Case Study: The Co-operative Group achieves £1.5 million annual savings with Citrix XenDesktop

The Co-operative Group saves £1.5 million per year with Citrix

The Co-operative Group, a UK mutual with £14bn turnover, 120,000 employees and diverse retail and financial businesses, needed a more scalable, flexible and sustainable IT model as it moved into a new headquarters. Its legacy estate—18,000 desktops, 3,500 laptops, 1,400 applications and growing numbers of mobile and home-based workers—created high hardware, license, power and support costs and made application migration and future growth difficult.

The Group implemented Citrix XenDesktop (Platinum) with XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix NetScaler and AppDNA, shifting task workers to virtual desktops, introducing thin clients and hot-desking and streamlining applications. The new VDI environment (900 VMs on 48 blades) cut servers and licenses, decommissioned 80+ apps and delivered estimated savings of £1.5m per year (including ~£459k in lower energy costs), while enabling flexible working, faster application migration and greater operational agility.

The Co-operative Group

David Murrell

Head of Servers, Storage and Desktops