The City of Corona delivers resiliency, security, ease of use from anywhere with Windows 365 and Microsoft Intune

Initially, the city opted to build a multiple-vendor solution that met most of its needs, including remote access. But this complex solution, cutting edge for its time, presented a few challenges. A city employee might have to wait as long as 15 minutes each time they wanted to use their remote desktop. Their work sessions didn’t persist, so they risked losing unsaved work between uses. Occasional profile corruption issues caused headaches for users and IT help desk staff. And as a careful steward of public funds, the city also needed to save on costs. 

The City of Corona addressed these issues by becoming one of the earliest adopters of Windows 365 Government, which gives city employees personalized, highly secure Windows 365 Cloud PCs that are designed according to United States government security and compliance requirements. The city also moved diverse employee groups to Windows 11 Enterprise. Now, the City of Corona’s field workers, call center employees, and numerous other remote and hybrid employee groups all have personal, persistent desktops with strong protection from Microsoft Intune, Azure Active Directory (Azure AD), which is part of Microsoft Entra, and other Microsoft Security solutions. 

A new, easier way to work

Some City of Corona employees had wondered if remote access was worth pursuing, based on their previous experiences. But workers felt immediate, wide-ranging benefits when they started using the Windows 365 Cloud PCs. “We’ve given everyone a complete and persistent desktop experience through Windows 365 Government,” says Edgeworth. “The only difference from the in-office Windows 11 Enterprise client experience is that people can access it anywhere, any time.” For example, it takes only seconds for employees to sign in to their Cloud PCs. This has been exceptionally important for the city’s field workers, like utilities personnel, who get asked to manage emergent, sometimes dangerous situations at any hour of the day or night. If these professionals need to wait 15 minutes to access their mission-critical apps, the consequences could be dire.

Not only did the lack of persistent work sessions increase the likelihood of employees losing unsaved work, but the virtual machine they had been working on would be taken offline entirely. Signing back in meant signing in to their desktops, restarting all the apps they had been using, and reopening their files. This was detrimental to productivity, and in some cases, it also increased government response times. Brad Ransbury, Systems Administrator for the City of Corona, recalls the headaches that the previous system caused. “Our IT folks sometimes have to respond to technical issues in the middle of the night from home,” he says. “Using Windows 365 Cloud PCs to fix a simple issue in 5 minutes instead of 20 literally helps us get more sleep at night.” 

The City of Corona also improved its disaster recovery capabilities with Windows 365. If the area experiences another wildfire or other natural disaster, the City of Corona leaders know that the response teams will have the support they need. “Our goal has been to make sure that, whatever happens, our city can continue to function,” says Edgeworth. “Windows 365 Government delivers on that goal and takes our abilities to the next level—enhancing our lives and making operations easier.” With its infrastructure in the cloud, the city no longer needs to worry about the physical threat a natural disaster represents to its systems. Likewise, if an update is implemented incorrectly or malware is introduced to the system, the City of Corona can quickly and easily roll back the affected devices to a prior state. This reduces downtime for workers and helps to increase data security. 

Simple security and compliance

Strong data security has always been part of the city’s plan to move to the cloud. With Windows 365, Windows 11 Enterprise, Intune, and other security layers like Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, the City of Corona has implemented a modern, automated, and steadily updated solution that provides robust security with little involvement required from IT personnel. “With Windows 365, Windows 11 Enterprise, and Intune, we automatically get the newest security capabilities Microsoft has to offer,” says Ransbury. “We know everything is configured and deployed properly because we’re using Intune, and that’s a huge boost to our productivity.”

The city’s IT help desk staff have seen meaningful increases in productivity. Before adopting Windows 365, they had to set up new employee devices onsite, a process that took an hour or two to complete. With Windows 365 and Intune, the process can now be handled remotely in a matter of minutes. An admin assigns a license to an employee and a Cloud PC is created automatically. This frees help desk employees to focus their time on more complex tasks and saves new hires the time they would have spent coming to the office for their device setup. 

Using its new Microsoft solutions, the city has developed a broader view of its compliance landscape. With Intune, the City of Corona has reduced the number of apps on employees’ work devices. At one point, Edgeworth’s team discovered that the city’s 900 employees had as many as 5,000 unique apps spread across their devices. City leaders understand that, as a government entity, a city represents a large target for would-be bad actors. Accordingly, they take compliance very seriously. “We needed standardization, not just of which apps were on our devices, but which versions of those apps we had in circulation,” says Edgeworth. “Through Intune, we’ve got the control we need. We know what’s on our devices and whether those apps are up to date. That helps keep us compliant and secure.” 

Many City of Corona employee groups use Surface Pro or Surface Laptop devices, all managed as Azure AD–joined devices. This means that they can only be signed in to the government’s Microsoft-hosted network with an Azure AD account, can access the city’s network from anywhere in a highly secure manner, and do not require any localized infrastructure to be up and running. “We just deployed 10 new Azure AD–joined Surface Laptop devices for our Emergency Operations Center,” says Ransbury. “That way, if an earthquake or some other event shuts down our internal network in the city, vital emergency response personnel will be able to enact our emergency response protocols from anywhere they have internet.” 

Predictable pricing, reliability, and ever-expanding benefits

As a governmental body, the City of Corona has a fixed budget for each of its services. It spends carefully and values the per-user pricing model of Windows 365 over that of consumption-based offerings. “We appreciate that with Windows 365, we know exactly what our costs will be,” says Edgeworth. “It provides us the resources we need, without any surprises at the end of the month.”

Going forward, city leaders expect to adopt even more Windows 365 features as they become available for governmental entities. “I’m very excited for the upcoming Windows 365 Boot feature,” says Ransbury. “This will give our users a seamless experience between their Cloud PCs and working remotely or from the office.” The City of Corona is also excited about potentially using Windows Autopatch, a feature of Windows 11 Enterprise, in the future as another time saver. “We see Windows Autopatch as another layer of automation and security that should help our personnel take on less-repetitive tasks,” says Edgeworth. “With Windows 365 and Intune, we really are doing more with less all the time.”

For Edgeworth and his team, the journey to the cloud began with the need to be better prepared for any disaster that might come the city’s way. Now, after implementing Windows 365, Windows 11 Enterprise, and Intune, he finally feels as if the City of Corona has achieved that goal. “With Windows 365 Government and the Microsoft Cloud, we’ve got a new, holistic view of our environment that helps assure we remain compliant, stay secure, and have the resiliency to take on any obstacle—including malware, ransomware, and even natural disasters,” says Edgeworth.

Find out more about the City of Corona on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.