Introduction
How can client PCs and data, dispersed over departments and branch offices, be efficiently managed while enhancing security levels? This is a common concern for many corporations and municipalities. Tsukuba City of Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan, found its solution in desktop virtualization.
Home to many universities and leading edge research institutions,Tsukuba City of Ibaraki Prefecture is known as a science technology hub of Japan. The municipality of Tsukuba has long been actively engaged in the implementation and operation of innovative IT systems.
For example, PCs are controlled under three security status levels—prohibited, limited, or monitored status—according to the user’s task and authority level. In addition, using PCs outside of the office and writing data to USB memory devices are restricted. Furthermore, the city’s IT system uses separate OSs for its mission critical system which accesses information about citizens and its internal information system—dual booting required users to select the OS according to their task to avoid simultaneous access to both systems while reducing the number of terminals.Reason to Be Selected
Highlights:
What caught the interest of Tsukuba City for its IT solution were thin clients or desktop virtualization. The city’s approach to the technology dates back 10 years.
“From around the time the Information Network Center was launched, we had started searching for a new client environment.Demonstrations showed that desktop virtualization was extremely effective. We first were attracted by benefits related to security and operational management—there was no risk of data loss because terminals did not store any data whatsoever and security patches and policy settings could be distributed in batch. On top of that, centralized management could simplify otherwise extremely complicated software license management,” explains Mr. Hiroyuki Tsukamoto, Chief, Information Systems Division, General AffairsDepartment of Tsukuba City.
However, despite their interest, at the time the solution was unable to support the city’s self-developed applications and shortcomings of the network forced them to give up the implementation.
It was the new municipal building, opened in May 2010, that put desk-top virtualization back on the table. The city recognized that there location to the new office was a good opportunity to review their client environment. During the intervening years, virtualization technology had advanced and previous issues had been resolved. The city concluded that time was ripe to introduce desktop virtualization.
Following the decision, the city drew up the specifications, con-ducted the bid, and as a result selected NEC’s Virtual PC Center thin client system (hereinafter VPCC) as their solution. NEC Fielding undertook the onsite implementation.
For Tsukuba, the greatest advantage of NEC’s VPCC was its virtualized PC sharing technology—a method which allows multiple users to share a common application environment.
“Our survey on PC usage had showed that, contrary to our expectation, quite a few terminals were left unused by staff members who were out of the office for meetings, business trips, or absence on leave. Therefore we determined that by adopting virtualized PC sharing technology, instead of having one PC for every staff, we could build an environment with a PC for each of the staff members work-ing the same hours,” explains Mr. Tsukamoto.
Details
With the adoption of virtualized PC sharing, the information system environment was greatly reduced from over 1000 PCs to 700 virtualized PCs plus a minimal number of traditional PCs for specific operations. Mr. Kazami comments, “We have 700 virtualized PCs for 1000staff working with the information system in the main office which demonstrates that we are making maximum use of our resources.
Shifting from an environment with one PC per staff member to this new environment with just enough PCs for the simultaneously work-ing staff helped us achieve significant reductions.”
Throughout the system configuration process, great attention was paid to improving usability. With the new system, staff who engage in tasks with both the internal information system and the mission critical system which accesses citizen data no longer need to reboot the OS when switching systems. “This was achieved by completely separating the environment and network of the two systems. The mission critical system requires a PC installed with an OS and wiredLAN, while the information system is used by accessing a virtualizedPC via wireless LAN,” explains Mr. Yuichi Numajiri, Assistant Man-ager, Information Systems Division, General Affairs Department ofTsukuba City.Recommended
| Lat: | 36.082 |
| Lng: | 140.078 |
| Type: | |
| Region: | Asia |
| Scale: | City |
| Field: | Governance |
| City: | Tokyo |