From a Microsoft Case Study:
Client: The Woodlands
Development Company
WS2008 Project developed by Insource

Real Estate Company Appraises Presentation Virtualization, Projects Hardware Costs Recoupment In 24 Months

Implementation was quick and simple. It took 14 minutes to set up the operating system. That’s eight hours faster than deploying the previous solution.

-- Jonathon Gardner, Network Administrator, The Woodlands Development Company

Client Profile
The Woodlands Development Company develops residential and commercial real estate. It wants to offer mission critical applications and terminal services to remote users through easy Internet access. After implementing Windows Server® 2008, the IT team identified lower operating costs and expects to recoup hardware cost with software savings in just 24 months.

Business Needs
The Company presents a multi-layered business model, ranging from residential and commercial real estate development to apartment, country club, and resort management. The original IT infrastructure is a Windows Server® 2003 native environment with 30 Hewlett-Packard (HP) ProLiant servers, including: 3 domain controllers, 7 terminal servers, 8 servers running Microsoft® SQL Server®, 4 data servers, numerous application servers, and 250 HP desktop computers. Connectivity between sites is provided through p2p T1 or 100 megabyte (MB) fiber optics. The Company also supports ten remote locations, with 5–100 employees at each location, which compose over half of the Citrix environment users.

Ideally, the new solution would meet the following requirements:

• Deploy applications through simple Web access regardless of connectivity speeds.
• Provide more secure, remote access to terminal service applications and desktops.
• Deliver the same services with greater performance and at a reduced cost.
• Reduce total number of servers required for published applications.

The challenge would be whether Windows Server 2008 Presentation Virtualization and the Hyper-V™ features could provide a
suitable platform for remote deployment of the Company’s centralized applications.

Other key considerations in the evaluation included the following:

• Cost of hardware, software, and annual licensing.
• Performance, including deployment speed, application responsiveness and reliability.
• Interoperability with existing financial and point-of-sale applications.
• Ease of use from an end user perspective.

Solution
Insource Technology, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, evaluated Windows Server 2008 on behalf of The Woodlands Development Company. It compared cost and performance to the existing solution consisting of Windows Server 2003 R2 with Citrix Metaframe Presentation Server 4.0. Other than the existing Citrix solution, the Company had not considered evaluating any other vendors or products.

The Woodlands Development Company IT team decided to install Windows Server 2008 Enterprise on an HP ProLiant DL380 G5 server, deploying virtual machines for two servers running Windows Server 2008 Standard, to support approximately 100 users in a financial application for the duration of the evaluation.

Network Administrator Jon Gardner states, “Implementation was quick and simple. It took 14 minutes to set up the operating system out of the box. That’s an average savings of eight man-hours compared to deploying the previous solution.” Anticipated system compatibility issues were handled by downloading hot fixes and running applications under Windows 2003 compatibility mode.

According to Gardner, the technical team appreciates the ease and speed of implementation, as well as virtualization and hypervisor technology capabilities. They are using the 64-bit version of Windows Server 2008 Enterprise with Hyper-V beta to power two virtual machines running Windows Server 2008 RC1; one for Virtualization Presentation and the other for Terminal Services. Therefore, instead of establishing individual remote desktops, they can now use the Terminal Services (TS) RemoteApp™ feature to deliver applications with easy remote access through the Terminal Services Gateway or by publishing a shortcut to the users’ desktops.

Going forward, the goal is to secure applications and data in a central location and remove them from laptops and branch locations, which now use remote access.

Benefits
The Woodlands Development Company reports two significant initial benefits from using Windows Server 2008, in addition to the remarkable 14-minute installation with its resulting savings of eight-man hours of professional labor. In labor costs, this translates to almost $1,000 per server deployed.

• First, the Company reported an immediate annual gain of $5,300 by not renewing Citrix licensing. Their total cost of ownership (TCO) is reduced by the same amount.
• Second, it had an immediate return on investment (ROI) due to the lower costs of software and reduction in the number of servers necessary.

In addition to the ease of use and implementation, the Company gained improvements in functionality. Other benefits include:

• Easy access to business applications over the Internet enables users to work from any location for greater productivity and expects additional savings for the company.
• Secure remote access to centralized applications and data removes the risk of data loss from laptops or other locations.
• Secure virtual access to terminal services eliminates the costs of maintaining servers at distributed locations.
• Hyper-V technology enables terminal server consolidation to further reduce costs.

Windows Server 2008 delivers faster, more flexible application deployment, reduces operating costs, and enables easier centralized server management. “This provides us a viable published application solution, while reducing overall cost, number of servers, and energy consumption,” says Gardner.

WIndows Server 2008
Windows Server 2008, with built-in Web and virtualization technologies, enables you to increase the reliability and flexibility of your server infrastructure. New virtualization tools, Web resources, and security enhancements help you save time, reduce costs, and provide a platform for a dynamic and optimized datacenter. Powerful new tools like IIS 7.0, Server Manager, and Windows® PowerShell, allow you to have more control over your servers and streamline Web, configuration, and management tasks. Advanced security and reliability enhancements like Network Access Protection and the Read-Only Domain Controller option for Active Directory Domain Services harden the operating system and help protect your server environment to ensure you have a solid foundation on which to build your business.