Case Study: Stara achieves centralized desktop management, €0.5M savings and greater workforce flexibility with Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp

Stara, Helsinki’s construction service, improves IT management with XenDesktop

Stara, the City of Helsinki’s construction and maintenance department, manages streets, parks and seasonal crews from about 25 permanent and temporary sites. Its 1,500–2,000 workers rely on a 14-person IT team that struggled with time‑consuming PC maintenance, onsite repairs and slow provisioning across roughly 800 desktops—challenges made worse by summer staffing spikes and imminent retirements constrained by budget.

Stara deployed a Citrix solution (XenDesktop and XenApp) on Dell Wyse thin clients, with replication across two data centers and NetScaler load balancing, to centralize desktops and apps. The change cut update time dramatically (publishing to 400 desktops in hours), enabled sub‑minute provisioning, improved remote support, let users pick up sessions at any location, extended hardware life and reduced energy and hardware costs (about €0.5M estimated), freeing IT to focus on proactive work.

Stara

Vesa Konttila

Systems Specialist