Case Study: Wakefield and District Housing achieves dramatically faster log‑on times and reduced operating costs with IGEL thin clients

Wakefield and District Housing - Customer Case Study

Wakefield and District Housing (WDH), a not‑for‑profit landlord responsible for over 31,000 homes in the Wakefield district, needed a new virtual desktop infrastructure to improve user experience, simplify management and cut costs. Faced with long log‑on times at 75 locations (some taking up to 30 minutes), limited 1 Mbps ADSL links at many sites, and a growing mobile workforce, WDH selected IGEL and its thin client products—notably the IGEL UD5 LX and the IGEL Universal Management Suite—to deliver a faster, more manageable desktop solution.

IGEL deployed 200 IGEL UD5 LX units to 70 locations (eventually replacing 775 PCs) and used IGEL Universal Management Suite alongside DriveLock for device control and encryption. The result was dramatic: log‑on and application launch times fell from as much as 30 minutes to under 2 minutes, initial device setup took two hours versus five days for a competitor, and electricity savings enabled a rapid, single‑phase rollout in two weeks. IGEL’s solution also reduced management time, improved security and delivered clear measurable cost and performance benefits for WDH.

Wakefield and District Housing

Andrew Howard

Project Manager