Case Study: National College of Ireland cuts exam timetable by two-thirds and boosts student IT performance with Citrix VDI-in-a-Box

National College of Ireland forecasts a future of BYOD students

National College of Ireland (NCI) is a Dublin-based tertiary college with about 3,500 students that has seen rapid growth in courses and resource-intensive software while relying on aging PCs. Rising BYOD demand and poor performance—most notably end-of-year computing exams that took three days to complete because of slow logins—meant the IT team needed a future-proof way to support diverse devices and heavy applications.

Working with partner Zinopy, NCI deployed Citrix VDI‑in‑a‑Box with NetScaler and Citrix Receiver to deliver task-specific virtual desktops. The pilot cut the exam timetable by two thirds (from three days to one), reduced legacy PC boot times from ~10 minutes to 30 seconds, eliminated student performance complaints, and enabled secure BYOD access with scalable resource allocation for multimedia and other demanding applications.

National College of Ireland

Frank Flynn

Manager