December 18, 2009

Care provider Independent Living Group deploys hosted desktops

Reduces software maintenance and application management

By Leo King, www.computerworlduk.com

Independent Living Group has deployed 100 hosted desktops from supplier ThinkGrid, in an attempt to improve system efficiency and cut maintenance.

The care home firm, which looks after adults with learning disabilities, Huntington’s disease and Acquired Brain Injury, operates 43 learning and disability homes across south England. It will deploy the virtual desktops across these and its head office in Surrey.

The move to the new setup was spurred on by ILG’s decision to improve the flexibility of its desktop environment. Previously it had a Citrix-based setup, with desktop applications hosted by specialist care sector IT supplier Coldharbour.

ILG made the move to an entirely hosted desktop setup, over one weekend in August. The ThinkGrid-hosted setup is providing it with a fully supported and more easily scalable infrastructure, it said.

The change also removed the need to manage any software, patches, email and file servers, to update applications, or to manage software licences, it said. It also aided with remote working and disaster recovery.

Software typically used by ILG care and head office staff includes Microsoft Office and specialist care software. All of this is hosted on the new platform, alongside financial software.

Alex Korniak, IT consultant at the company, said that having systems in house can be “a huge cost and management burden”. The organisation opted for hosting in order to “drive greater efficiency in our day-to-day operations”.

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