Case Study: Universität Duisburg‑Essen achieves greater flexibility and reduced administration costs with VMware Horizon (VMware)

Flexible learning from any location, on any device

The University of Duisburg‑Essen, a large German research and teaching institution with about 45,000 students, faced an ageing, hard‑to‑manage IT landscape across multiple faculties. IT teams struggled with diverse operating systems, BYOD demands and numerous devices and peripherals, and needed to improve resource utilisation and cut administration costs while meeting students’ and academics’ expectations.

The university’s CViS competence cluster adopted VMware Horizon to virtualise student pools, staff desktops and specialist scientific environments, replacing fat clients with zero clients and centralising management. The move delivered faster, more reliable infrastructure, around a 60% reduction in pool administration costs, ubiquitous access to personal virtual desktops and applications (including GPU‑accelerated scientific computing), streamlined licensing and better use of existing hardware.

Universität Duisburg-Essen

André Kreft

CIO and Dean of the Department of Biology