Kane County: a VMware Case Study

Just west of Chicago’s Cook County lies Kane County, the fourth largest in Illinois. Thanks to its fast growth, currently 17th fastest in the nation, Kane County will soon be the third biggest county in Illinois. Largely an affluent commuter suburb of Chicago, the county boasts a population of just over 400,000 citizens, 1,450 county employees, and a yearly budget of $460 million.
Kane County’s IT group supports 2,000 PCs across a region of 500 square miles, all with a team of four desktop technicians. A given desktop help ticket could involve a total drive time of two hours. Furthermore, the hardware and staff costs of replacing 2,000 PCs every four years really add up. Kane County is using VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) to help manage their dispersed desktop user base, lower IT staff costs and increase user satisfaction.

Results
- Eight-year refresh cycle on thin clients lowers capital and operating expenses surrounding hardware refresh.
- Mobile laptops connect to hosted virtual desktops using wireless cards, keeping sensitive information in the datacenter and safe from theft.
- Per-desktop hardware costs reduced to under $300 -- a 70% reduction from fully provisioned desktops.
- Sensitive county health services applications running in hosted desktops are now HIPAA compliant.
- Legacy applications that are terminal services incompatible run flawlessly in hosted VDI desktops.
- VDI helps with patch and upgrade management, including mobile police units which took up to three months to upgrade in the past.
- Kane County is deploying 1,200 VDI terminals countywide.