Case Study: Dexia achieves ultimate mobility and business continuity with Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop

Dexia Gets ultimate mobility and flexibility with Citrix

Dexia, a European banking group with about 35,200 employees across 26 countries, faced an aging branch IT estate and a post‑merger need to deploy a new Java‑based banking application (FOXE) that wouldn’t run on existing PCs. The bank also needed greater flexibility for mobile work, simplified administration for more than 1,000 business‑critical roles (business continuity planning), and secure, sandboxed Internet access for certain user groups without replacing thousands of desktops.

Dexia implemented a Citrix‑based virtual desktop infrastructure using XenApp and XenDesktop, consolidating servers and delivering apps and Windows workloads to thin clients and locked‑down PCs; 6,000 thin clients at branches run on 400 HP servers, with 2,000 HQ PCs temporarily acting as thin clients and a plan to extend virtual desktops to about 18,000 employees. The solution standardized and centralized desktops, reduced hardware and management costs, enabled Mobile at Work, made BCP systematic, and provided sandboxed Internet access for ~500 users while supporting 400+ applications including FOXE.

Dexia

Thierry Abeels

Member of the Executive Board