MD of Greenview’s IT transformation
The Municipal District (MD) of Greenview has changed how its users interact with information technology while simultaneously reducing risk and creating opportunities for cost savings.
The organization was tasked with upgrading its information technology (IT) network in 2021. This included upgrading IT infrastructure, improving the internet connectivity of its facilities, and creating ‘redundancy’ to ensure the organization’s IT could continue its operations should an outage occur at its primary site.
As part of this project, the organization saw an opportunity to implement a virtualized desktop infrastructure (VDI). This innovative solution allows users to work on servers via their workstations.
The practicality and flexibility of the VDI approach are unquestionable. It affords users the luxury of accessing their work desktop anytime, anywhere, paving the way for more dynamic and flexible work arrangements. Furthermore, it significantly reduces IT downtime and minimizes hardware expenditure.
Greenview’s internal IT organization also reaped substantial benefits by taking this approach. Greenview is the largest municipal district in Alberta (nearly 33,000 square kilometres), which makes it difficult for IT professionals to provide onsite support. The implementation of VDI removed the operational and logistical challenges associated with maintaining an IT network in a municipality of this size.
This solution also showed its worth during the recent wildfires when Greenview swiftly granted remote access to all its employees, keeping nearly all its municipal operations functional. It was a tangible demonstration of VDI's potential in emergency management, disaster recovery and business continuity.
For the MD of Greenview, these benefits are the product of careful planning (i.e., coordinating a variety of projects, including fiber upgrades) and methodically working with their stakeholders to adopt this technology.
For more information, please send an DanB [at] abmunis.ca (email) to Dan Blackburn, Senior Director of Growth & Innovation.
