The Salvation Army has extended its use of cloud client computing by introducing virtual desktops in its college.

As part of an overall refurbishment of the William Booth College, the charity replaced the PCs with Wyse Xenith devices using a Citirx XenDesktop environment, last summer.

Martyn Croft, chief information officer at the charity, said that the high definition experience of the devices was important for the teaching needs at the college.

“In answering our requirements for a superior multi-media experience, we will be able to extend the benefits of desktop virtualisation to a much wider community of end users who previously would only have accepted a high-performance PC on their desk," he said.

The Salvation Army has been using Wyse thin client devices in its LifeHouse welfare centres for the last five years and plans to expand the use of virtual desktops across the organisation.

Desktop virtualisation means that all data is stored on a central server rather than the individual devices or clients. It should mean that data is stored more securely and IT management and support costs are reduced.