The management team of ITW India Automotive Ltd always prefers to innovate and think out-of-the-box than follow the rut. So, when the time came to overhaul their IT infrastructure, which had become a tedious and costly affair to manage, they decided to go green and virtual by implementing NComputing’s affordable and energy-efficient desktop virtualization solution.

The Indian arm of the 100 year old, Chicago, USA-based Illinois Tool Works Inc., ITW India was set up in 2004 in Pune, India. It later expanded presence by setting up two more facilities at Chennai (2005) and Manesar (2012), respectively. ITW India Automotive Ltd designs and manufactures engineered plastic injection molded components and fasteners for automotive industries. The company has a turnover of over $25 million.

ITW India has expanded and grown exponentially in less than a decade. The company is ISO 14000 certified and has received Ford Q1 status, which is awarded by Ford to companies that excel in the following four areas: competent systems, constant improvement, enduring performance and satisfied customer.

Obsolete IT infrastructure was a bottleneck

ITW had an obsolete and traditional IT set up that was hampering the overall resource efficiency of the organization. The set up comprised individual PCs connected to a server. This resulted in high power consumption, decentralized data, and complex, time consuming and decentralized IT infrastructure management, enumerated Mr Prasad Bhattad, Manager—IT, ITW India Automotive Ltd.

“Modern machines have powerful processors, having more processing power than a typical user requires/consumes. So, we decided to find a solution that helps us use our IT and human resources to the optimal and is simple to deploy and manage,” he added.

NComputing provides the perfect solution

ITW evaluated many solutions including a few VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) solutions offered by Mumbai-based vendors but the cost of most solutions was almost double of the NComputing solution, affirmed Mr Prasad. He added: “When we were evaluating solutions, people discouraged us from going ahead with a VDI solution; they asserted that business applications won’t run effectively on a virtual desktop platform. But our experience has been extremely positive. We are running many business applications, such as SAP, Tally and Outlook, which work wonderfully well on the NComputing vSpace platform. At our Pune and Chennai locations, 25-35 concurrent users access the SAP business application on a daily basis but we haven’t encountered any performance related issue. The Manesar location has a total of 10 users; all are concurrent users accessing multiple office applications. The company is using the L-series thin client access devices on virtual vSpace server.

A solution that delivers great ROI

ITW deployed the NComputing solution in August 2012. “The deployment of NComputing access devices merely took two working days. It is only the process of centralizing data that took time. Now, we have a ready vSpace platform to which we keep adding more users/seats; it is an extremely simple task and can be done instantly through a plug and play process.” Mr Bhattad enumerated the value that the company is drawing from the NComputing solution:

“Great power savings: We are recording significant power savings. If we look at just one year’s power consumption of one location equipped with 45 NComputing seats (compared to the earlier set up comprising 45 traditional PCs), it is way lesser, mainly because NComputing devices consume 1-5 watts of power each, as compared to 110-125 watts consumed by a traditional PC.

“Simple to scale up: Every time we need to add a user, we can add a low cost NComputing seat instead of buying a PC/laptop that would typically cost between INR 30,000 to 35,000. So, there is an upfront hardware cost saving of up to 50 per cent.

“Centralized data and infrastructure management: We are managing the entire infrastructure and data from one console. Data and application access rights are pre-defined for each user. This lends enhanced security in a LAN-based infrastructure.

“Optimal use of IT resources: We are glad that we are making optimal use of the available IT infrastructure and manpower. The time required to maintain the infrastructure and provide tech-support to users is far less. Earlier, two engineers were required, but now only one engineer is doing the job with ease.”

Currently, all three ITW locations are running NComputing solution. The company has plans to add more seats. At present, the company has three servers, one each at their three respective locations. Plans are underway to integrate these three servers on one console, which will enable centralized monitoring and management of the entire IT infrastructure.

A role model for small businesses

The ITW management is happy with the change that NComputing’s desktop virtualization solution has brought about to the company’s IT landscape. “Many people come to see our set up in Pune. We have also recommended NComputing to many of our peers. Without doubt, NComputing is by far the best desktop virtualization solution available in the market today. It is definitely an ideal solution for SME/SMBs to automate their business processes in an economical way and save on hardware cost, power cost and IT infrastructure maintenance cost—factors that are invariably key concern areas for small businesses,” Mr Bhattad concluded.