Apex Group optimizes costs, safeguards data, and unlocks value with Azure Virtual Desktop

Dedicated to helping its clients make sound decisions and build financial security, Apex Group strives to support the communities it serves. The company aims to deliver reliable financial services and convenient, engaging, digital experiences for its more than 6,000 clients, while it safeguards client data and meets tough compliance requirements. To achieve this, Apex Group needs an advanced, reliable, high-performance IT structure that includes comprehensive network and data security.

To that end, Apex Group migrated its overall infrastructure to Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365 and ran Azure Virtual Desktop in parallel with its underlying Citrix Virtual Apps. Apex Group worked jointly with Microsoft and Citrix to make Azure Virtual Desktop and Citrix Virtual Apps part of its reference architecture, and added significant value for the Group in the process. In so doing, Apex collaborated with Infosys to design, migrate workloads, and implement the architecture and IT operations necessary to help ensure a secure and highly functional foundation. Pradeep Yadlapati, Infosys Cloud Ecosystem Vice-President, states, “Infosys is proud to be associated with Apex Group on its cloud and workplace transformation journey, and to have helped establish the foundational infrastructure Apex Group needs, both for its current employees and for its future acquisitions.”

In addition to saving money and protecting its existing investments in Citrix, Apex Group was able to take advantage of new opportunities for scalability and advanced capabilities in Azure such as data services, AI, and automation while using Citrix to manage its Azure Virtual Desktop environment.

“When we adopted Azure Virtual Desktop, we created an immediate cost benefit because it’s so manageable and the interoperability between Citrix and Azure Virtual Desktop is so strong,” says Barry Rooney, Group Chief Information Officer at Apex Group.

The necessity for security, the complexity of compliance

With 10,000 employees, over 80 offices in more than 40 countries around the world, and hundreds of vendors with different environments—all dealing with clients’ financial and other sensitive data—Apex Group must keep security and compliance at the top of its priority list.

To help protect its networks and meet a complex array of challenging regulatory requirements, Apex Group wants to keep data off employee and vendor devices. Keeping sensitive information on individuals’ devices can require broad and sometimes labor-intensive controls to meet governance, monitoring, and reporting standards. And it can make dealing with a potential breach even more complicated.

“We would have to report tremendous amounts of information, particularly to European regulators, if data were even potentially exposed,” says Rooney. “If data were actually compromised, we would have to talk to potentially 20 or 30 regulators.”

Apex Group had previously utilized an on-premises Citrix solution to manage the varied landscape it had inherited through its numerous acquisitions. But to centralize and scale its VDI across the company, Apex Group wanted to migrate it to a cloud platform and keep all high-risk data hosted and protected in the cloud. Now that the technology is centralized, users get all the apps and information they need to do their jobs through Azure Virtual Desktop, anytime, nearly anywhere, with minimal risk of data breach and streamlined compliance.

“It has always been our corporate philosophy, from our CEO down, that we persist no data on devices,” Rooney emphasizes. “Our use of Azure Virtual Desktop with Citrix fits perfectly with that because now the data is virtualized and safeguarded, the applications remain in the cloud, and sensitive data never persists on the user’s device.”

The agility to scale up and down

Say it is tax time, and work demands are high. Apex Group now scales with Azure Virtual Machines, running as many as 500 virtual machines to meet peak loads or as few as 20 when demand declines. With the flexibility to scale as necessary, the company saves effort, accelerates time to value, and reduces costs. Coping with spikes in business like tax season, and even just being able to shut things down for the weekend, helps Apex Group optimize costs by only paying for what it uses.

Apex Group now has more centralized control and simplified configuration of remote desktops across the company. By eliminating procurement and automating configuration and remote installation, Apex Group has reduced the time it takes to add virtual desktops from as much as a week to as little as an hour. Flip a switch, and it is done. “The autoscaling with Citrix and Azure Virtual Desktop is phenomenal,” states Rooney. “We can ramp up from 100 users to 4,000 or 5,000 users in a few minutes. It’s seamless to use Azure Virtual Desktop to get huge workloads available on demand."

Grow, evolve, succeed 

Apex Group team has created a powerful business, driving change in the financial services with global reach. And its clients have been part of the change. The company plans to continue to grow and evolve, garnering acquisitions that strengthen the business by both geography and service.

Apex Group has other Microsoft cloud resources playing a significant role in the company’s expanding workforce via Azure Virtual Desktop, from familiar desktop apps like Word, PowerPoint, and Excel to Microsoft Viva Connections, which employees use as a convenient touchpoint to find acquisition and other news and connect with others across the growing company. With Windows 10 and Windows 11 multi-session remote desktops—a new feature available with Azure Virtual Desktop—Apex Group employees and other users can participate in multiple concurrent interactive gatherings, so they can collaborate easily and effectively while the company optimizes operational costs.

“By building our VDI on Azure Virtual Desktop and Citrix, we now provide more services and control employee and vendor access to our systems in a much better way,” says Rooney. “Microsoft has helped us a lot on this journey, and we’re keen to share positive stories of working together with Microsoft and its strategic partners like Citrix to deliver real value to our business.”

The company will evolve its client-service model, putting relationships and responsiveness first. But with Azure Virtual Desktop and Citrix, Apex Group already is bringing better resilience and performance to users, and therefore customers, when it is time to get deliverables out.

“Consider applications running on Azure Virtual Desktop in multiple countries, and then multiply 6,000 people saving up to a minute every time they sign in,” reflects Rooney. “That is an extraordinary experience for the user and a significant efficiency for the business.”

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