Application & Desktop Delivery

Desktop virtualisation drives efficiency for Scottish Building Society

The Scottish Building Society was the first in Scotland and started life in March 1848 as the Edinburgh Property Investment Company, changing its name in 1929. It is now the only independent building society based in Scotland.

A traditional mutual Building Society, the Scottish Building Society has over 30,000 members and offers mortgages and savings accounts to customers through six main branches and a network of 67 Agency Offices throughout Scotland. 

A review of IT infrastructure needs, in line with the Society’s key business objectives, identified that the introduction of virtual desktop technology would maximise the existing PC estate without having to undertake a hardware refresh for each PC. It would also bring further benefits in terms of disaster recovery and business continuity.

Alison Quilter, Head of IT, Scottish Building Society, said:

“We chose Castle to implement a desktop virtualisation solution that would make the most efficient use of our infrastructure, while at the same time improving efficiency and resilience to meet our business objectives.

“The removal of branch servers in favour of adding virtual servers in head office addressed the challenges of geographically spread locations. We have negated the need for remote branch backups and removed remote hardware from the estate, which saves on maintenance costs for servers and makes them easier to manage. Data security is critical and this has been improved by retaining data at head office and our data centre, rather than spread across offices.

“The reduction of physical servers at all sites allows the IT team to manage more of the estate centrally and new desktops can be set up very quickly, with files being distributed more efficiently. Software upgrades are now easier and much quicker.

“We now have the additional flexibility of remote access that allows staff to work from home or other locations through the virtual desktop environment.

“We have had a business relationship with Castle for many years and have always found their staff to be helpful, extremely professional and a pleasure to deal with. Castle used their Desktop Readiness Assessment to scope the project, identifying potential issues and changes in suggested hardware or software choices that would require additional work. This meant plans could be reworked and re-priced before the project began in earnest, ensuring that it was delivered on time.”