Marlins Offer Its Employees Greater Flexibility and Efficiency While
Also Increasing Sales and Improving Customer Experience
The Miami Marlins are a professional Major League Baseball team based in
Miami, Florida. While constructing their new state-of-the-art ballpark
in 2012, the Marlins leveraged Citrix solutions to migrate over 450
employees from a co-located, shared IT environment to the new stadium
offering a secure mobile platform accessible from anywhere, anytime on
any device.
This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here:
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20150915005524/en/
David Enriquez, Senior Director of IT, Miami Marlins (Photo: Business Wire)
By implementing Citrix Workspace Suite along with NetScaler, Marlins’
employees moved from office-bound physical desktops and laptops to a
completely mobile workplace in which location is irrelevant and
flexibility and security are key. Employees can now work anywhere in the
stadium or remotely; scouts and interns can securely access crucial data
via tablets, as well as share video clips and other large files with
third parties; and sales agents can process ticket orders on mobile
devices, showing a patron an actual seating section then processing the
order real-time in front of the guest. In addition, the organization can
scale all of these activities up and down seasonally. Overall, the
implementation of Citrix solutions has created an efficient
infrastructure that makes employees mobile, while also driving increased
ticket sales and improved customer experience for baseball fans.
The key benefits of this Citrix deployment include:
-
Mobile Workplace – The ability to seamlessly relocate hundreds
of staff members to the new ballpark without having to physically move
existing infrastructure. At their previous location, the Marlins’
users were very much tied to their physical desktops. They were not
able to move around the building or work remotely, unless VPN software
was deployed, so the thought of moving to a new site was a big
challenge. During the transition to a new stadium, by implementing
XenDesktop, the Marlins were able to have employees finish the workday
Friday at Sun Life Stadium and start working at Marlins Park on Monday
morning, continuing with their normal workday routine using nothing
but a WYSE thin client. No new setup or training was required.
This mobility continues on for employees who now work on a daily basis
from anywhere using mobile devices.
-
Security – The organization needed to find a new method to
efficiently support a variety of remote workers from scouts to
interns. Scouts faced the problem of securing their sensitive data and
files as well as allowing them to share very large video clips and
other files via email, which was a constant source of frustration.
Interns on the other hand were prohibited from accessing sensitive
information, but still needed to perform their roles efficiently. To
deal with these unique scenarios, the Marlins chose ShareFile to
provide remote workers with a place to securely store and share data
without having to keep a local copy and XenMobile to ensure tablets
and mobile phones are secure and manageable. In addition, they
implemented XenApp to provision and instantly remove access rights and
applications that are provided to interns on thin clients. By adopting
these tools, the organization’s view toward mobile devices changed
from a security threat to a powerful business tool.
-
Sales – A year before the ballpark opened, the organization
began to dramatically improve its ability to market, sell and process
ticket orders wirelessly on mobile platforms using Citrix technology.
Previously, ticket sales agents had to be in the office to place
orders for seats. By transitioning the sales team to using the Citrix
virtual desktop, sales teams now can access proprietary apps to show a
patron an actual seating section over the phone using GoToMeeting,
then bring them into the stadium real time to show them the same
location in person. This ability to show the customer a 3D image of
the park in advance gives potential ticket buyers a better vision of
the experience, which has led to increased ticket sales.
-
Scalability – The Marlins needed to be able to easily scale
resources up and down during the baseball season for added sales and
call center capacity. Previously, the Marlins would spend weeks
planning and deploying a new, temporary mobile sales office to scale
up in capability. With the ability to auto-provision as needed, the
Marlins can now easily support the additional users during their peak
season, without the need to deploy new equipment or build additional
infrastructure. The time savings is immense as well given that this
switch can now be accomplished in a single day instead of weeks.
-
High Availability – The Marlins built a highly-available
infrastructure utilizing an off-site colocation facility to provide
redundancy and business continuity capabilities. Adding the team’s
spring training facility to the infrastructure enhanced this plan by
allowing the movement of personnel between the two facilities without
any disruption in collaboration or service.
-
Improved Customer Service – In the past, the Marlins required a
VPN to be established from the remote worker’s laptop prior to the
help desk gaining access to provide support remotely. When the VPN was
not functional, the only recourse was to ship the laptop back to the
IT department and wait for it to be repaired. With GoToAssist, the
Marlins no longer require a VPN to provide support, nor any
installation ahead of time. Gaining remote access is far more reliable
now and allows the Marlins IT staff to support remote workers in
real-time. This provides far more flexibility and improved customer
service when support is needed.
Quotes
David Enriquez, Senior Director of IT, Miami Marlins
“After we built the new ballpark in 2012, we were able to leverage the
Citrix virtual desktop environment and migrate approximately 450
employees to the new ballpark with no loss in productivity. Without
individual PCs to manage, the IT operations team can focus on ensuring
availability of the centralized environment, which also greatly
leverages the team's efforts, allowing them to maintain, patch, update
applications centrally, and then distribute these to the user base
overnight.”
Geir Ramleth, Chief Strategy Officer and SVP & GM, Workspace
Services, Citrix
“We believe workers should be characterized by who they are and what
they need to do – not what device they have or where they need to go.
The Miami Marlins’ use of Citrix solutions is an excellent example of
this, as they designed their facility with the needs of their workers
and customers first, and then built a secure IT infrastructure that
enabled them to address those needs and remain flexible for the future.”
Related Links
About Citrix
Citrix (NASDAQ:CTXS) is leading the transition to software-defining the
workplace, uniting virtualization, mobility management, networking and
SaaS solutions to enable new ways for businesses and people to work
better. Citrix solutions power business mobility through secure, mobile
workspaces that provide people with instant access to apps, desktops,
data and communications on any device, over any network and cloud. With
annual revenue in 2014 of $3.14 billion, Citrix solutions are in use at
more than 400,000 organizations and by over 100 million users globally.
Learn more at www.citrix.com.
For Citrix Investors
This release contains forward-looking statements which are made pursuant
to the safe harbor provisions of Section 27A of the Securities Act of
1933 and of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The
forward-looking statements in this release do not constitute guarantees
of future performance. Those statements involve a number of factors that
could cause actual results to differ materially, including risks
associated with the impact of the global economy and uncertainty in the
IT spending environment, revenue growth and recognition of revenue,
products and services, their development and distribution, product
demand and pipeline, economic and competitive factors, the Company's key
strategic relationships, acquisition and related integration risks as
well as other risks detailed in the Company's filings with the
Securities and Exchange Commission. Citrix assumes no obligation to
update any forward-looking information contained in this press release
or with respect to the announcements described herein. The development,
release and timing of any features or functionality described for our
products remains at our sole discretion and is subject to change without
notice or consultation. The information provided is for informational
purposes only and is not a commitment, promise or legal obligation to
deliver any material, code or functionality and should not be relied
upon in making purchasing decisions or incorporated into any contract.
© 2015 Citrix Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Citrix, XenApp,
XenDesktop, NetScaler, XenMobile, ShareFile, Worx, GoToMeeting,
GoToAssist and other marks appearing herein are trademarks of Citrix
Systems, Inc. and/or one or more of its subsidiaries, and may be
registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other
countries. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are property
of their respective owners.
View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20150915005524/en/
Copyright Business Wire 2015