Greenwich puts PCs on a diet
Thin clients for all
Greenwich Council has replaced almost all of its PCs with thin client computers to help cut costs and greenhouse gas emissions.
The lightweight, low power machines are used by 3,000 staff at the London borough to access applications that are streamed from a central server using Citrix technology.
Ian Henderson, interim head of e-government services at the council, said replacing its old desktop PCs had reduced its power usage by cutting running costs and CO2 emissions, it has also standardised security across its network and allowed staff to work more flexibly.
"All of our key systems are hosted centrally, such as those handling casework and financials," he said.
"It is part of the modernisation programme at the council, underpinned by the ICT, which is helping to support new ways of working.
"Just recently there was a leak in the roof in a council building and it enabled us to move everybody to an alternative location where they were able to log into other machines and continue working."
Thin client computers are used by most of the council's 4,000 computer users, covering staff working in many areas, including social care, housing and tourism services.
About 500 desktop and 500 laptop computers remain in use, with Henderson adding there are a handful of applications that still need to be run on PCs.
The council has also just struck a deal to upgrade and maintain the council's network infrastructure, with service provider Logicalis upgrading and implementing a LAN and WAN. It will see redundancy built into the network and 24-7 monitoring to minimise any outages.
The seven-year, £6m deal will also see Logicalis providing a VoIP network, which is expected to be completed in the next 18 months.
"Having all these applications hosted centrally is totally dependent on having a good network underneath," Henderson said.
Henderson said the council is also looking to use the bandwidth and reliability provided by its new telecoms network to offer new transactional services on its website in future.
The IT network will also support online services for use by visitors to the London 2012 Olympics, with two venues, the O2 dome and Greenwich Park, falling within the London borough.
Greenwich has a highly outsourced IT infrastructure, with Logicalis looking after its network infrastructure, IBM running its primary datacentre in Warwick, Northgate providing desktop and helpdesk support and Liberata running its financial systems.