50% of VTB Bank employees switched from Citrix to Russian developments

2024

Switch from Citrix to Basis Workplace

More than half of VTB employees switched to using Russian virtualization solutions - the VTB.Cloud virtualization platform and the Basis Workplace virtual desktop creation and management system (VDI). This was announced on September 9, 2024 by Sergei Bezbogov, deputy head of the technological block - senior vice president of VTB.

Until recently, a foreign virtualization platform has been used to solve work problems. Citrix The transition of most VTB employees to domestic alternatives is expected by the end of 2024.

For the transition, VTB acquired a package of licenses for the Basis Workplace solution from the Russian developer of the Basis system software. Within the framework of the concluded contract, Bazis IT specialists will support the solution until the end of 2025. T1 Integration (part of T1 Holding) is engaged in work on the migration of users to a domestic solution.

To accelerate the pace of migration, a tool was developed and implemented that allows you to automatically transfer desktops from an imported virtualization solution to a domestic one, which is especially important for the bank as part of achieving technological sovereignty. Thus, it became possible to move up to 500 virtual workplaces of employees per week, or up to 2,500 seats per month, saving all user documents, as well as setting up their work places.This made it possible to significantly reduce the time, reduce the burden on administrators, make migration comfortable and seamless for users and reduce the number of errors, - said Sergey Bezbogov, deputy head of the technological unit - senior vice president of VTB.

Huge infrastructure, increased requirements for its availability and scaling, a professional team with which you need to be on a par - all this has become a challenge for us as a supplier of system software in the VTB project. We coped with this challenge and helped import substitution of a foreign solution in the bank's infrastructure, but not only - we also gained new relevant experience and at the same time made our product better, - said David Martirosov, CEO of Basis.

Specialists T1 Integration helped to build a highly available fault-tolerant virtual seat infrastructure in VTB's technological landscape based on the Basis Workplace and the bank's cloud platform.

Business is in need of flexible, highly scalable systems implemented on a secure technology stack. Replacing Western software with domestic VTB.Cloud and Basis Workplace solutions will allow a financial institution to reduce dependence on foreign solutions and gain access to technical support from the manufacturer. As of September 2024, our experts migrated to a solution with the lowest possible downtime of half of VTB employees' virtual workplaces. Engineers T1 Integration solves end-user issues related to the transition to this software product, and also supports the functioning of the infrastructure, ensuring its catastrophic stability while maintaining the usual functionality, - said Mikhail Knigin, Executive Director of T1 Integration.

VTB employees move to Basis Workplace

Basis, a leading developer of dynamic infrastructure, virtual desktops and cloud services, has become a provider of infrastructure software for VTB. The domestic desktop virtualization platform Basis Workplace will replace a foreign solution in the organization's infrastructure. Read more here.