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

We use the solution for remote desktop access. 

The solution is deployed on the Citrix cloud.

The App is the most valuable feature.

Citrix should consolidate the multiple tools currently required into a single platform. At present, to access all the features, I need to log in to four separate locations and use four distinct tools.

I have been using the solution for four years.

The solution is stable.

The solution is affordable.

I give the solution an eight out of ten.

• Remote access
• BYOD
• High performance
• Feature-rich, full desktop experience

• It has enabled remote working from anyplace, anytime, and anywhere
• It has simplified, secured, and centralized the challenges of O/S deployment across the enterprise.

They could reduce the number of bugs and fixes required post release. This would ensure a smooth integration with any flavour of hypervisor or cloud provider.

I have been using the product for fifteen years.

Over the years Citrix has increased the pace in which new versions are released, and often the product has not gone through thorough enough testing so the consultants are left very challenged trying to resolve bugs, and obtaining post-release fixes from the Vendor (Citrix). It would be much better if Citrix could slow down the rapidness of their updates and give a bit more time and consideration to belt and bracing the solution prior to general public release.

For the most part, we did not encounter stability issues. However, owing to the complexities involved in working with multiple vendor platforms, and by the nature of the Microsoft O/S, there are sometimes gremlins and bugs which affect deployments for which hot fixes are often required.

These bugs can sometimes affect stability, but often only affect it when mixing multiple vendor solutions.

We did not encounter any scalability issues. By design, Citrix offer a very modular solution whereby you can bolt-on and build-up on features and functionality as required. Citrix tends to do future-proofing. It is still the market leader in Server Based Computing deployments.

Technical support was usually excellent. However, you sometimes have to push to ensure that you get to the top level of engineer to deal with the case. This is the case with most vendors.

We have worked with all competitors over the years. I think that the "Ferrari" Citrix is still your best choice

It depends on what business needs you are trying to achieve and which product features you need to enable.

Installation and setup have been improved over the years. However, to implement a truly robust, performance rich solution, you still need an SME to help design and implement the solution.

We have a teamed on seasoned Citrix Consultants, specialists in their chosen field covering off the complete Citrix Product Suite from XenMobile, to XenDesktop

We recently implemented a new on-demand private cloud solution for SAS Software to replace their aging PC/Ghost imaging within their classroom environments throughout the UK. The new XenDesktop solution is completely hands-free enabling the end user to provisioning the desired desktop image on-demand within a 3 minute end-to-end process. Previously, it use to take the SAS Support staff an entire weekend to rebuild a classroom ready for the SAS Software training course to commence on Monday. They realized their ROI within just one year.

Citrix is competitive when compared to other vendors. Often you get what you pay for. In this instance, if you want an enterprise-class and future-proofing solution, then Citrix is a good choice to make.

We have evaluated, and continue to evaluate all the main competitors since 2000.

We looked at VMWare View (now Horizon) and Microsoft RDS/VDI.

We are brand agnostic and we go with the best solution which fits the customers' needs and budgets.

As professional consultants, we will advise and present the pros and cons of each solution when explaining our recommendations.

• Talk to fellow experts who have worked extensively with the technology.
• Ask them to come over, showcase, and demo the solution so that you can cover all your business objectives and ensure the right vendor.
• We always recommend an onsite PoC for 5-10 consulting days to prove the technology and to thrash out what can and cannot be achieved.

The Provisioning Services and Machine Creation Services features allow you to provision workloads just by following a wizard, and most importantly depending of what you have in your environment, either a below average network (Machine Creation Services) or fast and large storage (Provisioning Services). You are able to use either one of them to improve the time it takes to build workloads and make them available to users.

One of our clients where we implemented XenDesktop has a highly mobile fleet of users, and providing access to shared desktops either via Wyse terminals or tablets has really shown what a difference in improving efficiency and reliability can do to a system. What we love the most about XenDesktop is the simple and easy way to scale on-demand depending on the workload.

Citrix Director, which is like the monitoring interface from Citrix could use a revamp in the way that it displays information. The display is not very intuitive, and it could also have better integration with SCOM via Comtrade MP (now Citrix) and other monitoring tools. This is in progress with v7.8 using SNMP traps which will allow Director to talk to upstream monitoring systems like BMC Patrol, CA Spectrum, Tivoli, etc.

I've been using it for three years.

With the deployment, it was only doing the design that took a while to build. It was a very particular client with a not so good network, so we had to work around that, but Citrix adjusted perfectly, for every issue we found when designing XenDesktop had a feature to make it happen.

XenDesktop is a very mature product and since implementation early last year, we've only had couple of issues that required our attention. As the solution was built with High Availability in mind, we only suffered from a degradation in service rather than a full outage of the system.

If you need more hosted shared desktops, boom it's really easy, and only takes couple of clicks and in minutes the new workloads are available and ready to be used.

Excellent, Citrix support guys are top of the line, and when we required a Citrix Consultant on premises, Citrix sent one straight away to assist us.

Previously, I used VMware Horizon View. This solution is simple and elegant, but it lacks the robustness Citrix has. Protocols and features to improve user experience when the network is not the best, are features that VMware has but they are not as effective as Citrix ones. The ICA protocol from Citrix has been maturing for many years, and the amount of settings you can tweak to deliver a great user experience is incredible. It can be a bit complicated, but if you work with the product you can work out what option suits best your scenario. VMware is still behind but let’s not think it is the underdog as they are gaining market share and it is a cheaper solution than Citrix.

After the design was built, agreed upon, and firewall rules were defined, deployment of the solution was a breeze. Having XenDesktop running on top of XenServer as native hypervisor is the best way to go. When machines are created via MCS or PVS you don’t need to do anything else for the VMs to be created as XenDesktop talks directly to the hypervisor and instructs it to create whatever workloads you need on the fly.

The implementation was done in-house mostly, however with the design considerations we approached Citrix for assistance and to confirm whether or notour design considerations were following best practices. One thing to consider when implementing Citrix and a set of policies is that if it is a big environment, you are deploying, please ensure that the person or team that's doing the design knows what they are doing. Citrix works marvellously when properly configured but if not, you will find a world of trouble trying to make it work as you want.

For implementation, my advice is if you are designing a big environment contact Citrix Professional Services. If you're not sure on some aspects of your design, and have a CCE-V in your team, this is the key person to contact when doing a design for a large environment - 5000+ workloads for desktop or server.

Citrix is a pricey product, but it is the best product for large corporate companies that want to squeeze to the last buck the life of their existing computers. Using Citrix allows medium to large companies to save money when computer hardware refreshes need to happen; Using shared desktops with Windows Server 2012 R2 as OS you can provision this for a large fleet of users that are probably still using a Windows XP computer but the user experience they will have will be like using Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 if you use the latest version of XenDesktop

Plan your budget, and do a PoC first if possible to get key users feedback, work with Citrix licensing team to find out what best license scheme adjust to your needs, don’t go out and buy the Enterprise license because it has it all, check first what your design requires and after that make an informed decision.

My focus has primarily been on publishing virtual applications.

Pricing and technical support need improvement. 

I have been using Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) for fifteen years. 

The scalability of Citrix matches with almost all devices. 

The technical support was challenging in the beginning but now it seems to improve. 

The initial setup is straightforward. 

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

Use cases are situations where multiple people require the use of some apps, whether Chrome or SAP, for example. We primarily use it for app launches and we deliver multi-session OS.

The solution has improved over time. For example, one of the functionalities that has been incorporated into the latest versions is the Local Host Cache. Another improvement is zones. There is also something called Local Text Echo that was introduced with version 7.9 or 7.11. These features have helped us to adapt the product within different customer organizations and within our own organization as well.

Additional benefits the solution has provided are work from home and bring your own device. These have made us more efficient in terms of being able to work wherever we want and through whatever device we'd like to work on. Encouraging people to work from home and reducing dependency on fat clients, like laptops and desktops, and providing them with thin clients or zero clients, we'll be able to save on costs. With fat clients, the renewal cycle is around three to five years, whereas the renewal cycle for thin clients or zero clients is around seven to 10 years.

The app protection feature is one of the most valuable because it provides good security, as nobody is going to be able to look into your screen while you are sharing the screen. And if someone has installed a keylogger in your system, your keystrokes will be jumbled up and they would not make any sense to the keylogger. App protection is one of the coolest security features that I have encountered on any platform.

Our company is a systems integrator and I have been using Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops for around eight years.

We have multiple versions, including Citrix Cloud and 7.15 LTSR (Long Term Service Release). Some customers are running with 7.6 LTSR and some are running on 1912 LTSR as well. But none of them are using the current release. In our organization we are also running on 1912 LTSR.

Right now it is on-prem, and in the next three to six months it will be going to the cloud.

The solution is quite stable. Approximately 60 to 70 percent of the time, I find that issues belong to the dependent components, like network, storage, another profiling solution, or the cloud. Around 30 to 40 percent of the time it is Citrix that is the culprit. But it is quite stable.

It is quite scalable and robust as well. On our platform we have more than a million users. And we are trying to increase the use cases so that we will have better penetration among all users.

I'm an ex-Citrix guy. I was part of support and post-sales activities and I was involved in sales activities as well. I would not rate their support as high as I would have during the time I worked there.

In part it's because they hire people from the market who may or may not have a complete understanding of the product. That is okay, but once you onboard them for support, you need to get them trained properly. Once they are trained, you need to understand their current skill set and level, and that may not be happening. That's the reason, when you jump on a call with Citrix support, they lack some basic understanding. Troubleshooting is an art. It is not just knowing about technical things. It is also asking the right questions. That level of understanding and knowledge only comes with a lot of practice.

Neutral

Setting up the solution was straightforward because, at the time, it was all on-prem. But today's solutions that we are deploying are not straightforward to set up. There are cloud, SaaS, and PaaS products, and different profiling solutions. Customers want the best of everything, and that makes the solution a bit complex.

The setup time depends on the number of users. If I look at a standard of 10,000 users, it may take 45 to 60 days, post user-acceptance testing. But if you include the UA phase, the time may go up to three to four months.

To manage Citrix for that same, standard 10,000-user environment, one that is operational 24/7, you would require one SME, two level-threes, four level-twos, and six to eight level-one people.

Citrix solutions cost a lot in comparison with competitors, like Azure Virtual Desktop or VMware Horizon. Those solutions cost around 50 to 60 percent less, per month per user, than Citrix. The leadership of Citrix should really consider the pricing factor. Apart from that, they are the leader in the virtualization of desktop applications.

In our organization we have Azure Virtual Desktop and VMware Horizon. Citrix is not the only solution on which my team and I work.

Scalability is the biggest factor, along with ease of use and the security features that we get. The kinds of features that we get in the Citrix security stack are really phenomenal, and I don't think that kind of feature set is available with any other platform. In addition, it is highly usable, even on choppy or low bandwidth. If customers have issues in their network, it works pretty well.

These days, Citrix lacks innovation, so I would rate the current product stack as an eight out of 10. If they innovate more features for more business use cases, and they try to take more users from on-prem to the cloud, with reduced pricing and better after-sales services, they will definitely get a 10 from me.

You can manage all devices and users in your company. You can respond rapidly to user requests. If you use the thin client, you can save energy.

You can simulate disaster scenarios for our virtual world and you can increase your virtual security.

You can create Linux virtual desktops with XenDesktop, but only Red Hat and SUSE versions. I would like to be able to create Linux virtual desktops for VMs running Ubuntu, Kali and other Linux versions. Citrix should add this features to the next version.

I would like applications to open faster. Citrix can increase applications' startup time.

I have been using XenDesktop for nine years.

I had a stability issue with Citrix XenServer. If you experience a problem with XenServer, you must know Linux commands, unlike with VMWare ESX. You can solve any problem with the GUI on VMWare ESX. With Citrix, it must be developed.

Citrix has a very easy setup GUI in versions 7.x.

Implementation varies from company to company. If you have more than 10,000 users in your company, I prefer to perform implementation in-house.

Regarding Citrix XenApp & XenDesktop licenses:

• Example 1 - You have 100 users in your company. If all workers use Citrix products during work time, you can select the Citrix user/device license. (For any company.)
• Example 2 - If your company uses a shift system (60 workers in the morning, 40 workers at night), you can use a Citrix concurrent license. (For example, any university.)

This Citrix product is flexible, easy to manage and faster than similar products such as VMWare Horizon.

The initial installation plan should be well-done. It must be well-constructed and it must be very well-optimized. Anyone can install this product, but not everyone can manage this product.

My rating refers to version 7.x of the product. I rate earlier versions lower.

I mainly use it for VPN connections to resources like my physical laptop, which is currently in the office, while I'm working remotely. We use it for all the virtual machines.

The goal is to simply give users the possibility to securely connect to their laptops or virtual machines, in some cases.

It's not a cloud solution. We use Virtual Apps and Desktops with Windows 10 in the same way as servers with, for example, Linux systems. There is no dedicated infrastructure.

I'm not a Citrix administrator, I'm just a regular user.

From my perspective, when the COVID pandemic occurred, and the whole company had to work remotely, the users who used this solution had a better feeling that the remote system is stable and reliable, in comparison with a regular VPN connection with a VPN client. The difference with Citrix is that only the things you move on your screen, like the mouse and keyboard keys, are transmitted. In a normal VPN connection, the whole connection to the network resources in the company are transmitted and this costs bandwidth. The Citrix solution is much more convenient for the user.

The most valuable feature is the gateway to a remote connection, to a physical or a virtual PC. Compared to a normal VPN client and connection, the connection via Citrix is more stable and does not consume as much network bandwidth.

I have been using Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops for about two years, but I am familiar with previous versions like XenServer and XenDesktop. So my overall experience with Citrix goes back about six years.

It is a stable solution. But if we don't have a stable network in the user environment, it is very sensitive to things like that. The user experience when using the solution’s technology remotely depends on network stability. When the network is stable the experience is positive, but when there is some fluctuation of the network speed, Citrix can freeze the screen or mouse at that moment, and this is not good for users.

One of the advantages of Citrix is its automatic reconnection. If a connection is broken for a second or two, Citrix tries to reconnect. And if the loss of connection is less than, say, 15 seconds, the user will have the same moment on his screen as before the connection was lost.

As I review the possibilities of adding a second site or more users, or advantages like multi-screen, I believe this is a scalable solution.

I am familiar with Check Point's VPN and VMware Horizon. These are comparable technologies to Citrix.

At various times I have used the VPN client from Check Point. This solution is a very stable and secure solution.

Citrix is oriented toward web application access with access to VDIs or regular, physical PCs. 

And VMware Horizon is a solution oriented strictly to give access to give to virtual desktops. Citrix is a set of technologies which can be used to access physical and virtual machines, while Horizon is mostly for virtual machines and Check Point is mostly for accessing physical applications and to secure the traffic.

Each vendor, in upcoming versions, adds this or that possibility, so that the products will be similar in terms of their roadmaps.

It's easy. We have a very clear idea of the setup. But from a financial point of view, it's not so easy to deploy it quickly.

This was a kind of PoC, to see what Citirx looks like. After financial considerations and discussions, we decided to stay at this stage for the next year or more.

In terms of our initial setup, from the beginning of COVID pandemic, starting in March of this year, about 50 users have started working with the Citrix connection to their laptops and VDIs, while about 100 users have worked with regular VPN. The Citrix users mainly work with detailed applications which need long connection times. They are IT employees, like me, and a couple of people like the CEO and others from management.

There are two or three technicians who administer it.

Based not only on the cost of Citrix, but additional costs like firewalls, IPS, and other solutions, the total cost of switching users from using normal laptops with VPNs to connection via Citrix were so huge that the CEO of our company decided to postpone the deployment process.

Because we are at the beginning and have started from scratch we are, on the one hand, in a very convenient situation. But on the other hand, we must spend a certain amount of money for infrastructure on things like routers, connections, etc.

Building a real farm of VDIs could improve the work for users, but this is a strategic decision for our company. We are reviewing technologies like VMware Horizon and others. In each case, the cost is high and in the current pandemic/financial situation, our company has decided to postpone plans to move until next year or later.

I would like them to make the licensing easier to understand. Licensing is quite complicated for apps or processors or servers. When you try to adopt a solution, licensing is per bundle. But for a regular user, from a business point of view, there is no strict license: For example, access to VDI will cost X, and that is all. Instead, in each case, there is a license for access costs, while per-server the cost is that, and to another type of server it costs that. No vendor will tell you, "This is the cost per user." In each case, the answer is, "It depends."

My advice would be to be patient. Each solution has its pros and cons.

We use the following in protecting our environment: Citrix Gateway combined with users from Active Directory and RSA tokens, as well as Remote PC Access.

I am able to use the solution from my private laptop, my company laptop, and I don't see any difference. I imagine the behavior should nearly be the same across other devices.

I have a few small companies as customers who need to have access to data stored in a centralized site from remote locations. We provide them with this tool so they can do their work in that type of business model.  

XenApp is fast and secure and reliable for remote connections. It is a solution that is completely different than older Windows solutions like Remote Desktop, Server Gateway, and Runtime Brokers. These Windows solutions have never really produced satisfactory results for me.  

There are a few things I would like to see improved. First, the price can be improved for sure. Microsoft does not have support for this type of solution to make it easy to use the product. But in using Citrix, I can provide remote access support. The features I use with Citrix cannot be found in Microsoft products with any solid alternative. RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol), which is the Microsoft solution, is limited. If you try to go with the solution in the cloud, the RDP is still very slow because there is an HTTPS overlap on the RDS (Remote Desktop Services), and RDP is not secure enough. They also could improve support for the integration of these products.  

The other thing I would be looking for in the next release is that they make improvements to roaming profiles. I think they have already made some additional efforts to improve this. It's good, but it could be better. Most of the problems I come across are caused by profiles being incorrect. That should be fixed but it may not be possible on the Citrix side because it is really a Microsoft issue.  

I have been using that for 10 years already.  

If I look back at the issues I had over time, there really have not been too many. Most of the issues are Windows Server related, they are not problems with the Citrix solution.  

I think the product is very scalable. I would say it is really infinitely scalable from my experience.  

I have 16 customers and the customers use XenApp every day, all day. But I can scale that as needed as my client base increases.  

In the beginning, the tech support was very good, but today like every other company, Citrix is limiting its support solutions. Right now I would say that the technical support ranks as a six or seven out of ten. Sometimes it is very good and sometimes I find the solution faster by myself than they find it for me. But overall, it is not really impressive and not as good as it was.  

They certainly should improve support. On the other hand, the price of support isn't very much. You have to buy the maintenance every year to get the new versions and support access. For that small price that they charge for the support, you can't expect to have services that are really very good. In the past, you had to buy the products and you have to buy the support separately. Today the cost is more for the product alone. On average the vendor will gain more, but it might be better to have better support packages that you can pay extra for, especially in this case.  

For me and my situation — I have a complete Citrix environment with NetScaler — all services were installed in one day. The most time it takes to install an additional application is one or maybe two days. I may outsource some tasks at times, but nothing about it is really complex. I know using Citrix with Microsoft is fairly complex and you have to use it in the cloud and have things done for you at times. But I don't believe that alone constitutes complexity.  

I do not use other resources for implementation. I do it all myself as I am a partner and reseller.  

The advice I would give to those who want to start using this solution is to beware of Citrix and Microsoft. They are both considered sort of the bad guys in the computing world. They want to push you to the cloud and maybe you don't really need the cloud for your solution. You don't have to listen to them.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate this product as an eight.