Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops
Helps Nilkamal Protect Critical Datawith Secure Access to SAP
from Anywhere
Leading Indian furniture manufacturer moves to Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops

SUMMARY
Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops helps Nilkamal improve workforce
productivity without compromising on data security with secure access tomission critical applications from anywhere.

Industry

PROVIDING ADEQUATE BANDWIDTH FOR REMOTE ACCESS

Location

Nilkamal Limited is an industry pioneer in the manufacturing business ofmoulded furniture and material handling products. The company’s portfoliospans across material handling solutions, ready furniture, lifestyle homesolutions retail chain, mattresses and material protection solutions. Nilkamal
serves a diversified customer base including household customers,
industrial customers and retail buyers in India and across the globe in 30countries.

Manufacturing & Retail

MumbaiCitrix Product
Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops

Key Benefits••

Nilkamal’s journey to becoming a household name is founded on thecustomers’ trust it has built over the years. Behind that lies extensive
operations spanning across the country.

•Ensures secure access to
mission critical applications fromanywhere
Improves employee productivity
through enhanced userexperience
Enables business continuity
during the pandemic throughsecure work from home

Whether it is its 8 manufacturing plants and 42 depots or its network of
1,100 distributors, over 20,000 dealers and 80 stores, it’s entire operations
rely on the SAP ERP application. To say that SAP is the backbone of thecompany’s operations would be an understatement.
When it came to ensuring secure access to the application, Nilkamal
approached Unified Data-Tech Solutions (UDTechs) for consulting on apossible approach to enhance security, centralization and flexibility to deploy
critical resources to employee devices during the COVID-19 pandemic.
UDTechs proposed Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops to provide secure
remote access to their business critical apps and data. By introducing thisVDI solution, Kilkamal was able to enabling successful remote working andallowed for business continuity in the middle of the pandemic.
“As a fast-growing company with highly diversified operations, it wasimperative to enable our employees with the ability to access SAP fromacross different locations, including from non-office locations whiletraveling,” explains Karan Doshi, Head – IT & Strategy, Nilkamal Ltd.

“As a fast-growing companywith highly diversified
operations, it was imperative
to enable our employees withthe ability to access SAP fromacross different locations,
including from non-officelocations while traveling,”says Doshi.

Citrix | Nilkamal
Considering how mission critical the application is for business, the priority
for Doshi and his team was to not only enable seamless access to SAP fromanywhere, but to do so without compromising on security.
From undertaking financial transactions, managing inventory, and keeping
the plants running to maintaining the supply chain and managing sales – key
departments across the organization are dependent on SAP for their day-today functioning. With multiple entities accessing the application, it opens up
the possibilities of data leakage. This was especially true when theapplication was accessed from outside the corporate network.
According to Doshi, SAP is a highly data sensitive application and data
being the business’ lifeline, ensuring the highest standards of security wasparamount for the company. User experience was also an area of concern
with issues around latency and slowness. Considering the large data
volumes involved, the experience while accessing the application washampered, especially when connecting over low bandwidth. Thus, impacting
overall employee productivity.
“With Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, while we were looking for application
virtualization to address the immediate need for secure and seamless
access to mission critical applications, we also wanted to lay the foundation
for future of work - one that allows our workforce the flexibility to work fromanywhere and be more productive,” explains Doshi.
While the Nilkamal IT team evaluated other app virtualization solutions,
UDTechs along with Citrix stood out for its strong security controls built
around the zero trust security model as well as the ability to run on low
bandwidth. In comparison with other solutions in the market, it offered
greater business value with minimal resource consumption.
According to Doshi, “Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops fit well with our vision
for the future. It not only met our current requirements but also offered theability to align with the future demands and changing workplace dynamics.”
This was more than proven when the company had to unexpectedly andquickly get its employees to start working from home in March 2020 due tothe pandemic. Having experienced the solution’s efficacy at work for over
one year, Nilkamal decided to grow their Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops
deployment to enable continued work from home. This continued to allow for
secure access to business critical applications from anywhere.

SECURE APPLICATION ACCESS TO SUPPORT MODERNWORKFORCE NEEDS“The secure remote access provided by Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops
to our mission critical applications, including SAP, has significantly
enhanced our security posture while supporting the modern mobileworkforce. We are confident of giving our employees the flexibility andchoice without exposing our business information to risk and meetingthe compliance requirements,” says Doshi.

“The secure remote accessprovided by Citrix Virtual Apps
and Desktops to our mission
critical applications, including
SAP, has significantlyenhanced our security posturewhile supporting the modernmobile workforce. We areconfident of giving ouremployees the flexibility andchoice without exposing ourbusiness information to risk
and meeting the compliancerequirements,”
says Doshi.

Citrix | Nilkamal
The Citrix solution has built-in security controls along the lines of zerotrust security, ensuring no data is compromised. The additional app
protection feature provides anti-screenshotting and anti-keylogging
capabilities to provide an additional layer of protection from withing theusers’ sessions. The solution also doesn’t allow the user to copy paste
any data from the application, thus avoiding the possibility of dataleakage.
Another key feature of Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops that has helped
Nilkamal improve data security considerably is session watermarking.
The feature places a watermark containing the username and company
details over the SAP session. This dissuades the user from trying to takea photo of the screen on their mobile device and allows for data to betraceable.

BUSINESS CONTINUITY AMID THE PANDEMIC CRISIS
With Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops in place, Nilkamal was ready on
day zero as the pandemic forced the employees to Work from Home(WFH). With secure access available to mission critical applications suchas SAP, the solution helped keep the business operations running evenin the middle of the lockdown.
“With time of the essence, Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops helped us inenabling remote working and ensuring business continuity right fromDay 1. The solution was well equipped to handle the WFH scenario at an
unprecedented scale that no one had planned for, making sure there
was zero disruption to business” exclaims Doshi.

ENHANCED USER EXPERIENCE IMPROVES PRODUCTIVITY
According to Doshi, “An effective remote working experience requires the rightbalance of security and productivity. With Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops we havebeen able to achieve that with considerable improvement in the employee
experience, which in turn, has improved the experience they’re able to offer to theircustomers.”
Among the factors contributing to the enhanced end user experience include theCitrix solution’s ability to work on low bandwidth. Nilkamal has implemented theEnhanced Data Transport (EDT) protocol by Citrix which works on high latency
networks. This ensures that even when the user is accessing the applications from along-distance network with high latency, they don’t experience any lags. Seamless
access with no compromise in performance has been a significant productivity
booster even as majority of employees continue to WFH.
With Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops in place, Nilkamal in now looking at building afuture ready workplace aided by the key tenets of security, choice and experience.
Strengthening the partnership further, the company has also invested in API
protection and WAF solutions from Citrix to manage their API exposed to the outsideworld and to protect SAP from Layer 7 attacks respectively.

“With time of the essence,
Citrix Virtual Apps and
Desktops helped us inenabling remote working andensuring business continuity
right from Day 1. The solution
was well equipped to handle
the WFH scenario at an
unprecedented scale that noone had planned for, making
sure there was zero disruption
to business”

he says.

Citrix | Nilkamal0