Cheshire East Borough Council is using Centrix WorkSpace iQ, an end-user computing analytics offering from Centrix Software, to review its current IT estate and provide intelligence on the dynamics of its user environment.
The Council, which operates a Shared ICT service with Cheshire West & Chester Council, is using the analytics offering as part of its desktop transformation initiative.
It has completed the first phase of its discovery and review process across entire desktop estate. Under phase two, the council will use WorkSpace iQ to identify which users and devices are good candidates for desktop virtualisation.
The local authority utilised WorkSpace iQ to analysed its installed application and hardware assets and to gather detailed intelligence on how its users consume and use the council’s IT resources.
The Centrix offering provides the council with a platform for discovering, monitoring and metering IT assets and service consumption across large-scale end-user computing environments.
With WorkSpace iQ, the council’s IT teams has been able to establish the usage of current resources, the number of users accessing services, and empirical data for an optimised Microsoft Enterprise Agreement renewal.
The council also established the potential areas of cost saving relating to technology investment and a true picture of its application landscape, including usage of core and non-core applications, connected users and virtualisation.
Cheshire East ICT programme manager Alan Myatt said their desktop estate is based on Windows XP and so they are making plans to migrate to a supported desktop operating system.
"Centrix WorkSpace iQ has enabled us to plan for a more flexible, user-centric desktop transformation, as well as identify optimisation opportunities around our current environment along the way," Myatt said.
