Mobile operator One2One has chosen Citrix MetaFrame as its standard application server software to deploy mission-critical applications to more than 2,500 customer-care and call billing centre personnel.

One2One said that performance and availability problems had spurred it to embrace server-based computing.

"The customer care and billing system is the heart and lungs of mobile telephony," said John Murray, IS director of One2One. "Citrix MetaFrame has enabled us to scale our operations very easily, while delivering excellent performance."

The mobile operator uses the Amdocs Ensemble customer care and billing software, running on multiple HP 9000 V-Class UNIX servers with the Oracle 8i database.

Centralised information is integrated into a PowerBuilder front-end application, with the application managed and deployed by Citrix MetaFrame running within a server farm comprising 70 Windows NT servers. These are linked to call centres via a 8Mbps Wan.

Murray said that they are exploring the deployment of applications to wireless PDAs using the same technology.

Andrew Ponsford, of analyst Datamonitor, said many enterprises were interested in server-based computing because less intelligent devices could be used at the edge, but warned that this had to be traded off against the limitations of centralised computing.