, bandwidth is no longer an issue because only a small amount of encrypted data — keystrokes, mouse clicks and screen refreshes — is sent over the network between the centralised server and client.

“Our field-based engineers, as well as our sales and financial people, are now able to manage their time and resources much more efficiently. Our levels of customer service have improved as we can now deliver our promises based on real-time fact rather than secondhand information,” commented Hempenius.

Future Plans

When considering the ongoing support of its new infrastructure, M&O Techniek wanted to maintain a level of flexibility with its IT overhead, and opted to outsource its complete network support to A3 Business IT, with the Citrix partner now managing both the company’s data and telephony infrastructure.

Using remote connectivity to its centralised server, A3 Business IT is able to support M&O Techniek’s users with ease without having to physically ‘touch’ their desktops.

M&O Techniek plans to continue its expansion and connect a fifth building in the near future. With incremental licenses of Citrix Access Essentials available in groups of five users, A3 Business IT will easily facilitate this for the installation company, bringing its users to 60.

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