Case Study: La Cité expands access to 3D graphics and streamlines lab management with VMware Horizon

La Cité Virtualizes College Computer Labs Enabled with Advanced 3D Graphics

La Cité, Ottawa’s largest French‑language college with about 5,000 students, faced an aging lab infrastructure of 65 computer labs and more than 1,000 workstations. The machines were noisy, power‑hungry and slow to boot, access to graphics‑intensive engineering and design applications was limited, and IT was overwhelmed maintaining many different images across labs.

The college virtualized its workstations with VMware Horizon on Dell servers equipped with NVIDIA GRID GPUs, repurposing 550 desktops and adding 450 zero‑clients to create a 1,000‑seat virtual desktop environment. The solution delivered workstation‑level 3D performance, cut login times from roughly 10 minutes to 2, expanded access to specialized apps (including remote/BYOD access), reduced lab footprint/noise/heat, and significantly lowered administrative effort.

La Cité

Francois Barberie

CAD Instructor