Case Study: Exxaro cuts IT costs and boosts mobile productivity with Citrix virtual desktop infrastructure

Exxaro enables smarter working and slashes IT costs with Citrix virtual computing

Exxaro, a leading South African mining group with 14 operating divisions and a R71 billion market capitalisation, struggled with distributed “fat‑client” environments across widely dispersed field offices. The IT team faced high support and licensing costs, slow application performance for remote teams, and the need to centralise control to improve responsiveness, collaboration and security while enabling mobile workstyles.

Working with Citrix and Datacentrix, Exxaro implemented a Citrix virtual desktop infrastructure (XenDesktop, XenServer, NetScaler, Receiver, Branch Repeater) for more than 4,000 users and launched a BYOD program. Centralising apps and data cut IT support costs by R5 million per year, extended PC lifecycles by turning desktops into thin clients, improved application performance and collaboration across locations, and strengthened data security.

Exxaro

Ian Brown

CIO