Oneblood, Inc., is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) community asset responsible for providing safe, available and affordable blood to more than 250 hospital partners and their patients. The service area of OneBlood includes the Tampa Bay area, the Orlando-metro area and surrounding Central Florida counties, South and Southeast Florida, parts of Southwest Florida, Pensacola, Tallahassee and areas in Southern Georgia, Alabama and the Carolinas.

In 2019, OneBlood’s IT organization embarked on an initiative to modernize the blood bank’s end user computing (EUC) infrastructure. Ciro Zummo, Senior Systems Engineer for OneBlood recalled, “Our Windows 7 operating system was nearing end-of-support and we were experiencing compatibility issues with our software applications, browser, and operating system.”

He added, “Whichever workspace delivery solution we chose had to support more than 143 apps, a fraction of which are unique to blood collection, including barcode printing, scanning and business analytics, and used by our more than 3,000 employees working at hospitals, our brick-and-mortar locations and mobile blood banks.”

Zummo continued, “For OneBlood, it is imperative to the success of our business that blood is taken and delivered to the correct locations. The fact of the matter is we are really in the logistics business and as such, we must have the right technologies in place to quickly and efficiently manage our collection and testing services.”

MIGRATION TO VIRTUAL DESKTOP INFRASTRUCTURE (VDI) ALIGNS WITH ONEBLOOD’S MISSION, VISION AND VALUES

OneBlood is a world-class blood system with a commitment to staying a leader by innovating through new services, technology and research that positively impacts blood product safety and availability, while at the same time enhancing the health and safety of others, as well as the lives of its team members.

Among the ways OneBlood achieves its mission and vision is through execution, innovation, continuous improvement, agility and respect. “In line with these core values, we selected Windows 10 and Citrix VDI to modernize our end user computing infrastructure,” said Zummo. “However, that was only part of the solution – we needed to find a way to quickly, easily and cost-effectively deploy VDI across more than 1,100 endpoints.”

IGEL BRINGS SIMPLICITY, SECURITY AND COST SAVINGS TO ONEBLOOD; PROVIDES PATH TO FURTHER MODERNIZATION

At the time of its planned migration to VDI, OneBlood had 1,150 HP T610 thin clients within its end-user computing infrastructure. “We estimated that it would likely take a six-figure budget to replace all of our older HP endpoints with new hardware – and it was money we didn’t have at the time, so we started looking at other options and came across IGEL, and its industry-leading OS,” said Zummo.

After attending an IGEL DISRUPT Cloud Workspaces Forum event, Zummo learned how IGEL could convert existing hardware endpoints into IGEL OS-powered endpoints – quickly and cost-effectively. “We loved that they supported Citrix VDI and saw how fast and easy it would be to convert our endpoints with IGEL,” added Zummo.

OneBlood began adopting IGEL in early 2020, and within the first four months was able to convert nearly one third of its endpoint devices to IGEL OS, leveraging the IGEL Universal Management Suite (UMS) and IGEL UD Pocket. Additionally, OneBlood also purchased five IGEL UD3 endpoints and plans to begin replacing its current hardware with IGEL as endpoint devices become non-functional.

Initially, OneBlood’s cost-savings related to the conversion of existing hardware is estimated to be about $300,000. However, what Zummo and his team like most about IGEL is the simplicity of the solution and ease of management.

“I wish I would have known about IGEL years ago as it would have saved me from a lot of endpoint management headaches,” said Zummo. “With IGEL we are able to quickly deploy IGEL OS on all of our machines, and make updates on the fly, with significantly fewer resources than before. It really saves us a lot of time and allows me to devote our resources to more strategic initiatives that drive business value.”

PRINTERLOGIC SIMPLIFIES VDI PRINTING; SPEEDS TIME-TO-VALUE

Several years prior to OneBlood’s migration to Citrix VDI, Windows 10 and IGEL, they had modernized their printing infrastructure with PrinterLogic because of their interest in a serverless print infrastructure.

“In order to support our more widely dispersed workforce and the expansion of our business through various mergers and acquisitions, it had become cost prohibitive to supply our employees with networked printing capabilities and to continue to support the massive infrastructure it required,” said Chad Nelson, IT Infrastructure Manager, OneBlood. “At one point, we had 300 printers in the queue, and it was very confusing to our team when print jobs would go to the wrong printer.” PrinterLogic solved our deployment challenge by eliminating scripting and GPO’s as our go-to printer deployment strategy and instead allowed us to deploy by IP address range, host name, or a user-friendly self-service printer installation portal.”

Because of its compatibility with Citrix infrastructure, and the ability for end-users to access PrinterLogic via Citrix Storefront, this became an attractive option for OneBlood when it came to printing. “Now, when workers need to print a barcode, label or other document, they can go directly to the closest printer, authenticate and print immediately. It’s a major productivity boost over the old method of playing ‘find the printer’ and it is far more secure!”

The use of PrinterLogic has helped speed time-to-value for the solution, and enabled OneBlood to streamline logistics and the transport of blood to where it is needed most. “We use PrinterLogic to print barcodes that then track every bag of blood from point A to point B and all points in between.”

IGEL AND CITRIX DRIVE PRODUCTION THE TIME OF COVID-19

Zummo and his team at OneBlood could not have made the switch to Windows 10, Citrix VDI, IGEL and PrinterLogic at a better time. Shortly after OneBlood started migrating to the new solution, the global COVID-19 pandemic hit.

“Almost immediately, our business expanded beyond blood collection and supply to also include COVID-19 antibody testing,” said Zummo. “Initially, while we saw a drop in demand for blood when most elective surgeries were cancelled and later rescheduled, there was a tremendous need for blood testing, which has continued to keep our team busy, along with blood collection as the need for donations picks up again. With our workforce becoming even more dispersed as a result of the pandemic, IGEL, Citrix, and PrinterLogic kept our team productive during the ups and downs of the pandemic by providing them with anytime, anywhere access to their workspaces and the essential software and tools they needed to do their jobs.”