Case Study: DeWitt Stern achieves cost-effective VDI rollout and Windows 7 migration with Nutanix

Insurance Brokerage Uses Nutanix for VDI rollout to Migrate to Windows 7 with Repurposed PCs

DeWitt Stern, a New York–based insurance brokerage, needed a cost-effective way to support remote employees and migrate desktops to Windows 7 while extending the life of three‑year‑old workstations. Traditional VDI options requiring a Fibre Channel SAN were estimated at roughly $150K with limited redundancy and poor ROI, so the IT team sought a smaller, more efficient solution that could deliver good performance and centralized management.

They deployed a compact 2U, 4‑node Nutanix Complete Cluster with VMware View and a thin Windows‑7 client on repurposed PCs, giving converged compute and storage with fast provisioning. The rollout cost about half of the comparable SAN configuration, delivered faster, more reliable desktop performance, extended client hardware refresh from three to six+ years, simplified management, and scaled to support 100 users (with XenApp published apps for remote staff).

Dewitt Stern

Peter Emmel

Assistant Vice President, DeWitt Stern Group, Inc.