Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) Reviews

We use application virtualization capabilities and on-premise desktop virtualization. In one of the companies, we are using remote PC access or remote access to physical desktops. We used cloud-hosted desktop virtualization for a PoC.

Our organization has over 15 companies all over the eastern region. We are in manufacturing, distribution, technology, and many more things.

It provides the flexibility of being used on any device. It is good in terms of user experience. Generally, if you want to run an application over the internet on your virtual desktop, you need to have many things working well to have the same experience that you will have if you were are working on your own laptop. It provides a good user experience in terms of working even with not-so-high bandwidth.

There is end-to-end security not only for the application itself but also for the users. We need to ensure that the applications are always protected and the connection between the user and the application is also protected. 

Integration with the cloud provides a seamless experience. You can publish applications over the cloud, and you can access the workspace and your application on your computer, your laptop, your tab or iPad, or on mobile devices. It works well with your Apple, Android, or Windows devices. It works with everything. There is also a system where you can remotely assist any person who is running any specific application.

There is good integration between Citrix and Microsoft applications. You can also optimize the user experience with certain configurations. Security plays a very important role in working with Citrix in terms of dealing with group policies, legal policies, and application policies. You can apply the required policies. For example, you can have a clipboard policy where people cannot copy or screenshot stuff.

It is very easy when it comes to the deployment and management of hybrid cloud apps and desktops. You are working only in one console, and it is straightforward. You can see everything there. You can see the policies, rules, profiles, and whether you want to have it on the cloud or on-prem.

When it comes to the security and protection of critical business applications and desktops, 
there are certain business applications that some companies prefer not to publish or not to have on virtual desktops in the cloud. However, when we're talking on-premises solution, it can integrate with any published application. If you're working on certain projects or certain versions, you will not have any issues in terms of the version because the configuration is based on the server and not on the client PC. For example, some Oracle application or ERP application needs certain plugins to be available, and users didn't have those on their laptops. In spite of not having them, they were able to work on these applications through a virtual desktop.

It simplifies adherence to industry regulations for data protection and compliance with all kinds of security policies. 

It benefits the overall business operation and reduces the total time of managing big applications. The applications are available at any time of the day. Previously, if anyone lost his computer or had his computer damaged or something like that, we had to take that computer and reinstall everything for a staff member to be able to access the application, whereas now, the staff member can access the application through his phone or another computer. His information is there on the service from any place. So, it impacts the availability of applications, and it saves a lot of time to replace a damaged PC. In certain cases, it also saves a lot of cost of buying new Windows or new hardware for the applications, so we can use old laptops to run these applications. It saves time and money.

It saves the cost of buying new PCs and the maintenance. It saves 50% to 60% of the total cost of a new device that needs to be bought for any new employee or for a specific service. It saves a lot of money and reduces wastage.

It provides security of our intellectual property and data when remote employees are using the solution. The main thing is that you can create your own policies and you can specify what applications users can run based on the locations. For example, if they are working in Dubai, they don't need to access all data in Lebanon. We can create profiles and policies for them. In the group configuration, you can just integrate it with Active Directory or another security platform so that the configuration can be applied to the region.

It is very efficient to work with a thin client. There are no problems with integration with various devices.

We're running it on-prem. We are working with Hyper-V and vSphere, and we don't have any problem with that. We can run any server and storage. It can work with any hypervisor. There are no restrictions.

First of all, the manageability of the applications for publishing is valuable. Second, it is about being able to run the applications on all main platforms. Third, its licensing is valuable. You can either switch to the cloud and keep on-prem. You can work with this hybrid scenario.

As an admin, for managing the devices, the interface is very user-friendly. There is no problem, and it is very good.

Licensing service installation and configuration was the biggest challenge for all Citrix solutions, but now they have fixed a lot of issues.

I have been using this solution since 2013.

We have companies that have around 500 users, 100 users, and 50 users. The biggest company has around 1,000 users. This company is all across the region.

We will increase its usage depending on the business and the requirements.

They were excellent from a project management standpoint. They helped us with issues related to licensing. 

If we need any online support, they are able to provide that. Their support is fine.

I used to work with VMware Horizon.

It didn't take a lot of time. Within a week of entering into an agreement with Citrix to use their service, I was able to administer and work with it.

We had everything that we need, and their support team in Lebanon was very helpful. In less than a week, we were able to administer and install applications. At the initial stage, we also had to develop our own profiles and policies, but it was very straightforward. There was no complexity. It took around two hours for installing the Citrix and the license service, and it took around two days to configure the profiles. We had three people for deployment.

You can buy an on-cloud or on-prem license. You can switch between on-cloud users and on-prem users.

Its licensing is cheap. It is from $8 to $15 per user. It is not that expensive when you compare the cost of buying new hardware with the cost of the license. For example, at $15 per user, it costs around $180 for a year, which is cheaper than buying a $600 PC that at a certain stage, you will again have to change because its hardware is not supported. It may also get damaged or stolen. So, you can compare the cost of the actual hardware that you have to buy and the time spent in supporting the clients with the cost of its license.

I evaluated other solutions such as VMware Horizon and Microsoft Remote Desktop Services. Citrix works seamlessly on different platforms, and its bandwidth consumption is very low. Desktop profiles, integrations, and remote assistance were also the main factors for going for Citrix.

To get the benefit of the return on investment, you need to plan well in advance when to change all of the laptops, and you also need to train the users to cope with the new environment or new structure.

I would rate this solution a nine out of 10.

LG Uplus is using Citrix for internal groupware. Every employee here uses Citrix to access the VDI to make some Word documents or PowerPoint presentations. We are not allowed to use our local PC resources at all. 

The second use for my team's project is that we are reviewing the potential for a virtualization solution for our customers, who are mainly video editors. We offer them a low-price alternative. Instead of buying our high-end desktops or workstations, they can save money by virtualizing some application solutions. 

This is deployed in LG CNS, which is a subsidiary of the LG group. Most LF subsidiary companies are a part of the LG CNS solution. LG CNS solution is combined with Citrix, which means that if you work with LG CNS, you have no choice but to use Citrix.

First, since we adopted the Citrix VDI, we are no longer dealing with the problem of leaking the customer's personal information. Second, we aren't investing a lot of money in buying new personal laptops. With the VDI, we aren't relying on a high-core CPU or memory in each employee's laptop. Because the functions that require a lot of memory and CPU are happening in the cloud, we can just give the employee a basic Pentium CPU laptop.

The Virtual Desktop Interface is very important because we have many departments for customer service. For example, we have operational storage and also we have a customer call center. Most of the customers are calling about a security problem. 

Before we adopted a VDI storage solution, our customers' personal information was leaked. This happened a lot. But since we adopted a VDI solution, these kinds of issues have happened rarely. Of course, we banned each user from installing or sharing software, like peer-to-peer sharing software. There is no chance that a single user could leak personal information by mistake through unauthorized access.

Virtualized solutions are very important. Because of the high-speed internet service here, I think the virtualization application solution can be adopted in a B2C market for customer service.

We've tested a lot of cases with the Citrix solution and found that it's okay when the Citrix virtualized solution is adopted over the laptop or desktop. But it has some latency issues—a lag between the input device and screen—when we test it with a smartphone or tablet. The reason that users use the virtualized desktop is they want to access a Windows 10 application, but they need their keyboard and mouse. Every employee complains about the performance or quality of their VDI. After we adopted the security solution, I think the performance is quite better. But employees are still complaining about the speed of the VDI.

Latency is also a major problem when adopting Citrix for video editing software or 3D editing software, especially editing 4K video or large file size. The Citrix virtualized solution becomes too slow, so we cannot use the VDI. For the streaming, Citrix needs to improve its screen resolution problems because this is a market trend. We produce and use a lot of high-density videos. If Citrix cannot improve these kinds of issues, then we might not be able to use VDI anymore two or three years from now.

Citrix doesn't offer any solutions for the virtualization of macOS, either. I think we could use that kind of service.

It's been around 10 years or so.

I would rate it very low actually. Because here in Korea, most of them are for sales, not technical assistance. For developing some applications, we have to choose or test virtualized applications. But call up Citrix agencies—sales agencies—they say they cannot solve the technical issues. We have to find some technical references through the internet or through developers who have some experience with Citrix.

Internally, the IT department uses Citrix. For developing customer service for my team's product, I use Hyper-V's client solution instead of Citrix, because the price of the Citrix virtualized application solution is too high. Citrix only provides the B2B license here, so they don't have any B2C license. I use Hyper-V-based applications and virtualized solutions because of the price issues.

I think it was very complex. It was difficult to install Citrix by ourselves, but we have an IT department and a PC maintenance department. The initial setup required around three people. But after the initial deployment, most employees don't have any trouble with installing Citrix solutions. For each user, it takes around half an hour. For example, I broke my laptop and had to get a new laptop. I personally asked the IT and PC maintenance departments to install the systems again. It took them around 30 minutes.

We have a dedicated IT department. They have a contract with Citrix and they're employed here. 

It's tough to say whether we've really seen any cost savings. Many people don't believe the Citrix solution lowered the total cost of the whole system. But I think if we adopt an application virtualizing service, then we can reduce costs a little bit more. 

Currently, everyone here is using the same public cloud server resources for every software. but if we adopt a virtualized application solution, then the IT department can choose which software needs a lot of resources and which can adopt lower-tier public cloud resources. That way, we can save a lot of infrastructure costs.

It's my understanding that the solution license fee for each user is around $300 US. If we buy a personal laptop for each employee every five years, then the total cost is five times $300 US, or $1,500 USD. So we could buy 100 personal laptops instead of the Citrix solution. If we compare the cost of a high-performance laptop and the price of the Citrix solution, the total cost savings is very small. But we can improve the security issue.

I think the speed and latency of Hyper-V are quite good, but one thing I worry about is the security issues. Our internally developed client for the Hyper-V solution doesn't have as many security solutions as Citrix does. As I recall, LG CNS has its own VDI solution. At this moment, there are some solutions that can replace Citrix, like FreeVDI, an open-source VDI, for example. We have tried using those kinds of service solutions in some departments, but they didn't quite meet our expectations.

I would rate Citrix seven out of 10.

As a care provider we provide hospital and community health services with around 3,200 staff at the hospital and a further 650 community staff who work in local clinics and in patients' homes. On 1^st April 2020, we acquired our first primary care practice as part of our move towards being an integrated care system.

In terms of Citrix our biggest use case is for remote access and remote control. The former provides a VPN connection and the latter a published desktop. Prior to the onset of the COVID virus we had a 200 concurrent connection license covering both types of connection but today, following an NetScaler upgrade we now have a license for 1,000 concurrent users. Typically we're running 500 to 600 connections out to those locations every day.

Our hospital systems are a mix of SaaS and on-premises solutions. Our primary clinical platform is the Cerner Millennium electronic patient record (EPR) system, and that is delivered entirely over Citrix. However, we also use Citrix on-premises to deliver a range of services, including modern workspace, sharefile, load balancing (over 4 NetScaler’s) and of course remote control and remote access. Recently we have been working with Citrix to develop a thin-client workstation-on-wheels, for use on our hospital wards and believe this to be the first of its type. That's really where the relationship with Citrix has stepped up, because we're doing some new, innovative work.

We've consolidated all of our previous licenses into the latest version of the Citrix Workspace Premium Plus package to optimise the value received from the investment and are shortly to tender for a new support package that we expect will see us engage directly with Citrix.

The Citrix technologies allows us to do some clever things. For example, it has enabled our Radiologists review images that are quite large at home. Imagine trying to squeeze a 20Gb mammogram down a broadband connection, it is simply not practical. Yet by combining the Citrix technology with a specialist workstation from our Imaging partner, we're now able to have radiologists working successfully from home, reviewing MRIs, CTs, plain films, etc., because all we're sending are keystrokes and screen updates.

In terms of Security. Our organization has achieved the Cyber Essentials Plus security accreditation. My organization takes security very seriously. In fact, as far as I know, we're the only hospital in our region that has three full-time staff who work on security within the IT department. We very much take that Zero Trust position and ensure that we provide the necessary policies and controls to protect our organization, but not to the point where we impact our agility or flexibility in terms of supporting people who genuinely have a need.

We've built a strategic relationship with Citrix and we use a lot of their products for everything that we do. I would rate the Citrix stack highly as an end-to-end solution for implementing Zero Trust principles. It's allowed us to do a lot of things quickly and flexibly, and some of the functionality that has become available as we've moved into the newer, more advanced versions of the Citrix software, have proved very beneficial.

Among the most valuable features is the Citrix Workspace, which allows us to drive that thin-client connection and the remote control/remote access capabilities. Those things have allowed us to connect an awful lot of people quickly from home and that's obviously helped during the pandemic. There's a concern right now that a second wave of the Corona pandemic is on its way so we're gearing up now to enable a second wave of staff work either from home or from an alternate location. This way we can reduce the number of non-clinical staff in the hospital whilst not degrading the services we provide in any way. Fundamentally we are seeking to keep the number of staff working at the hospital down to only those who actually need to be there.

The user experience, when using Citrix technology remotely, is very good. It's easy to use and I say that with some authority because I've been working from home now for about six months. I've been able to do my role as the CIO entirely from home. I log on through the Citrix gateway first thing in the morning when I start the day and I stay logged in until 5:30 or 6:00 o'clock at night. I've been able to gain access pretty much whenever I want and it's just two clicks to get me there.

I've got friends who work on the wards who use the Citrix client on our workstations-on-wheels and they find it relatively easy. They load the Citrix client, they click on the link to the EPR, and that's it, off they go. Because it's a thin client, because we're not dragging huge amounts of stuff over the network, they get very good performance out of their equipment. And that's allowed us to extend the life of some of our very early workstations-on-wheels. Some of them are now four years old and are coming up for replacement. Indeed that's what we've been doing with Citrix, building the next generation of workstations-on-wheels, to benefit from what we've learned by working with Citrix and partners to deploy this new technology.

The prototype is built and is currently being tested. When we go live we'll see a big step forward in terms of the performance, a notable increase in battery life and the corresponding reduction in the number of times the unit has to be recharged.Those are things that our nurses have told us will be of benefit to them.

The solution also provides the flexibility of being used on any device. We have a mixture of Windows PCs, Android mobile devices, Apple tablets and other Apple devices. We have Citrix installed on all of those and it allows our users to use these devices for any number of things. They can use it for clinical access, bringing patient data quickly to the clinician. For example one such system is the EDM (electronic document management) system that holds the scans of all of our paper documents and using Citrix staff can switch between the EPR and EDM and so get a complete picture of the patient's health. On a more basic note it can also be used to access tasks lists, calendars and email – helping to manage busy lives at a time when hospital staff are working under extreme pressure.

It affects the employee experience in a very positive way because of the way in which we have combined the remote connectivity with the Citrix tools. That means that as long as you have the right level of authorization, you can access a great deal of information from anywhere, and you can do it in one of two ways. If you have a hospital device that belongs to the Trust, then you've got a very high level of access to a lot of information because we can then employ end-to-end security. But if you're at home and you're using your home computer, you can still connect. It's just that there is no data transfer and the performance is less through the published desktop than it would be through the remote connection. But both situations work really well and, obviously, have been tested very severely with the Coronavirus where, very quickly, we had to give a lot of people the ability to work from home. One of the ways we did that was to allow them to use their own computers and come in through the Citrix desktop connection.

It takes a little bit of work upfront to get it configured and operable, but given the length of time we've been working with Citrix and the strength of our relationship, we're normally able to get any glitches ironed out and resolved quickly. That allows us to provide both a strong suite of applications to our users and a good user experience.

In terms of automated analytics to detect serious performance issues, what happens is that Citrix work with us and provide a monthly health check. This service monthly provides a series of analytics reports and tell us that it's all working, or if there is any issue they work with us to get it resolved.

Where improvement could be driven is in terms of clarity as to the functionality of some of the solutions. If you go back to the older Citrix Xen products that we had, we understood those really well. As we've come into the new workstation premium suite, there is a lot of additional functionality that we perhaps have not yet fully exploited. It is not because we can't, but simply because we don't yet understand the depth of functionality that's offered.

We made the upgrade to the Workspace suite last year we had planned to train this year but then the pandemic struck. We've only had one thing on our minds since March and that's how do we keep the hospital running? How do we make sure we keep people safe? And how do we treat patients in the face of a once-in-a-century experience?

Citrix have offered to help with demos or presentations of these new features, but we also simply haven't had time to dive in.

I joined the Trust on the third of January, 2017. At that point the Trust was already engaged with Citrix, so it's at least five years or more.

The solution is absolutely rock-solid. I'm almost scared to say this, but throughout the whole stress of what we've been through over the last six or seven months due to COVID, Citrix hasn't missed a beat. It's been solid and reliable. We've had no downtime. It's been absolutely on the money, and given how critical it has been to get people connected and working, the 100 percent reliability has made me very happy.

We're happy with the scalability. We were able to increase a 200-user solution to a 1,000-user solution simply by buying an upgrade to the license. We chose to buy two additional NetScalers, bringing our total to four, but that was largely because we bought the initial upgrade from 200 to 1,000 to allow us to connect the 640 staff who work in the community. But then, the hospital's need for remote access and remote control overtook that. That's what drove us then to buy a second set of NetScalers because we didn't really want to put some 4,000 users through just one gateway (pair). We felt having two gateways would be safer from a resilience point of view. And having two NetScalers per gateways means that we can take one down to do maintenance updates without disrupting the service.

In the next couple of months, we'll start to plan what next year's digital program looks like. The way in which we operate is that through November, December and January we engage with operational and clinical colleagues to determine how we are going to exploit IT to enable transformation going forward. We then build a digital program for our Digital Board to sign off on. As we go through that exercise, looking at how we can deliver better healthcare for our patients and improve the clinical experience, we will be looking to Citrix to help us understand how we can better exploit the new software that we've invested in. Normally by now, having bought it last year, we would have been well into it, but the pandemic has somewhat focused our minds elsewhere.

Given that we are building these new, next-generation workstations for use in the clinical areas, it's been great to see just how much support and help we've had from our partners including Citrix. They've recognized that it is something new, that it is something that will help hospitals (not just ours) to deliver services that are more reliable and quicker in busy clinic areas and on wards. It's been a huge pleasure to work with some of their very senior people on a project of this scale.

You often find when you're working with tech organizations, and you step it up to do something that's not straight out of the sales catalog, that some step up well and some don't. Citrix have really stepped up well. They've kept in close contact with us, they've supported the design and they've helped us to consider options at the build level. We're delighted with that. We've built a prototype that's being tested at the moment and we look forward to that going into production. We'll probably hold some sort of press event to talk about what we've done. It's the strength of the partnership that we enjoy with Citrix has allowed us to do that.

The very initial setup was done before I arrived at the Trust, but I have been involved in all the major iterations that we've gone through since. Some of them were relatively easy to do, others were more complex. Getting the license upgrade to increase the number of remote access sessions and upping the size and capability of the gateway was relatively easy. It took a few phone calls, purchasing of the license, and off you go. But configuring the VPN and the Citrix published desktop so that they work within the security model that we have did take more work than we had originally expected.

In some aspects, when you bring software products together from three different vendors, there is always a little work to do to get APIs aligned and to get the solutions talking to each other so that the user then gets a very slick experience. We do such things all the time with our IT department usually spending the most time on testing, especially when the solution is for use with patients. We seek to ensure that when we hand something to a busy doctor, a senior nurse or a therapist that they don't need to have an enormous amount of tech knowledge to be able to use it. They just click on the buttons, enter the information and press go, and it does what it needs to do.

In terms of how long these updates take, the remote access and remote control was a solution that was built for 200 concurrent users. Today, it's built for 1,000 concurrent users. It probably took about two weeks to agree on exactly what software license we needed to buy, about a week to procure it, and about three hours to embed it. That was quick and easy to do. 

In terms of the Citrix desktop, we couple that with a second form of authentication that comes from a third-party, and that took six to seven weeks. It didn't take that long to get it to work—we got it to work quite quickly—but it took that long to get it to work smoothly. It took time to work with the three different application vendors that were involved and iron out the bugs and make it work as we wanted. But most of it, particularly where it's just us dealing directly with Citrix, happens quickly and easily.

If you think about our ability to continue to operate as a healthcare organization during the pandemic, without Citrix we would have struggled. We would have found it very difficult to have so many people able to continue doing their day jobs from locations other than their normal bases. It is therefore fair to say that the ROI on our connectivity investment was excellent. Yet this does not stand in isolation as the delivery of our electronic patient record system using clinical workstations-on-wheels is all built over Citrix technology. Absolutely, for every pound we've spent, we've seen a good ROI.

I'm happy with the pricing. The cost of the Citrix software reflects what I would expect a product of that nature, in that market, to be.

Understanding the licensing is quite a bit more complicated, because one of the things about Citrix is that you can buy licensing at different levels. You can buy a basic license, which will give you the core functionality. You can buy an advanced license that will give you the core plus another layer, or you can buy a premium license, which provides a much wider set of functionalities. In truth I still struggle with some of the variations but with the aid of our reseller we usually find what we are looking for. Yet I still like the idea because it means that if all you need is a basic load balancing solution, then you don't need to buy an advanced or premium license. On the other hand, if you want to use the extra features that come with those higher-grade licenses, you can choose to do so, but you only pay for what you need.

The only comparable I can think of is that we use software from a different party for virtualizing servers. But we were aware that in terms of the ICA-type protocol, Citrix was the product that everyone was saying was the best. Indeed, I've worked with Citrix for a very long time - I guess a little over 20 years, so I never had really had any intentions of looking anywhere else because I believe that it's the right tool, to do what we need. In truth I have not seen any compelling evidence to make me think otherwise.

My advice is to spend more time planning than you do implementing. Get what you need—the components that make up the solution—all agreed and lined up before you then commence the build work. I know that's really easy for someone like me to say, when you're under pressure and your organization needs something built very quickly. Therefore, to make sure that you generate the most benefit from your investment and you drive the features that really help, spending a little more time in the planning phase and making sure that you've got the right type of license, the right application or appliance required to do the job as this will save a lot of rebuild work or remodelling work down the line. It will also mean that if you want to grow it for scaling purposes, it will be far easier to do if you've thought about that before you implement the solution.

One of the lessons I have learned from using this solution is the fact that we have been able to be agile and respond to the needs of the organization through the use of the product. That has been a very good side of things. Another side of the lessons learned is that when we paid for the upgrade to move to the premium suite, we could have engaged earlier with Citrix to understand the additional functionality. We knew ahead of time that there was additional functionality, but in terms of the detail, we didn't get into that and then we got overtaken by the pandemic. In a normal year that wouldn't have mattered, but the lesson I've learned is that if we take an upgrade in the future, if we take the next step forward to a next generation of that software, I want to try to ensure that the purchase and the training of my engineers are closely coupled.

As for protecting our environment, we use Citrix Gateway, but the single sign-on is provided by another partner of ours. We have Tap and Go, Remote PC Access, Web App Gateway. We do have Web/URL filtering, but not from Citrix.

In terms of maintaining the solution, I have resources at both 2^nd and 3^rd line engineering that have Citrix skills and who look after the day-to-day stuff. In addition we have a contract through a Citrix partner and so can escalate calls that we can't handle. We spent time and effort putting our engineers through Citrix training. But occasionally, something comes up and we're not able to resolve it. At that point, we log a call via the partner and the partner's engineers, and Citrix's own engineers, get involved. Normally that results in a relatively quick resolution. The Citrix engineers clearly know the product really well. They'll quite often say, "Oh, we've seen this before. You need to do this or that or the other." As I said, we've had very few issues with reliability on the Citrix platform so those calls are actually quite rare.

Overall, I love it. It's been a really good product. It's helped my organization and helped me to deliver what the organization wants. For me, Citrix takes 10 out of 10.

For example, right now I'm at home, and my connection to the hospital runs over the Citrix VPN that we've created. We also have Citrix Remote PC Access, so if you are home and you're on your own computer, rather than one that belongs to the hospital, you can access the published desktop rather than having full VPN access.

We're a fairly big Citrix customer. We're doing some quite ground breaking stuff with them. We're beyond just being a customer. Traditionally, Citrix is positioned in the marketplace as a manufacturer. They sell through channels and the customer deals primarily with the partner. Because of the amount of work we've done, we primarily deal directly with Citrix themselves. There is a partner involved because that's the only way of doing the sales component of it, so if we want to buy something that has to be through the channel. But the work that we're doing is being done alongside engineers who are employed by Citrix rather than by the partner.

The primary use case is for organizations with a large number of users, such as warehouses or production facilities. In these environments, users access a few applications from multiple computers. Citrix Workspace simplifies the deployment of these applications by installing them on the session host and distributing them to the users. 

From my perspective, the most valuable feature is the manageability. Citrix Workspace offers a wide range of options and makes the deployment procedure much easier.

Some customers find the price to be a significant factor. They have a hard time understanding the extra cost of the services. However, in the long term, I have seen a more stable business due to using Citrix Workspace.

I have been working with Citrix Workspace for many years.

It has been very stable. I would rate it a nine out of ten. 

It is a scalable solution. It is easy to scale. Around four customers are using this solution. 

The deployment varies depending on the client and their specific requirements. For example, some of our clients in the healthcare industry have specific applications and data that require special handling.

The deployment model depends on how you define a cloud-based solution. We host the session host and deployment in our data center, and customers connect directly to our data centers from their offices. So, we provide the infrastructure, but it may differ for different users based on whether they use the workspace plugin or have their own clients.

It's a monthly subscription. Some customers find the price to be expensive. Because first, they have to pay for Microsoft Remote Desktop user accounts, and then on top of that, they need Citrix accounts. It's not exactly double the cost, but it's a significant increase. Some customers are sensitive to costs, but some have started to understand why they need to pay for all the services.

If you only have a few users, it's hard to justify the costs. So using this solution will depend on individual use cases. 

I like this solution. Overall, I would rate it a ten out of ten. 

I use the solution to give my workers access to several application in the form of Citrix internal applications for the company.

We had an old software that our servers did not support. So we moved to Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops for cyber engineering in India and Mexico.

The support offered by Citrix's partner needs to improve. The partner support platform should aim to provide more technical information to users.

The solution is very expensive, including the license, and the support, of all the platforms.

For example, the solution of Microsoft, if you are partnered with Microsoft, you have access to the license, and you only need the variable servers from the virtualization with Microsoft.

I have been using the solution for six years.

It is a stable solution. We don't usually have problems with the platform, but escalating the issue is difficult.

It is a very scalable solution. In the last semester, we updated the video graphics on the virtualization and video 3D graphics for the simulation on the hardware, and it was implemented in three days. It took six to seven months to get the GUI and firewall, but that was because of the problem in the country rather than Citrix. Four thousand users are using the solution presently.

The technical support with Citrix is a nine but support with a partner is a four. So the problem with support is not with Citrix. It is more with the partner who was supposed to provide the solution.

Positive

Talking of my own experience, I have tried VMware and Microsoft Hyper- V solutions. But here in the company, Citrix is the only solution.

We recommended a partnership the first time we bought it from Citrix and Citrix. The partnership was closed several years ago, and the new partner could be better. It's not good. Now, Citrix has been bought by another company.

It's costly in the market. But it is not expensive for the company. For the company, it's relatively inexpensive because the core of the work is compensated with the price. Secondly, the price is included in the cost of the business.

Presently, we are in the process of evaluating other competitive solutions and collecting their names. I must propose an error to show why we must change or stay with Citrix.

People planning to use Citrix must take the right decision for their firm rather than evaluate the cost from the start. 

It is a robust solution. I rate it a nine out of ten.

We encountered some challenges in publishing outdated applications to end users, and we initially attributed it to ZenApp. However, we were eventually able to publish these applications to a specific user group that required access. It was a straightforward situation as we were primarily hosting end-of-life applications.

The architecture I built had a robust failover mechanism for the endpoints, and the interface was user-friendly. 

We were able to successfully publish the applications we needed without much difficulty. While understanding the background processes required some reading, I was able to deploy the system without any outside assistance or consulting.

My only issue with Citrix is that they frequently rebrand their products. I'm using the app and everything is fine but after a couple of years, it's entirely different. There were an enormous number of Citrix tools readily available. My immediate concern was selecting the correct ones.

I was able to choose the tools I required, and as previously said, the products I used have now been rebranded as Citrix Workspace.

It's similar to what VMware does with its Workspace One.

Before they transitioned to a workplace, I had assembled a Citrix environment using ZenApp and desktop and expanded upon it. Although it never reached production, I received training and successfully set it up.

In my opinion, it was very robust. I enjoyed working with it. We had used it for several years, and you could see that the software itself was being updated with time. Overall, I found it to be a pleasant experience.

We didn't face any scalability issues as we had a limited number of users, around 20 to 30, who needed access to the end-of-life applications.

The scalability was a nonissue. However, we didn't get into hundreds or thousands of users. I definitely don't have the experience to tell you that.

I didn't have to contact them as I could deploy it myself. I accessed their documentation through their website and my previous experience, which enabled me to do it independently without any assistance from them.

I remember that we had some challenges with sharing printers, especially with setting up access only for the finance and legal departments. It was a bit tricky, and I think that situation would have required assistance from technical support. However, we eventually managed to figure it out and get it to work, which was important for those departments.

If I recall correctly, setting up access to a printer was quite challenging. I don't have the specifics in front of me, and it's been some time since I worked on it, so I can't provide details. However, I do remember that it was more difficult than any other task I had to do.

I found it a bit complex, especially since we started using VMware products more frequently. If I had the choice, I would have simplified the process by using VMware Workspace going forward.

I don't quite remember the specifics of what we had. I believe we had a 25-user license, and I don't recall it being overly expensive. 

It was a reasonable cost. However, if you were to scale it up to hundreds of users, the cost would undoubtedly appear significant.

This is no different from what I would expect from VMware Workspace pricing.

I would rate it around seven or eight. It was highly robust and matured in terms of its features. I was building a high-availability environment while deploying it, and I appreciated its capabilities in that regard. Overall, it was quite robust and dependable.

I was quite satisfied with that as a solution.

Because I wasn't able to take the solution further, I would rate Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops a seven out of ten.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to thoroughly test it.

Despite not being able to conduct extensive testing, I found it to be good to work with, and it performed as advertised.

We are a system integrator for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops and we also make use of it in our own company. Our primary use case is ensuring that all our applications (e.g. Chrome) can be accessed in a secure manner by employees. As opposed to a VPN, it's much more secure.

The other main reason why we use this solution is because it enables us to centralize our systems, making it easier for the IT team to manage everything.

The biggest benefit of using Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops is that all of the company's applications and data are situated on one centralized server, removing the need to install applications on the users' physical desktops or laptops. Whenever we want to access anything, Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops provides a seamless experience that lets us connect to our apps and files from anywhere. It's much like having a virtual office.

This arrangement also improves IT security because it ensures that no potentially-unsafe data will be downloaded on the end-points.

Instead of pointing to any single feature, I would say the most valuable aspect of Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops is the overall product itself. Virtualized apps and desktops, in theory and in practice, are very helpful to users.

Our experience of Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops is good, but the environment can become complex and difficult to manage at times.

The price is also too high, in my opinion, and could be reduced.

I have been using Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops for seven years.

It is stable.

It's a scalable solution. In our company we have about 20 users but some of our customers have between 250-1,000 users.

We have occasionally escalated issues to Citrix's technical support. I would rate their support services a seven out of ten.

Neutral

We have tried other solutions in the past, but in the end we found Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops the best fit for our use cases.

The setup is a complex process as there is a lot of competency required. This isn't just to do with Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops itself; it also depends on how complicated the existing infrastructure is. 

Depending on the number of users and the specific requirements, the deployment can take from three days to three weeks. When we deploy the solution for customers, we have to take a number of factors into account, such as the user count, which applications they will be using, whether they will be using desktops or laptops, and other things such as how much data will be sent back and forth.

Then we need to size up the infrastructure (CPU, RAM, storage, etc.) to make sure that there are sufficient resources, and if not, then we will deploy the necessary extra hardware. After that, the next step is to use a virtualization platform such as VMware, Hyper-V, or Nutanix, and then we download and install the Citrix environment. Finally, within the Citrix solution, we configure the applications to be used by end-points.

I would rate the setup process a five out of ten.

We did our own deployment in-house with the help of one or two staff members.

Ongoing maintenance and support is generally required since there are multiple users, many of which are using Microsoft Windows, and we tend to encounter maintenance issues about once a month. However, most of the problems we see are related more to the Windows environment rather than being the fault of Citrix itself.

There is definitely ROI in the long term because you are getting increased security and productivity (i.e. you can access anything in your company from anywhere) with reduced operational costs.

We're paying for a standard license and, in my view, the price is too high. I would be satisfied with it if it were reduced by about 20-30%. Right now, I would rate the pricing a five out of ten.

My advice to others is to make sure that your physical environment has sufficient computing resources, otherwise the performance won't be as good as it could be and your users won't be happy with it. Besides ensuring stable infrastructure, you should implement the solution with people who have the required experience needed to manage it.

I would rate Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops an eight out of ten.

We were looking for a way to deliver the desktop to the end-user securely and within a short time. We leverage their cloud-hosted desktop virtualization.

We use Azure Cloud and, in terms of laptops, we give them to our employees but, because of the COVID situation, sometimes they work from home using their personal laptops to connect to the office environment. They use Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops as a medium.

Before we used the solution, when an employee would join our company it would take us between seven and 14 days to completely configure and give them a laptop. Now, within a maximum of one day they get their computer and can start working on that system. It has simplified things for us.

The solution also simplifies our adherence to industry regulations for data protection and for compliance. For data protection, we have watermarking enabled and the solution opens in full-screen mode so that end-users cannot toggle between VDA and their desktops. The solution also disables use of the clipboard to copy data from the VDA desktop to an endpoint device. Moreover, there is an option to disable even taking a screenshot of the virtual desktop. All of these features help with data protection.

For compliance, we have our own URL to access our desktop server. We can also create a tenant-based method for deploying the virtual desktop for each project, and we can group them. Also, the communication between the endpoint and the virtual desktop is encrypted end-to-end. All communication is over SSL and TLS connections.

The most valuable feature is the watermark because most of the time our employees connect from a remote location. In case they photograph the DDA or some data, the watermark will show which user did so and from which IP they connected. That makes it more secure.

The solution also provides us with flexibility so that it can be used on any device. We mostly have Mac and Windows machines.

In addition, Citrix uses its ICA (Independent Computing Architecture) protocol and for end-users with less bandwidth, the Citrix connectivity enables them to work.

They need to adapt more quickly to the latest additions to the Microsoft operating system. If Windows 10 comes out with a new version, there are compatibility issues and it takes them a lot of time to release an update.

Also, even though they support Linux, as with Windows, we are not able to use the latest version. They need to bring more simplicity to the Linux Virtual Desktop.

I've been using Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops for one year.

We don't have that many users, but the scalability is good. If required, there is no limit on the number of users. Currently, we have about 5,000 users on virtual desktops and about 1,000 are using Citrix.

In terms of support they are lagging. They take a lot of time to respond. Once they connect, they take a lot of time to resolve things, especially when moving things from L1 to L2 and L2 to L3. Their backend people keep on changing and it can be annoying for us. It is not that easy to get support. The support is not that great, although it has improved when compared to a year ago.

Neutral

Once we put it on a Cloud Connector, and if we are using a test cloud, it is very easy to deploy. If you want to deploy the ADC, then it takes some time to consider things, but otherwise deployment of Citrix consists of simple steps.

Because we are deployed in the cloud, it took us some time to configure the ADC. The rest of the components were deployed in a week's time, but the ADC took a lot of time, because there were a lot of compatibility issues. We followed the documentation, but it took some time for us to settle the configuration. The ADC is used to connect Citrix to the end-user system so it is a critical component. Deploying the ADC on the cloud is a complex process.

From the time we entered into an agreement to use Virtual Apps and Desktops, it took about six weeks to eight weeks until we could use it. On our end, there were two or three IT people involved.

The Citrix integrator we used was moderately helpful. They tried to help but they didn't have much experience with a cloud deployment. They were able to do on-prem fast, but GCP took them a lot of time.

Our deployment is in its initial stage so we cannot say there have been cost savings, but in terms of security, it is good. It has also improved the efficiency of our IT department by approximately 20 percent.

The pricing is a little bit high, but it's good value for the product's stability and efficiency.

You need to choose the right licensing, whether it is the Advanced or Premium Edition.

We have used Azure Virtual Desktop and some other solutions as well, but compared to all of them, in terms of the performance, the screen refresh, and security, Citrix is number-one.

Citrix is an enterprise leader for virtual desktops. We cannot compare Citrix options, usability, and simplicity with Azure Virtual Desktop. With Azure Virtual Desktop, there is a lot of slowness and audio will not work. When it comes to an enterprise-grade or first-class option, you need to look at Citrix.

You need to think about ADC. If you are planning a deployment in the cloud, you need to be well aware of what will work and what will not work with ADC. Otherwise, it will be difficult.