Background:

Our financial services client operates as a global network of independent member firms offering audit, tax and advisory services; working closely with clients, helping them to mitigate risks and grasp opportunities. Member firms’ clients include business corporations, governments and public sector agencies and not-for-profit organizations. They look to our client for a consistent standard of service based on high order professional capabilities, industry insight and local knowledge. Client member firms can be found in 155 countries. Collectively they employ more than 174,000 people across a range of disciplines. Sustaining and enhancing the quality of this professional workforce is our client’s primary objective. Wherever they operate they want their firms to be no less than the professional employers of choice.

Challenge:

Every year our financial services client required the immediate scale of desktops based on customized user attributes during tax season to collect all data for tax processing for corporations. Costs to accommodate the increased number of desktops required and provide customized applications per user based on user attributes while maintaining the integrity of very sensitive information were astronomical.

Approach:

Third Octet follows a proven six step methodology approach to determine the best solution for implementation and end user managed services, if required, for our clients.

Solution:

After determining individual user requirements, security requirements and analyzing current server application capabilities, Third Octet proposed an offshore solution with a Citrix virtual desktop infrastructure that utilized a single image to bake in standard applications then added customized extended server applications based on user attribute profiles for flexible user driver design.

Results:

The agile Third Octet solution enables our client to effortlessly scale their environment to accommodate work flow demand ranging from 100 desktops to 400 desktops within any hour. Offshore processing saves our client $10,000’s in labour hours. And there are no compromises as work flow productivity and security levels are on par with processing in Canada. The flexibility of the infrastructure implementation enables our client to retract deployment even more quickly as tax season winds down. Every year, the primary virtual desktop single image technology enables our client to accommodate filings processed.