Boosting collaboration and teamwork

IGEL says that Anthony Nolan, the pioneering blood cancer charity, has implemented UD3 desktops to support an organizational-wide implementation of Windows 10 and provide rich multimedia capability for over 300 employees. This will boost collaboration and teamwork by enabling geographically dispersed staff to, among other things, set up video-based conference calls to work more productively. 

Founded in 1974, Anthony Nolan is a charity that makes lifesaving connections between people with blood cancer and incredible strangers ready to donate their stem cells. Every day, its register of more than 780,000 people gives families a future. And it’s a significant problem. Every 14 minutes, someone is diagnosed with blood cancer such as leukemia, lymphoma or myeloma. This meant that, last year, Anthony Nolan helped over 1,400 patients receive a second chance of life. 

A long term user of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), Anthony Nolan uses Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops as its centralized content collaboration platform. Users are based at the charity’s headquarters in Hampstead Heath, London, a laboratory on the Royal Free Hospital site and a Cell Therapy Centre located in the grounds of Nottingham Trent University. 

Ilan Jacobson, Anthony Nolan’s Infrastructure Manager, says, “Our legacy thin client terminals didn’t support Citrix HDX, and we wanted a solution which would work with Windows 10. This informed our decision to choose IGEL.” 

After a trial period where ‘demo’ units were tested, new UD3 multimedia endpoints were supplied by Metaphor IT, a Citrix Gold partner and IGEL reseller based in the City of London. 

IGEL supports transition to cloud-based applications 

Anthony Nolan has transitioned to deploy Windows to embrace the cloud and was looking for an environment which is reliable, responsive and up-to-date and to deliver this whilst ensuring the best end-user experience possible. 

Jacobson explains, “We have a mixed environment now. We’ve standardized on Microsoft Azure for cloud services and run various applications like Office 365, Dynamics 365 and a new HR solution. Citrix is hosted in our physical datacenter, along with various internal systems, databases, print servers and domain controllers. The IGEL endpoints are agnostic and happily support both routes to application delivery.

“It’s essential we’re able to work at our best because every year in the UK another 2,000 patients with blood cancer, and blood disorders, start their search to find a matching donor. Anthony Nolan must be there to help them find that donor and ensure they receive the support they need to live well after transplant,” adds Jacobson.

All IGEL endpoints have now been installed at Anthony Nolan’s various sites. The project was easy to complete as the UMS makes it simple to configure settings centrally and apply them to all devices over the network. 

Andrew Gee, IGEL’s VP Sales Northern Europe, says, “Anthony Nolan has a lot of people who work at the office, remotely and from hospital sites. The use of Windows 10, combined with our multimedia-optimized UD3 endpoints, mean its IT team can introduce new ways for people to work, boost efficiency without the worry that applications like video conferencing will fail or perform poorly. This project is a good example, therefore, of how IGEL offers a powerful solution for any organization going through the whole Windows 10 migration process.”