McGregor Virtualises Its Desktops Using Citrix Software And Datad Services

McGregor ITC Transformation Highlights

• Has moved from ‘quick and dirty’ solutions to a well-thought out infrastructure based on Citrix desktop virtualisation
• Worked through a three stage process – setting objectives, planning and then implementing the solution
• Is achieving its ‘4 any’ objectives
• Has used reseller Datad to build its new solution
• Has simplified its servers building a twin data centre in the middle of Holland
• Has reduced the amount of managed data through centralisation and deduplication
• Will work on improving the company’s mission critical applications and worker business processes

ITCandor Analysis And Advice

2010 is a year in which many users are faced with desktop dilemmas – many have held off refreshing their devices during the downturn, Microsoft has launched Windows 7 (a more stable platform, but complete with VDI and other virtualisation options) and the focus of virtualisation has shifted from the server to the desktop with new software offerings from suppliers such as Red Hat, VMWare and Citrix. ITCandor aims to analyse as many user case studies as possible, demonstrating the practical choices and solutions being adopted.
McGregor is a dynamic, distributed business. It has expanded its clothing offerings to attract new customers. Like many companies its ITC system was inefficient, costly and unsupportive of its business processes. Its decision to modernise around desktop virtualisation was a pioneering step in 2009. We believe many other organisations can learn from the way in which it developed a clear plan, selected a reliable partner in Datad and implemented a good workable solution. It has discovered that transformation is a continuous process, rather than a one-time fix. Its ITC system – like its clothes – now appeals to the Y generation and should now support its flat corporate structure and results-oriented business ethos.

About McGregor

McGregor is an Anglo American fashion brand. Founded by an itinerant Scotsman in New York in 1921, it was initially a menswear brand to the over 50s. Its company has been growing in Europe since the early 1990s and now has around 900 employees It offers a full range of products from women’s fashion, children’s wear, to men’s wear, footwear and a bed & bath collection. Since 2008 it has been a sponsor of the Williams F1 motor racing team, which is based just round the corner from me in Grove in Oxfordshire.
McGregor has offices in Driebergen and Amstelveen in Holland, as well as in Brussels, Paris, Barcelona, Hamburg and Hong Kong. It has 115 of its own retail stores, split between McGregor and ADAM brands and had revenues of €200m in its latest financial year.
It boasts a flat organisation structure with a strong results-oriented and brand driven culture.

McGregor’s Client/Server ITC Had Become Problematic

I recently met with Rien Overvliet (Director of Corporate Services, McGregor) and Ronald Grobben (IT Architect, Datad – its ITC service supplier and Citrix reseller) who presented the company as a customer reference at a Citrix analyst meeting in Holland.
Like many other companies which have grown through acquisition from small company beginnings McGregor’s ITC was relatively inefficient before it decided to in 2009 to renovate its ITC infrastructure. In particular:

• Its infrastructure was loosely based on a Client/server model with servers in every office, but it had only one terminal server among the 100 or so servers in use
• Its stylists were forced to us PCs rather than Apple Macintosh computers
• Its technical and functional solutions did not keep up with its expanding business needs – Rien claims they were ‘certainly not future proof’.
• Its solutions were quick and dirty, neither stable nor scalable and were hard to manage
• There was no remote login facilities for any but the very senior employees
• Security was a big issue

Allowing Users Remote Access To Corporate Applications Was Central To McGregor’s New Infrastructure

The Targets

Rien set some clear objectives for ITC as part of the transformation plan in 2009. In particular:

• For ITC infrastructure to grow along with the company
• To allow business to lead technology
• To improve performance, making user satisfaction the key
• To allow ‘4 x any’ (any device, any connection, any location, anytime) access
• To have a stable, scalable, flexible and open – but safe – structure
• To support new locations – via acquisition, opening or moving office – within three weeks
• To have an easy-to-manage, low cost system

For me it’s interesting that the previous system was inefficient enough to offer Rien the ability to develop a much more powerful solution at a lower cost.

The Plan

Ronald Grobben, IT Architect at Datad described the implementation of these targets. He summarised the plan as follows:

• Centralising and consolidating the servers
• Accommodating general office workers alongside those working in styling and using powerful graphics applications
• Giving global access to all corporate applications
• Creating a 24 x 7 ‘always on’ environment and an adaptive and flexible ITC infrastructure
• Creating transparency in the workspace across workstations, laptops and Blackberry devices
• Providing a step-by-step migration of all of McGregor’s shops and offices

In short Ronald colourfully describes the plan as a migration from ‘spaghetti’ to ‘lasagne’.

The Solution

Datad helped build a new highly-available, twin data centre solution in the middle of Holland for McGregor which uses virtualisation at the server and desktop level. It is based on Citrix’ desktop delivery concepts. In particular:

• Server virtualisation is based on VMWare’s vSphere and includes 14TB of data
• Citrix’s XenApp 4.5 provides application virtualisation
• In 2010 it has adopted Citrix’s XenDesktop 4 for its virtual desktop infrastructure mainly for its staff in the styling division
• Access Gateway provides its ‘24 x 7’ and ‘4 any’ implementation
• WAN optimisation is based on Citrix’s Branch Repeaters, which is currently being implemented

It also uses additional tools for monitoring and maintenance. A view of McGregor’s network is shown in Figure 2.

The Benefits Of The New Approach

The consolidation activities have simplified McGregor’s ITC significantly, reducing the number of domain controllers from 17 to and the number of Microsoft Exchange mail servers from 12 to 3. In the process Rein claims a number of his objectives have been attained. In particular:

• ITC has become a utility
• The ‘4 x any’ has been achieved and the system is much more flexible
• Business critical applications have lower downtime
• The company has lower WAN and management costs
• The system is now centrally managed and uses more automation
• Data has been centralised and consolidated through deduplication
• It is cheaper to provide solutions to new offices

Overall Rien claims that users at McGregor now have a much better experience. I was impressed to hear that stylists were now able to use Macs as well as PCs for their design work and that the system now supports the company’s aim of allow its staff to work when and for however long they want to by providing better remote access to its corporate systems.

Some Conclusions – Lessons For The Future

Like most companies McGregor has found that transformation is not a one-time only process – that improving the system leads to continuous consolidation activities. Its future plans include:

• Improving communications by using new email, unified messaging and workflow solutions
• Building a new failover location to improve availability further
• Going further to optimise and reduplicate data sets
• Specific software upgrades to Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit, Citrix XenApp 6
• Streaming applications to XenApp and/or XenDesktop
• Optimising laptops through XenClient usage

There are still many challenges especially in upgrading and optimising the company’s business critical applications and in optimising its worker’s business processes.
I believe it is a great example of a company which is using advanced virtualisation techniques to help support its users and add real productivity benefits – not least in their ability for much greater access to corporate resources, supporting Rien’s ‘4 x any’ (any device, any connection, any location, anytime) objectives.
It is a clear example of a company using new techniques to improve its business processes through effective planning and efficient implementation. It is not clear that McGregor will save significantly sums of money through its new approach (although it certainly has better economies of scale and less overlapping technology). However it will find the integration of new offices, locations and acquired companies easier in future. Just as it has moved away from just supplying menswear to the over 50s it now has an ITC system which will appeal to younger Generation Y employees.