INDUSTRYFinancial Services, Insurance

LOCATIONKansas City, MO

KEY CHALLENGES•Business was scaling fast,

adding employees and offices

•Existing customer service system was slow and couldn’t keep up with business needs

•Large IT implementations were too costly

SOLUTIONTo speed up response time to customers and boost employee efficiency, IPFS deployed VMware Horizon View virtual desktops integrated with Virident FlashMAX II high-speed storage devices.

BUSINESS BENEFITS•The VMware Horizon View

with Virident FlashMAX II solution scales, from 100 desktops to 1,000

•Response times are twice as fast as the prior solution

•A physical look-and-feel desktop and better user experience for each customer service employee improved staff performance

VMWARE CASE STUDY

Imperial PFS (IPFS) is a leading provider of premium financing to insureds, insurance agents, and brokers in the United States and Puerto Rico. Created by combining two strong premium finance brands—Premium Financing Specialists (PFS) and Imperial Credit Corporation (ICC)—Imperial PFS is powered by the teamwork of a regional sales force with a broad network of local branch offices.

The ChallengePremium financing firms provide a short-term loan for businesses and individuals to use specifically to pay for property and casualty insurance coverage. The premium finance loan enables the insurance policy holder, often called the insured, to spread payments over the course of the policy instead of paying the entire premium up front. As businesses and individuals look for more ways to stretch their dollar, IPFS’s services have become increasingly popular and are growing steadily. With a workforce of 500+ employees spread across 30 offices in the United States and Puerto Rico, IT administrators at IPFS needed a cost-effective solution to scale their business while continuing to provide high-level customer service.

The VMware Horizon View and Virident FlashMAX II SolutionIPFS turned to desktop virtualization using VMware Horizon View to meet their needs for security, centralized management, and cost. As a service-oriented business, IPFS relies on fast response times when answering customer inquiries; but the performance of their existing storage solution did not meet their needs. Boot storms, or times when a significant number of users boot their computers within a very narrow time frame, caused delays in accessing applications and data. In

IPFS Implements Desktop Virtualization to Meet Needs for Security, Centralized Management, and Cost-Efficiency

addition, updating personalized desktops in the VDI environment was slow and time consuming due to the lack of performance of the datastores.

IPFS tried several solutions before finding the right one. They implemented storage area networks, flash memory, and flash memory inside a storage area network—but none of these options performed as needed. Finally, at a VMworld 2012 session presented by Virident, IPFS found the answer to their issues: a stateless solution without shared storage, but with VMware Horizon View Persona on flash stored locally. The implemented solution was simple, easy to manage, and scalable. It consists of the VMware Horizon View Infrastructure and three VMware vSphere® 5.0 servers, which contain two 550GB Virident FlashMAX II devices in each server. The Virident FlashMAX II devices are added to the Horizon View pools as datastores. The solution addresses all the pain points that IPFS faced with respect to VDI deployments.

Business Results & BenefitsIPFS plans to eventually move all their Horizon View users to the Virident FlashMAX II VDI solution. To date, IPFS employees are happy with the greatly improved user experience. They benefit from the look and feel of a physical desktop along with a superior user experience in

In response to recent growth in the premium finance industry and an expanding workforce, Imperial PFS recently leveraged a VMware® Horizon View™ virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) deployment to cost-effectively scale their business. The addition of Virident FlashMAX II storage devices allows IPFS to meet their need for fast response times and increased performance.

VMware, Inc. 3401 Hillview Avenue Palo Alto CA 94304 USA Tel 877-486-9273 Fax 650-427-5001 www.vmware.comCopyright © 2013 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved. This product is protected by U.S. and international copyright and intellectual property laws. VMware products are covered by one or more patents listed at http://www.vmware.com/go/patents. VMware is a registered trademark or trademark of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies. Item No: 3972-VMW-CS-IPFS-UNLET-20130215-WEB

VMWARE CASE STUDY

terms of boot-up time and application response. The response times are twice as fast as the prior solution, so they can access their data faster while retaining the customization of their desktops. With the built-in RAID, data protection, and increased performance, VMware Horizon View and Virident FlashMAX II provide the strongest solution for IPFS.

In addition, the Virident FlashMAX II solution enables IPFS to scale their Horizon View pools to 1,000 desktops. Prior storage solutions allowed for only 100 desktops on three vSphere hosts. With the Virident FlashMAX II solution, IPFS is able to grow to five times the capacity (500 desktops) on the same three vSphere hosts.

With VMware View Persona using Virident FlashMAX II as datastores, users are guaranteed a consistent and personalized user experience. Updates to existing desktops are non-intrusive and faster, leveraging the Horizon View Delete-On Log-Off and Virident FlashMAX II speedy performance. Together these features enable administrators to move users seamlessly with minimal downtime. With Virident FlashMAX II, it is now possible to simultaneously have a boot storm in one pool while another pool is being updated via “recompose,” even though both these actions are highly CPU intensive. At IPFS the number of vSphere hosts has been markedly reduced while conversely the capacity of virtual desktops and users has increased.

Figure 2: Implementation Details

Figure 1: Solution Architecture

VMWARE FOOTPRINT•VMware Horizon View

•VMware Horizon View Persona

•VMware vSphere 5.0 servers

APPLICATIONS VIRTUALIZED•Customer service database

•Customer response desktop UI

PLATFORM•Virident FlashMAX II

storage devices

PARTNER•Virident