VMware, Inc., the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter, today announced that law firm Duane Morris LLP has deployed VMware ThinApp to provide its attorneys with reliable, cost-effective access to virtualized desktop applications from anywhere, at any time, via their PCs.

Duane Morris LLP is one of the world’s largest law firms. The U.S.-based firm has more than 650 attorneys throughout Asia, Europe and North America. Duane Morris turned to virtualization as a way to reduce the cost and complexity of managing its desktop application environment. The firm’s attorneys typically work with multiple versions of applications to match the versions that are used by various clients. This often creates system conflicts that can crash PCs. In addition, the firm runs numerous internal applications that must be updated periodically. In the past, these updates required expensive, labor-intensive refreshes of every PC. These updates often took four to five months to complete.

With VMware ThinApp, Duane Morris is able to manage its applications centrally, eliminating the need for the IT staff to refresh individual PCs when applications are updated or patched. ThinApp’s unique approach to application virtualization enables attorneys to access the centralized applications from their PCs without having to install software agents, which further reduces the IT staff’s administrative burden. And, the attorneys are able to run multiple versions of an application on a PC without creating conflicts. Just as importantly for the geographically distributed workforce, the applications actually run locally so there is no performance degradation despite the long distance between regional offices and the firm’s datacenter in Philadelphia.

“We were blown away when we saw a demo of ThinApp,” said Michael Carpinella, technical services director at Duane Morris. “For starters, it didn’t require a back-end server, and it didn’t require agents for the PCs. When we looked at all the benefits that ThinApp offered — particularly compared to the other products that were out there — it made total sense to move to ThinApp.”

The ability to provide remote access to applications has also helped the firm improve disaster preparedness. “With other application virtualization products, we would have needed back-end servers, and if we wanted any kind of redundancy on that, we would have needed multiple back-end servers,” said Carpinella. “ThinApp, on the other hand, has redundancy built in. I can create a ThinApp of Adobe Photoshop or one of our other critical applications and put that onto my file server, which is replicating to my remote locations. If our network is down here in Philadelphia, our branch offices can still function, since that application is local to all the remote locations.”

Utilizing ThinApp in this manner has generated a significant cost savings for Duane Morris. If the firm had deployed a virtualization solution that required a back-end server, Carpinella estimates hardware costs would have reached $10,000. With ThinApp, Duane Morris was able to leverage existing servers in each remote location so there was no need to buy any new hardware.