Pret A Manger is one of the UK’s biggest food and drink shop success stories. From their first, humble London-based venture in 1986, they now run shops in over 500 locations globally and continuously strive to reach new consumer needs.
But in order to achieve continued growth and implement a cloud-first strategy, Pret A Manger needed to expand on their on-premise virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solution.
As Pret branched out their business, they quickly realised their on-premise infrastructure needed improvement. In order to branch out, they needed a solution that would support the roll-out of virtual desktops across their global stores.
Their on-premise capacity constraints, as well as their desire to start segregating certain services within their business, meant that Pret needed to respond to these challenges quickly.
Pret A Manger had ambitions to expand their business, invest in security and provide their European stores with the best, streamlined desktop experience.
Redcentric matched these ambitions by harnessing one of Microsoft’s newest technologies: Window’s Virtual Desktop.
Microsoft’s WVD, cloud-based solution provides Pret end-users with a connectable endpoint. The solution gives them the ability to migrate existing desktop resources from their on-premise environment into the cloud. This means each store can provision their own session hosts and scale their environment as required. What’s more, Pret is also able to define standardised ‘images’ for hosts and deploy them repeatedly within minutes.
Pret have adopted this solution across 22 pilot stores, but are looking to roll out the service to all of their global franchises.
We’re pleased to be partnering with Window’s Virtual Desktop – the roll out of this particular project was very smooth and delivered on time. We found the cloud team very responsive and quick to assist with our questions. We look forward to working together in the future.
The Windows Virtual Desktop solution benefits Pret A Manger by allowing them to:
In the future, alongside Redcentric’s technical support and consultancy, Pret A Manger are exploring additional opportunities with public cloud services.
Whether it’s being able to stream cloud applications onto each desktop environment, or select their region to reduce latency, Pret A Manger are geared to further increase their flexibility and productivity.
