The pilot was announced as a collaboration between Eversheds, Computacenter and Citrix, with each bearing an equal share of the costs.  Eversheds has a five-year contract with Computacenter for the outsourcing of many of its IT systems, with Computacenter operating a central service desk for 3,500 Eversheds users in Eversheds' Birmingham office.  

Part of this outsourcing process also involved the implementation of Citrix's virtual desktop environment (marketed as XenDesktop), which enables full desktop virtualisation on different clients.  Citrix Reciever is client software for smartphones and mobile devices (including Blackberry, iPhone and now the iPad), which enables the virtualisation on mobile clients.  The marketing literature promises "easy access to any Windows app ... directly on your iPad". 

The well established GoToMeeting app looks after virtual meetings.

Given that the iPad is functioning as a client on existing virtualisation software, and that the Reciever and GoToMeeting apps are available free from iTunes, this pilot would seem to be costing Eversheds and its suppliers little more than the hardware cost of the iPads.

Many of the largest law firms (including Clifford Chance, whose "Clifford Chance Anywhere" system sounds a lot like the new "Eversheds Anywhere") have bought into Citrix virtualisation, and it cannot be long before they have their own iPad programmes.

Laurie