SAN JOSE, Calif. – December 14, 2011 – Seattle Children's, a premier child healthcare center; Diebold, Incorporated, a global leader in developing, implementing, and servicing advanced self-service and security delivery systems; and Seattle University are revolutionizing the way they deliver information to doctors and nurses, automated teller machine (ATM) users, and university students and faculty using the Cisco Unified Computing System™  (Cisco UCS™) and desktop virtualization.

Desktop virtualization, a new computing trend that connects devices such as thin clients, tablets and smart phones with applications and information centrally stored in data centers rather than on PCs or laptops, is being rapidly adopted across a wide variety of industries because it reduces costs, helps to secure data, and improves performance.  The hosted virtualized desktop market is forecast by analysts to accelerate through the next two years to an estimated 70 million units by 2014, approximately 15% of all enterprise desktops/laptops worldwide. 

But there are also challenges: running multiple desktops, operating systems, and applications on a single server demands large amounts of computing memory, increases management complexity, and can increase power and operating costs. Customers worldwide are choosing the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) as the ideal platform to host virtual desktop solutions based on performance, scalability, ease of management, and memory density, providing industry-leading density of hosted virtual desktops per server blade without sacrificing performance or user experience.  Cisco UCS is the foundation to support the Cisco Virtualization Experience Infrastructure (VXI) — an end-to-end systems approach that delivers the next generation virtual workspace by unifying virtual desktops, voice, and video.

Seattle Children's, Diebold, and Seattle University are among the thousands of companies benefitting from the unique UCS computing model, which integrates computing, network, storage access, and management in a single cohesive system that reduces management complexity, requires less infrastructure, improves IT agility, and reduces the overall total cost of ownership.

Seattle Children's

"Our Cisco UCS decision was a game-changer," said Jake Hughes, Chief Technical Architect at Seattle Children's. "It's not just ideal for desktop virtualization, it also proved to be the right platform for our server virtualization, security infrastructure, and management efficiency." 

At Seattle Children's clinicians were accessing 6,000 workstations and 400 applications through a system that was becoming increasingly difficult to use, and complex for IT to support and manage. Denali Advanced Integration helped Seattle Children's to deploy a solution with Citrix XenDesktop® hosted on Cisco UCS to centralize information and applications in the data center. The solution greatly improved application performance, increased scalability (up to 120 users per server blade with no performance degradation,) and eliminated service outages due to incompatible components.

"Feedback from our clinical users has been overwhelmingly positive," said Wes Wright, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Seattle Children's.   "They can walk into a patient's room and within seconds access all their information—it's much more efficient and provides more time for patient and provider interaction. " 

Diebold, Incorporated

Diebold, a leading global provider of integrated self-service delivery and security systems, adopted Cisco UCS as its platform to introduce a new ATM prototype using desktop virtualization to boost operational efficiency, enable faster failure recovery and more rapid software upgrades and services deployment.

"We held a competition to compare servers in terms of price, performance, and innovation, with an independent firm to do the evaluation," said Mark Kropf, emerging technologies, Diebold. "Based on the survey and test results, Cisco UCS won in every category of comparison.  UCS was the only platform that could configure eight blades per chassis with up to 100 virtual machines per UCS blade, and deliver predictable performance to scale our ATMs in the field."

Using Cisco UCS as the computing platform for VMware View™, Diebold created "thin ATMs"-- information is centralized in Diebold's highly secure data center with very little hosted on the ATM itself, while remote display technology presents the ATM user interface to customers.   

"The virtualized ATM prototype minimizes the vulnerabilities of attacks, while the scalable architecture gives us an offering that we can deliver as a solution or set up as a managed service," said Kropf. "For ATM users, it means a greatly improved experience."

Seattle University

With VMware View hosted on Cisco UCS, Seattle University, the premier independent university of the Northwest, enables students and faculty to access the computer lab from their residence halls, homes, and other offsite locations through the high-speed internet connection linked to the VMware virtual desktop infrastructure. This solution reduced costs and management complexity while freeing up much-needed physical space on campus.  Students can now access the university's computer labs from anywhere, giving them flexible options for study and reducing commuter travel, while the university has improved IT management and reduced operating expenses.

"We are managing open computers in 17 of the 32 educational and administrative buildings, residence halls, and student areas on campus, with plans to grow into the other buildings as well," says Chuck Porter, Chief Information Officer. "The online solution is literally without boundaries. Cisco UCS has provided centralized management across campus to modernize our learning environment and provide quicker response times to support student and faculty educational needs."

Additional Resources

• Attend webcast on December 14 featuring Seattle Children's and Diebold
• Cisco Unified Computing website
• Cisco VXI Desktop Virtualization solution
• Seattle Children's customer case study
• Seattle University customer case study
• Read press release: University of Tennessee at Knoxville selected Citrix XenDesktop running on Cisco UCS to provide free, anytime access to desktops, applications, and resources
• 2011 Citrix Ready Business Solution Winner
• 2010 VMworld Award Winner
• Read Cisco Data Center  blog
• Learn more: Cisco Data Center solutions
• Cisco Data Center Services website

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