Xen and the art of remote access

Trade

IT services group Calyx teamed up with Dublin-based mobile security provider Adaptive Mobile to ease Adaptive’s expansion into India – without infrastructure, dedicated lines or expensive office development.

Announcing the delivery of Adaptive Mobile’s first virtualised office, Calyx said it achieved this by virtualising its servers and applications using Citrix XenServer and Citrix XenApp.

Adaptive needed to provide instant support to a new Indian-based mobile operator client who, in accordance with India law, required local servicing. Adaptive used the opportunity to expand its development team overseas while retaining its development code and infrastructure in Dublin.

Adaptive’s IT manager, Jim Donnelly, and his team decided to build the Indian office while simultaneously recruiting staff. To support a growing workforce in this way, the firm needed an immediate IT infrastructure that was both secure and robust.

Donnelly explains: “The nature of our software makes the Adaptive Mobile development environment highly complex. All our development facilities and code are held in Dublin, so we needed to provide access that was both quick and secure.”

Concerned about the technical challenges, Donnelly’s team approached Calyx Group.

Calyx Group’s Peter Durnin takes up the story: “We told Adaptive that Citrix Delivery Center would allow them to deliver the necessary testing tools to the Indian team without moving valuable intellectual property from the Dublin HQ. The firm only needed a serviced office in Hyderabad; their staff could access everything securely over the web.”

Calyx used Citrix XenApp enterprise edition in conjunction with Citrix XenServer to create several virtual machines in Dublin for Adaptive. It could then deliver a full Windows desktop preloaded with the development tools needed by the offshore team. A standard internet connection was enough to give the developers all they needed, with no dropout or latency issues.

Adaptive brought a development team online quickly, growing to 10 people just eight weeks after the office opened, while developers worked flexibly via the company’s remote client VPN connection.

Read More: Deals done