Case Study: Northern Arizona University achieves major cost savings and scalable virtual desktop delivery with Citrix

Using Citrix solutions, university supports tremendous growth at lower costs

Northern Arizona University (NAU), a public university serving nearly 28,000 students across 30+ locations, faced rapidly expanding IT demands—admissions grew 220% since 2003—while its IT staff did not. The university needed to replace aging thin clients, consolidate servers, cut costs, and provide flexible, secure access to academic systems and graphics‑intensive software without adding a large operational burden.

NAU deployed Citrix XenServer, XenDesktop and XenApp to virtualize servers, desktops and applications, delivering campus services and thin‑client access in labs, libraries and specialized units like a dental lab. The result: a 5:1 reduction in physical servers and 80% virtualization, major savings in power, cooling and hardware, faster management (over 300 VMs created in two hours), improved uptime, and greater student/faculty flexibility—plus pilots for virtualized GPU and mobile access.

Northern Arizona University

Tobias Kreidl

Academic Computing Team Lead