POSTPRODUCTION MANAGEMENT OF THE CITRIX ACCESS PLATFORM ENVIRONMENT

POSTPRODUCTION MANAGEMENT OF THE CITRIX ACCESS PLATFORM ENVIRONMENT

Citrix Access Suite is now rolled out across the enterprise. Your users are happy, and your IT staff has joined the swelling ranks of on-demand access evangelists. Performance should be compared with both expectations and established success metrics. The results should be reported to both management and users.

Measure User Satisfaction

One method for measuring user satisfaction is to send out surveys asking users to grade the project on various criteria, including performance, reliability, how well it meets expectations, ease of use, training, and implementation. Compare the user satisfaction results with those obtained in surveys taken before the Citrix Access Suite deployment. You can also use the surveys to find out what other attributes users would like.

Rate Project Milestones

Were project milestones reached on time? For instance, one milestone may have been to migrate all headquarters users within 60 days of the project start. Record and publish the results.

Update the Budget

Measure actual expenditures against the budget. Update the financial feasibility model with the project costs as well as with costs as they accrue going forward. This will enable a return on investment (ROI) to be calculated for the project over a three-to-five-year period.

Measure Access Platform Benefits

During the beta and the production deployment, you established service levels for your on-demand access environment. These service levels represent an agreement between the IT staff and the user community. Part of the agreement is that the IT staff will manage the system to meet certain established metrics and goals. The data needed to establish whether these goals are being met needs to be collected diligently and continuously. For example, if part of the SLA is 99.99 percent system uptime, every blue screen or other server outage needs to be recorded, as well as major network disruptions for a given region or data center.

Publish Results

The collected data does no good unless the appropriate people review it. There should be a policy of no secrets between the IT staff and the user community. Establish a reporting cycle as part of the SLA. It may not be critical for a user to see daily status, but it may be appropriate to display quarterly or monthly SLA results. This will depend on your corporate culture and what your internal reporting capabilities are.

Establish a Steering Committee

A technique for keeping IT staff and the user community focused on continuous improvement is to create a committee made up of both groups. The user representatives should be as diverse as the reach of the on-demand access project. If the on-demand access environment is multinational, a representative from each major region or country should participate. The exact scope and responsibility of the committee will depend on your corporate culture, but it should at least evaluate and recommend changes to the access platform.

Provide a Forum for Feedback "Outside the Box"

The help desk will record user problems and outages. In addition, you should provide a way for any employee of the company to give suggestions or constructive criticism. This input should be reviewed and evaluated by the steering committee. We've found that brilliant suggestions sometimes come from the most unlikely places.

Make Facts-Based Decisions on the Future Direction of Your Citrix Environment

Collecting and reporting on established SLAs and keeping the users involved result in invaluable information for making decisions about the future of your company's on-demand access initiative. Even after a successful rollout, there may be factions within the company that remain unconvinced as to the value of on-demand access. Having facts to back up a recommendation to expand the infrastructure or add applications can mean the difference between ultimate success or failure of the environment.

Establish a Citrix Access Suite Lab

To maintain a high quality of service, it is necessary to maintain a lab environment where new versions of software and hardware can be evaluated and tested. This lab does not need to be on-site. In fact, manufacturers often allow their facilities to be used for this purpose, as long as you agree to share the results. Regularly check the Web sites of Microsoft and Citrix for the latest information on changes and upgrades. The Citrix knowledge base, in particular, is an excellent place to find this kind of information. Since your Citrix environment is now tested and stable, any change must be rigorously evaluated and tested before deployment.

Share Your Experiences

After getting the proper clearance from management, seek out other companies that have undergone similar on-demand access deployments, and offer to share information. Even if a nondisclosure agreement is necessary, the result will be an enrichment of the on-demand access environment at each company. Participate in Citrix- related forums and events from Citrix and Microsoft to keep up on the latest developments and share your experiences. Finally, seek out peers on the Internet, in discussion groups, chat rooms, e-forums, or other areas.

Deploying Windows Terminal Server and Citrix Presentation Server as the standard for application delivery is a rapidly evolving technology. Hardware and software manufacturers are eager to help you publicize your success by writing and publishing success stories of their products in this environment. In this way, you can help contribute to the growing momentum behind this new and tremendously exciting industry.



Citrix Access Suite 4 for Windows Server 2003. The Official Guide
Citrix Access Suite 4 for Windows Server 2003: The Official Guide, Third Edition
ISBN: 0072262893
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 137

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