More than 120 employees of Hong Kong Air Cargo Terminals Ltd. (HACTL) are now enjoying remote office access through the company"s deployment of the Citrix Presentation Server 4.0.

The deployment of the advanced access solutions not only boosted the mobility of HACTL"s workforce, but also jacked up the speed of connection of old devices, said HACTL computer operations manager Kevin Lau. Users could now also access updated versions of applications such as Microsoft Office even through old PCs.

HACTL recently extended the Citrix deployment to remote office connectivity, which allowed employees in Hong Kong to work at home and staff members in the firm"s Shenzhen and Guangzhou offices to access the corporate network. The company also used the Citrix product suite to boost the efficiency of its accounting system by offloading administration tasks.

Lau said HACTL was now considering extending the Citrix deployment to its warehouse terminal replacement project, where a number of the Presentation Server"s functions would be put to good use.

CPU load-balancing, for one, is ideal for planning future warehouse terminal replacement as IT administrators can set the CPU loading for each user so that loads can be balanced without affecting the overall connectivity speed. The USB device connectivity/mapping function, for another, enables the selection of future peripherals for expansion.

He said HACTL would also be looking at the Hot Desktop feature of Citrix Password Manager 4.0, which enabled faster logon/logoff speed for shared workstations.