“Having successfully implemented Citrix in Saradar Bank and its 7 locations, LogistiX S.A.L., the multi-service Company of Saradar Group is aiming to expand Citrix Deployment to these companies, allowing them to access applications running in its Central site, with the same level of security and ease of use and without big investments in hardware and software.”
– Mr. Charbel Bou Habib, IT Director, BANQUE SARADAR S.A.L.

:: SARADAR BANK sal

As one of Lebanon’s major financial institutions, Saradar bank, a member of the Saradar Group, comprises approximately 500 users.

The bank’s decision to switch to Server-Based Computing Technology using Citrix was prompted by the need to provide customers with the highest level of service available in a very competitive and rapidly changing market.

:: The Challenge: Rapid Delivery of Applications

Since Traditional Client Server 2/3-tier architecture is the base infrastructure of Saradar’s application deployment, supporting and maintaining the 500 machine PC Park, which is distributed in 7 locations across the country, were costing the IT department entirely too much time and effort.

Mr. Charbel Bou Habib - Bank Saradar’ s IT Director, was driven to search for a solution that would both solve the problem and increase productivity.

“Investing in Citrix technology was an adventurous move in Lebanon, because we were among the first big structures thinking to go for a ‘full centralization’, taking into consideration the low availability and the high cost of Communications infrastructure,” said Mr. Bou Habib.

“In no time, we discovered it was a good decision because we became able to deploy many classical client/server applications into remote locations with a very acceptable WAN bandwidth and without intervention on the user's PC. Moreover, we have upgraded our MS Office 97 to 2000 application for all users and in only one day,” he added.

Indeed, the main advantage for a big moving structure like Saradar Group is that the infrastructure of any remote site, including the WAN bandwidth, have been designed and sized once and for all to accommodate the number of users and not withstanding any application that may be deployed in the future.

:: Implementing Citrix MetaFrame Application server Software

“When we first heard about Citrix, we decided to set up a small ‘lab’ with an evaluation copy of the software to measure up to which extent Citrix was able to handle all of our running applications, sometimes standard, and sometimes more private and tailored. After a few weeks of intensive tests with the assistance of our suppliers and business partners, we found out that there were almost no limitations and decided to adopt the Citrix Solution,” stated the IT Director.

One year after the launching of the Citrix deployment and by building a Citrix application server farm on 10 MF servers running Citrix Load balancing services, Mr. Charbel Bou Habib recalled, “Bank Saradar’s IT team has now a complete expertise that allows us to deploy Citrix in a whole distant location, on around 20 client machines, in less than 3 hours.” “After that, any modifications to standard desktop configurations including adding new icons and applications are made once on the server from the centralized IT location of LogistiX,” he added.

:: Cost and Savings from Application Deployment

With the centralized application deployment capability of MetaFrame, Bank Saradar has saved tremendous man power days and hence money.

Indeed, allowing the IT department to configure, manage and enable secure applications access from one centralized location, has not only reduced support costs but has also contributed to a lower total cost of ownership through improved IT staff productivity.
“More than 200 of our PCs are from the first Pentium generation, bought in 1995” stated Mr. Charbel Bou Habib. “These PCs were configured with Windows NT.4 workstation and used to run MS Office 95 and other client/server applications, in a LAN environment. All these PCs were to be replaced if we wanted to upgrade to MS Windows 2000 or MS Office 2000 the classical way, or even if we wanted to run locally Oracle runtime or Oracle Discoverer”. However, investing in Citrix technologies allowed Bank Saradar to extend the life of these PCs by having exactly the same configuration and setup. “We will be able to set up in the future new branches or locations with thin clients or diskless workstations. Hence, improving security and lowering cost.”

:: Future Plans

“Integrating the other Saradar Group Companies into LogistiX IT Network will be the next step,” said Mr. Charbel Bou Habib. He went on to explain, “Using Citrix will make this job easier. We will be starting with office applications, then mail and publications, and finally the various core business applications. Later on, we will allow some ‘officers’ to access their ‘usual’ desktop from home or any other location, over the Internet, using the Citrix Extranet VPN software.”