Call center applications were Windows-based, running on PCs, with access to back-end databases. In some ways, the choice of Sun Ray was unexpected. Supervisors can stop at a rep’s desk and approve a customer credit right there, or a rep can move from a sit-down to a standing workstation, or a team can form and move to a group of Sun Rays. Then inserting the card into any other available Sun Ray brings up the log-on screen, and after a valid logon, the user’s complete original session reappears, just as it was when he pulled the card from the first Sun Ray. I haven’t seen anything go down in this call center in four or five months.”Ī related user benefit is dubbed by Sun “hot desking.” A rep or a supervisor can simply pull the smart card from the Sun Ray without logging off, which causes the display to revert to the standard log-on window. And I had to wait for the programs to load, I had to reboot, turn it off, turn it on. “They were forever upgrading the PC, adding more memory. “We had to reboot it often,” says Doug Robertson, customer service coordinator at Verizon’s Chandler, Ariz., call center, the site of the first deployment. This system replaces the Windows PC stored under the desk. In the near future, this same smart card will be used as the employee ID entry card to enter the call center. Users power up the Sun Ray by inserting a personal smart card for two-factor authentication, type in their Windows username and ID, and within seconds can begin working with the server-based applications. The desktop box contains only some firmware that puts the display video onscreen and talks to the Sun Ray server software, which tracks everything about the user and the user’s session.Ĭall center reps now have an arm-mounted 19-inch flat panel display, with the compact Sun Ray box on a desktop perch. “There’s nothing on the Sun Rays,” says Michael McGuinness, senior member of technical staff, who co-designed Verizon’s architecture and helped oversee the deployments. In such architectures, the video display is redirected over the network to the desktop thin client box for processing and display. Sun’s Sun Ray is unique among thin clients, many of which still use some kind of embedded Windows or Linux operating system, even though the applications are shifted to servers. The conclusion was that thin clients on desktops, with the applications running on servers, would have to be replaced much less often than PCs, and would cut capital costs but, more importantly, also cut management and support costs. The carrier’s new approach emerged in fall 2005, when Carl Eberling, vice president of information technology for Verizon’s West Area, asked his team for ideas to cut IT costs at existing and new call centers. NEC just introduced a virtual desktop offering, called the Virtual PC Center, with traditional Wyse thin clients, integrated VMware virtualization software and client support for Citrix. The deployment is Verizon’s first for a large-scale thin client architecture, part of a growing enterprise trend to virtualize the desktop.
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