Case Study: Maricopa County Sheriff's Office achieves reduced downtime, improved dispatcher productivity, and enhanced data protection with VMware Horizon

Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office Turns to Desktop Virtualization to Reduce Downtime, Improve Productivity, and Protect Sensitive Data

The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO), which serves the fourth-largest U.S. county and manages about 3,000 network endpoints, faced persistent dispatcher downtime, slow access to critical information, high hardware and maintenance demands, and the need to better secure sensitive law enforcement data as it moved into a new 911 dispatch center. To address these issues, MCSO began virtualizing roughly 100 dispatcher desktops as the first phase of a broader virtualization initiative.

Using VMware Horizon (built on its existing vSphere environment), MCSO deployed two virtual desktops per dispatcher—one for the CAD system and one for email, browsing, and internal apps—isolating sensitive systems from Internet access. The result was faster logins, reduced latency and interruptions, a smaller hardware footprint, simpler maintenance and software updates, and improved data protection, with plans to expand virtualization across the agency.

Maricopa County Sheriff's Office

Chip Lemons

Senior Lead Systems Admin