Case Study: Waterstones achieves fast, seamless VDI desktops and simplified management with AppSense DesktopNow

Waterstones transforms legacy desktops with VDI and AppSense

Waterstones, a leading UK bookseller with nearly 300 shops, faced a legacy desktop environment after relocating its head office: users were tied to individual fat‑client PCs, there was limited central management, no profile management, non‑standardized images and a poor user experience. The IT team needed a flexible solution to let staff work from any workstation or remotely while simplifying desktop administration.

Waterstones implemented a VDI and Citrix refresh with AppSense DesktopNow (Environment Manager and Performance Manager) alongside IBM servers, VMware/XenDesktop and NetApp storage, rolling the solution out to retail sites supporting 1,200 XenApp users. The deployment reduced the number of build images, enabled fast logons and seamless session continuity, removed GPOs and logon scripts, resolved a CPU bottleneck and significantly improved performance and manageability.

Waterstones

Mike Bookham

Infrastructure Architect