NeverTrust vs Zero Trust
EDF Energy adopt Droplet to securely migrate away from Citrix to Azure AVD
About EDF Energy
EDF Energy was set up in 2003, five years after French energy company ‘EDF Group, Électricité de France’ bought Seeboard, London Energy and SWEB Energy. EDF are one of the ‘Big Six’ energy companies in the UK and one of the biggest generators of zero-carbon electricity. EDF Energy aims to generate it’s zero-carbon electricity from wind, nuclear and solar power stations in order to help cut down carbon emissions in the coming years.
Project Background and Key Challenges
Centralised Cloud Delivery
EDF’s initial objective was to migrate away from Citrix to Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) as their existing Citrix contact was about to expire. However, during the migration they encountered several software compatibility and security challenges, which led them to seeking assistance and advice from Droplet.
Software Compatibility
“Click Schedule” a business critical application which operates across both Windows 7 and Windows 10, and is used globally to schedule and manage remote EDF engineers, was found to be non- compatible with both Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) or the latest version of Citrix.
Cyber Accredited
In order to attain the latest version of cyber accreditation, including cyber essentials plus and NIS2 standards. EDF Energy must ensure that all the software delivered to their end users, is compliant and fully supported by the software vendor, otherwise it must be removed or isolated on their network.
Tight Deadlines
On top of these challenges the EDF team and their system integrator TCS, where faced with a tight deadlines as their existing Citrix licence was soon to expire. Which meant that they needed to quickly find an alternative solution, which addressed compatibility, security and compliance, then test and deploy it, before it expired.
Droplet is a software solution, based on containers, that enables secure access to any x86 application on a wide choice of operating systems and cloud platforms, including Windows, MacOS, ChromeOS and Linux, we also support any cloud platform or hypervisor, including Azure, AWS and Google Cloud on Hyper-V, vSphere or KVM.
To enable a cloud delivered solution, Droplet worked closely with Tata Consultancy Services, TCS to securely migrate all of EDF’s Windows 7 and Windows 10 apps from Citrix to Azure and delivered them securely, via an Azure Virtual Desktop, inside our portable, locked down, Droplet NeverTrustTM (beyond Zero Trust) container.
To help EDF address software compatibility, Droplet can be used to enable secure remote access to any x86 application, inside our Droplet NeverTrustTM (beyond Zero Trust) container. We don’t care if it’s a legacy, modern or bespoke application or what operating system it was originally written for, i.e. Windows7 and Windows10.
To ensure cyber accreditation, By default, when installed Droplet creates an isolation layer between our container and the O/S of the device we’re installed on. We then remove all admin rights from users, and block all inbound traffic whilst encrypting the traffic between end user devices and our Droplet Server Appliance (DSA)
To meet the tight deadlines, Droplet worked closely with TCS to migrate EDF from Citrix to Azure, and as a result EDF not only met their tight deadlines, within budget, but managed to complete the full migration ahead of schedule, within budget, reducing their infrastructure from x300 Citrix servers to x 60 Droplet-AVD servers.
Customer Testimonial
** Following our engagement with Droplet and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), we successfully completed all the Citrix to Droplet application migrations ahead of the Citrix licence expiry this month. Which was a fantastic achievement and a massive milestone for us that we couldn’t have done without your product and your support**
EDF IT Infrastructure and End User Compute Manager
Key Business Benefits included:
- Reduced their total cost of ownership
- Improved security posture
- Helped futureproof their aging software
- Delivered any app, anywhere to any device
- Maintained their cyber accreditation status
- Reduced their infrastructure substantially
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