Kluwer: Desktop Virtualization for Next-Generation Publishing

Kluwer, a subsidiary of Wolters Kluwer, is a leading publisher and information services company in the Netherlands. Globalization, consumerization and advances in digital technology have shaken up the publishing industry, and Kluwer wanted to adapt to its new reality. No longer is the product (e.g., a book) key, but the dynamic information needs of the client.

End user expertise

Kluwer’s clients, authors, employees, partners and suppliers wanted access to their information and applications from anywhere in the world at anytime. CSC has been working with Kluwer to translate these requirements of accessibility, agility and scalability into innovative solutions.

“CSC has a good culture fit with Kluwer and offers significant added value in its solutions; for Kluwer, especially in the end-user workspace environment,” says Martin Wuite, Kluwer CTO.

Different access for different users

In 2008, while CSC and Kluwer were working together to design an IT infrastructure to support the expansion of products, ideas and resources, the world was hit by fierce economic recession. Aside from adding value, and in order to survive the economic storm, the new products and solutions that CSC and Kluwer were working on would have to deliver considerable financial savings and reduced total cost of ownership (TCO).

Kluwer and CSC achieved this by providing different levels of access to different end-user groups:

• Transactional clients who require a pre-defined, fixed set of applications and always have network connection
• Flexible clients who, as well as access to predefined applications, also require total freedom to install anything they need on their desktop
• Mobile clients who often lack network connection

For each of these groups, we provided a different, yet cost-effective, variation of our Dynamic Desktop virtualization solution.

Availability up, TCO down

In less than 18 months Kluwer and CSC moved from developing a concept to a fully deployed Dynamic Desktop solution. Results include:

• Overall system availability remained well above 99.9%, and with improved stability and performance.
• End-user response is very positive, with many expressing amazement of how little disruption this major change caused.
• Use of desktops and laptops has declined by 90% in favor of virtual desktops.
• Kluwer TCO, as far as in scope for this project, has decreased by 7.5% structurally.

  Related Information

  Download the entire Kluwers virtualization case study (PDF).

  Learn more about Dynamic Desktop.