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

For virtual desktops, like Windows 10 or Windows 7, we primarily use the solution to offer some customized applications to the users. 

Some of the basic applications, like Windows applications, are being used across all VDIs. 

The usage depends on the specific customer. They decide what applications they want to have in their VDI. We have certain items as far as their requirements, and we just manage the infrastructure in the background.

Citrix tends to have the most capabilities surrounding desktops.

The application virtualization is very, very good.

The customer is always looking for a unified solution. They need a single place where everything can be managed from while using a web application. With Citrix's system, there's an administrative tool and a helpdesk tool. Those two tools are very different, and the Citrix administrative tool is not meant for web-based use. It's in a heavy application. If they could build it into their web-based applications, that would be ideal. That way, administrators can log in from anywhere on any browser and they can just manage the environment in the background. 

Citrix does not have an in depth assessment tool. Some customers ask for components in Citrix that can give information around the hypervisor's resources or in-depth metrics of the hypervisor's site. There is a free tool from Citrix, however, it does not give you the deeper information of the other components like hypervisor or the OS or the storage, or downloads in the network. Those are the limitations of that particular tool right now. We might need to use a third party tool to gain that information. 

If Citrix can develop something which can have more reach towards the backend infrastructure, other components of the Citrix environment, that would be ideal. 

We've most likely been using the solution for over eight years at this point.

Citrix is one of the companies that is delivering virtual apps and desktops in a big way. They are mature enough to understand the level of stability required and deliver it. 

Now, they are moving towards the cloud and offering everything as a service. The redundancy part is already taken care of by the company. 

We have many components and have controlled redundancies. From the end-user side, a user won't see any disruption in the services. That's due to the fact that the infrastructure in the background is highly available. Elasticity is also introduced. We're always building provisioning desktops on-demand and shutting the machines that are not in demand. 

We have certain policies defined in the infrastructure in the background, which can enable our administrators to utilize the resources as they need them. Therefore, it's quite stable.

We use this solution ourselves in our own organization and have a 60,000-70,000 userbase currently. We have more than 40 customers within the virtual workspace. Most are medium-sized entities. A few have 20,000-40,000 users. We'll be adding another client in healthcare that has about 20,000 desktops.

Scalability is not an issue. You can scale up to any number. There's only the requirement of adding the infrastructure and building that horizontally. You'll need to set up the different components horizontally. For example, if we have a 10,000 user base, then we can probably have 10 master servers. If the user base is around 40,000, then we can double the master servers so that they can take up the load.

We often contact technical support.

They are very engaged, whenever we have an issue. They are very helpful. Most of the time, whenever we run into an issue where we need to reach out to Citrix they are available to us.

We do not support only Citrix. We also support the backend infrastructure and hosting infrastructure that are also Citrix products. If it's tied to another product, such as Microsoft, they'll work together to resolve whatever the issue is. 

We haven't found any difficulty in working with them. It's rare that we'd need to reach out to other vendors as well as Citrix (usually once in a quarter), however, if it happens, we know Citrix will do what they can to work with all parties.

We do not exclusively work with Citrix. It's much more high-end than other services, however, we do also offer, for example, VMware and Horizon.

The initial setup is very simple currently. Earlier we used to install many components separately. Now, we have a basic software installation setup. We can build the environment in a few hours. It does not take much time now. Earlier, we used to have to secure the servers, for example. It is all virtualized. One administrator can build the environment from scratch and in a very short period of time. It's not complex now. Earlier it was, but not anymore.

The deployment time depends on the sizing of the environment. If the customer is looking for only 500 desktops, it takes one day to build everything. If there is planning involved, and there are some different components or key bits and pieces that the administrator needs to collect, it might take a bit longer.

If it is in a scalable environment that's sized, for example, at 1,000, 10,000, or 20,000, it will definitely take time. This is due to the fact that we need to choose the appropriate technology for the background. We need to figure out if the customer's willing to have a provision desktop, basically. That all depends on what the customer size is and what the customer requirements are.

We also offer managed services, so we can help our clients manage everything once the solution is fully deployed.

Our team can help implement the solution for our clients. That said, I don't handle the process directly myself.

Citrix is competitive, however, at the same time, they give great service. VMware, Horizon, or other VDI solutions may be cheaper. That said, they do not have the same capability that Citrix has. 

We offer other VDI solutions like Microsoft WVDs and the VMware's Horizon, that are on the cheaper side. It's up to the customer, what they want to do. If they want to have premium services, we will host their VDIs on Citrix system components only. That will give them better features and better capabilities or maybe less frustration on the user experience side.

We offer cloud and managed services offerings as well as environments hosted on our data center. We have a variety of options and therefore can offer a variety of prices according to what they need/want.

We're currently using the latest version of the solution.

While we mostly work with on-premises deployments, we also occasionally handle cloud deployments as well. 

We have our internal Cloud offering. Form there, we have a managed data center and within our company's premises, the customers are just subscribing to services based on their need for virtual desktops.

I would recommend the product. It's an industry leader in the VDI environment. Nobody can match their capabilities right now.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten overall. If they had better capability testing, I might rate it higher.

The main focus of Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktop is remote access, mobility, and speed of deployment. 

Our most important use case is remote access. We had to deal with a lot of complaints from our users that were really difficult to troubleshoot. 90 percent of the issues were related to the local connection with the Internet and traffic problems with the ISP, which were not related to Citrix nor our infrastructure. This was difficult to troubleshoot. Since we have had Citrix Director implemented, every session looks crystal clear on the platform. We know exactly what each one of our 7,000 users is doing with the platform and how their sessions are performing. It has helped us to give better support and recommendations to our employees regarding the use of the product and their requirements for their welcome networks and Internet access. It has been a huge improvement for our Internet service.

Our organization has the following protecting its environment:

• Citrix Gateway/Single Sign-on (SSO)
• Remote PC Access and Remote Desktop Access
• Web/URL Filtering
• Contextual Access
• Citrix Endpoint Management
• Citrix ADC
• Citrix SD-WAN.

We are mostly an on-premise customer. Most of the visibility that we need, it is inside our network.

Citrix is a key solution for our business continuity plan/strategy. We are using it for remote access for every single employee, business partner, and service provider. Citrix is used for anyone working with Banco Galicia. One of the most interesting examples is what happened with this pandemic. At this moment, 95 percent of our employees are using Citrix as the only tool to do their job. That's it. It is as simple as it sounds. 

There is no difference between being at the office or home when using the solution’s technology remotely. You can't even feel the difference.

The solution provides the flexibility of being used on any device. We designed this solution with Citrix and our local partner, and one of the main aspects of the project was the ability to use it everywhere and with any device that you want. That was one of the requirements. We encourage the use of corporate-owned devices, but if you prefer your personal devices more than the corporate provided ones, then we make sure that you can use it safely without putting our business and infrastructure at risk. This is a really good solution from a bring-your-own-device perspective.

Our organization supports Zero Trust as a security strategy. In the last three to four years, Citrix has made huge improvements so we can have all its features on the same solution. Even with the simplest Citrix deployment, you have all its features available without additional products so you can provide safe access to your apps and infrastructure.

We have some protections for location-based access on our network delimiter. Our business is 99 percent locally in Argentina, so we have different policies on our network access. Then, we are evolving our deployment of interpretation and analysis from Citrix based on the software that you have installed, device that you using, and different policies.

XenApp is a really good product. The user experience is awesome. The security features that it has are invaluable for a customer like us. Because we are highly regulated, we need to operate in a highly secure environment. 

We love Citrix SD-WAN and have it fully deployed on all of our network and branches.

We saw a huge improvement when we implemented Citrix Director. We have full visibility of our users' traffic, from their houses to our data center. This solution has provided a huge advantage with visibility.

The solution provides everything in one integrated platform. When it comes to monitoring their solution, it is really easy. We have all the information in one place so we can have the right information at the right moment. We can be proactive when it comes to dealing with performance, maintenance, and security issues. 

The product advances really fast. For some customers, we need better backwards compatibility. 

For products that we still have to use some legacy software, the virtualization of applications works okay, but sometimes it requires some additional effort from our team to make it work.

For more than 10 years.

The stability is good. It is one of the most important aspects that we took into account when we decided that Citrix would be our platform for mobile access and remote access. The platform is completely stable.

We have done a lot of integrations using different applications and vendors with Citrix. Everything is well-documented. All integrations have been tested, and we have proof that they work. You feel confident when you move forward. An example is that four months ago we had our Citrix solution sized for 2,000 employees. Since the pandemic exploded, we were able to scale up to 7,000 users in 48 hours. If that is not simplicity, I don't know how to define it.

From an administration point of view, everything looks simple, consistent, and seems to have been designed to provide the same type of user experience that we are providing to our users. However, you have the same kind of feeling when you have to perform all the administration of the suite. It's very simple to use it and perform all the maintenance and monitoring activities. We have only two administrators for 7,000 users. This means that it's not that simple because it does require skill, but the experience is good and everything looks simple on the platform.

We have always had support from the Citrix working team as well as the business partner working with us here in Argentina. The Citrix people and their partners have a good skill level. Every project that we start with them, we always can move at a good speed because everybody knows what they're doing.

Previously, we used a combination between regular VPN access plus Citrix. Then, we decided to remove the standard VPN product and move ahead with the Citrix's solution.

The initial setup was straightforward and easy. 

It is well-documented on the Citrix support side. All the official documentation is accurate.

Our deployment never ends. We have been working with Citrix for more than 10 years, so we are always deploying new things.

We have seen ROI using Citrix from time savings, employee satisfaction, and security. 

The Citrix licensing scheme is really straightforward and simple. It doesn't have hidden costs. You get what you pay for. It is easy to understand what is on the product, so it's simple to get a clear idea of how much it costs. Licensing is not an issue. 

We evaluated Cisco, Fortinet, and Check Point. The main differences between these products and Citrix were the user experience, ease of deployment, and end-to-end solution. With other products, when you try to enforce your security policies, the experience turns difficult and messy for the end user. With Citrix, when you deploy your solution from day zero, you can focus right away on delivering a good experience for your end users, customers, or business partners. You can be also focused on security, which is one of the key topics that IT professionals must focus on.

We use products from other vendors to provide intelligent analytics for proactive detection of malicious user behaviors.

Once you give it to your internal customers or your employees, it won't be easy for you to take it away. Therefore, training is one of the most important things. It's really important to have all your team trained and certified on your products before starting a deployment. 

Security is the key to everything right now. With Citrix, you don't have to focus only on delivering virtual apps on your desktops or remote access because there is no trade-off between user experience and security or speed of deployment and security. 

We have been doing a deep dive with things related to endpoint analysis and security policies, but we haven't taken a look at the analytics part.

I would rate this solution as a nine (out of 10).

We offer our Citrix platform to all faculty, staff, and students at the university. We are a university on eight campuses throughout the state with about 130,000 potential users. We have the capability to offer any applications that we're licensed for and that fit well, being virtualized on that platform, to everybody. We offer it to everybody, but not everyone shows up.

We have special use cases where we're using the same physical infrastructure, but have carved up specialty virtual apps, desktops, and networks, for certain pockets of the university. We offer them to the School of Medicine, our Dentistry School, and to the university Online Program, where we have certain faculty that teach their courses exclusively online. We have to customize desktops for those particular fields of study, or for faculties that want to teach in via online learning. 

In addition, for the School of Medicine and Dentistry, we do all of our clinical offerings. Anytime that we can virtualize a clinical offering and extend that beyond the brick and mortar part of the university, we do that. So that also applies to our Speech and Hearing Sciences. We train all of our future audiologists on the virtual platform. And it goes for Optometry.

We also offer assistance to our on-campus health center.

Another use case is that we offer the employees like me, people we call our "staff employees" of whom there are about 5,000, the ability to support their other IT infrastructure environments remotely. We have a special network that we've isolated for security purposes and streamlined for certain types of special research projects.

We also have a global network operations team because the university runs something called the Internet2. That's important. We give the folks who support Internet2 the tools, virtualized through our Citrix environment, so that they can work from home and support that in a secured manner.

We have Citrix Gateway but we don't have Single Sign-on. We have a lot of the Remote PCs, which has naturally been beneficial in dealing with the surge in usage due to COVID. We don't have Citrix Secure Browser deployed in production, but it is in test. We have Web/URL Filtering on the NetScaler. We also use the Web App Gateway and Citrix ADC. We deploy a two-factor authentication environment, on the security side. So we definitely force a second-level authentication. We have that integrated with a product called Duo.

It's deployed as a hybrid model. At the university, we have contracts with all of the big three cloud providers. It's our intention to be able to extend workload to all of them: AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.

The user experience when using the solution's technology remotely is definitely superior to our VPN and/or Windows Remote Desktop. It's a much better user experience for those folks.

The solution provides the flexibility of being used on any device. That allows the employees to be truly mobile in their remote work environments. They don't have to worry about running back to their physical homes to get on a laptop. They can use their phones if they need to. They can just be connected at all times.

The solution provides intelligent analytics for proactive detection of malicious user behavior. To some extent, we do have that on the Netscaler. We have analytics constantly collecting information and setting the alerts for deviations that we would see in our network traffic patterns. It has helped us to detect breaches before damage was done. 

Once it's fully deployed, I believe the solution's automated analytics will help us to detect serious performance issues. We are not there yet.

The Citrix solution also provides everything in one integrated platform. We haven't found the need, yet, to go out and buy another product to help us in that space. There is still depth that we need to explore with the existing product line. In terms of the value this brings, while user experience is something that is quantitatively hard to express, certainly our university is touted for being very forward-thinking and for its advancements, compared to other universities. That's especially true in our particular state as it relates to the flexibility in offering our solutions remotely. I don't know anybody else that does that.

We certainly get more bang for the buck with the XenApp environment because we can really stretch that platform to many. It's a low cost when you look at the number of users that we get to access our Citrix XenApp-published desktop and individual applications. Citrix doesn't really even talk about XenApp anymore. They are marketing everything under the XenDesktop piece of the product line. Traditionally, XenApp was just anything that was a server-based OS, and Desktop was anything that was a desktop-based OS. We do both here at the University. We just have more workload on a server-based OS environment than we do on desktop OS. There are ebbs and flows. We used to not have very many virtualized desktop OS deployments, before COVID. We've had to do a whole lot more of that in the last few months. So for us, XenApp is number one, and Desktop is number two. 

The other product that has really helped us quite a bit is that we have a Citrix NetScaler. They now call that ADC. That is our hardware appliance, the physical appliance that sits on the perimeter of our network. It acts as a firewall, router, and load balancer. That's where we can add the extra pieces of security. That's how we're able to use the same physical infrastructure to deliver virtual apps and desktops to everyone at the university and, at the same time, do more specialty, secure network offerings for our School of Medicine and researchers.

There is room for improvement on the hypervisor side, providing better integration between the hypervisor and the product line. I suspect that they haven't put the work into that because of the move to the cloud. They want everything to be cloud-hosted. But for folks like us, who will always be a hybrid model, that's of some concern.

I've been using this Citrix solution since 2000.

We're very stable. We have a 98.9 percent uptime. We operate with just a little, rolling outage window that we'll use once a month for patching and the like. We're never, ever fully down, which is really crazy when you think about it.

It scales very well, but it can be expensive. We've been able to scale the environment quite nicely by using the Citrix Remote PC. I can't say enough about that. And because that relies on utilizing your existing hardware resources, and making those available as a part of your Citrix farm — with a second level of authentication and security pieces around it — we added some 4,000 workstations without an additional overhead or cost. That has been key for us through the COVID pandemic.

In our environment we have about 20,000 people who use it regularly.

Citrix technical support is average. It's not below average; it's not spectacular. If you stay with it, you can escalate your issues and eventually get to a design engineer, if you need to. We've had to do that and have been successful with it.

I have supported Microsoft, using regular Windows Virtual Desktop and things like that. Those solutions can definitely serve some basic purposes, but when you want to do something more complex and you want to offer it for the whole enterprise, you want the extra bells and whistles and features that you get from the Citrix product.

The initial setup is straightforward. Because I've been doing this for so long, I have been able to build on my prior knowledge. But the documentation that exists is, for the most part, well done. For some of the more complex pieces, they have, just lately, missed some key pieces that we've had to have escalated to higher engineers on the inside. But, when escalated and when we finally get the right team of people on the line, we've been able to progress and move through those issues.

I wasn't here for the initial deployment. Since I've been here, the rebuilds that we've been able to complete have been done in about six weeks.

In terms of our implementation strategy for the rebuilds, we knew that we needed to keep a hybrid model. We first looked at the options for design of that hybrid model. Most of my concerns centered around two-factor authentication and being able to keep that. That was something we weren't willing to let go or bargain with. It created a little bit of challenge for us because Citrix offers a form of two-factor authentication, their Duo product in the Citrix cloud, but that would be a different two-factor authentication. The last thing we wanted for our 130,000 students was to be confused about which Duo environment they were required to log in to. We needed all of ours to be on-prem and we worked with Citrix to design that strategy, so that everything would first filter through our on-prem points of authentication. That was key in strategizing how we would do our new build or deployment.

I believe we have seen ROI from using Citrix. It's been around at the university now for going on 12 years. That's a long time, at a university, to constantly keep shelling out dollars. But the ease of use and the flexibility that it offers to our entire university, and having the ability to do really forward-looking designs and offerings with special use cases around HIPAA in medicine and research, makes it well worth the money.

You need to know your workloads very well. And that isn't something that you just know. So you should probably buy small, really small — smaller than you ever thought — and see what your workloads look like, and then grow into it. That's the key when it comes to sizing or implementations. Vendors generally want to come in and oversell you. They want to license you to the max for your number of projected users. That's really not necessary for a product like Citrix.

The biggest lesson I've learned from using the solution is to start small and find a small success story with the particular use case. Then let that success speak for itself. The way that my team operated is that we had the core service offering to all 130,000 faculty, staff, and students. And then we started slowly coming along and doing these customized service offerings within the university for specialty areas. Once a particular group sees a successful deployment or operation, it just spreads. Today, we have many more use cases that are waiting to be onboarded to our platform. I don't have to go soliciting for that. The work and the experience speak for themselves.

A lot of people who are just starting out with Citrix go straight to the cloud product. If it's your first introduction to the Citrix product family, that is the way to go. If you believe you have any use cases that will not likely move to the cloud — generally, those are some of your protected workflows — you can still give the product a try. Remember that the hybrid model is probably the most commonly used model that's out there today with this product family.

For a remote solution and connectivity I think it's the best that there is on the market compared to the other two, big, competing products. It's definitely superior so I would give it a nine out of 10.

Remote workers/branch offices needed quick, reliable access to resources at the Corporate Data Center no matter what kind of device they were working from.

It has allowed us to provide network/application resources to anyone anywhere, no matter what kind of device the end user had, we were usually able to find a compatible Citrix receiver app.  That gave our user base flexibility to be anywhere and still be productive.

I found the ease of deployment, scalability, and security to be to our benefit when supplying virtual applications/resources to our clients.

Printing is huge, there are a lot of shortfalls with supporting printing over XenApp.  I know it isn't all a Citrix issue, Microsoft needs to do some work to get the print subsystem streamlined since it apparently hasn't been looked at since Windows NT4 days.

More than fifteen years.

Very easy to scale, virtual servers can be stood up quickly on your virtual platform using Citrix PVS

No previous solution

ThinApp

The product is basically basically, it's a virtual asset and desktop to provide the applications and the desktop to the users. And if I compare with this one, it is it has more feature. If you compare to the pricing and I think it is little bit faster than the Horizon PDI.

The most feature is the Citrix policies. We can easily manage, and it is integrated with the active directory as well. These are very important because we can easily maintain maintain the user's profiles and all these things. Apart from that, the IC protocol if we compare with the horizon. So it is little bit faster than if we are working with if if we are comparing with the horizon,

The licenses are very costly.

I have been using Citrix Workspace for 15 years.

I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.

The on-prem environment is more scalable than cloud environment.

I rate the solution’s scalability an eight out of ten.

The technical support is not good. Earlier, every time when we call, they provide end to end solution and with the proper documentation, but now the the support is not good. The response time is very poor. They take around four to five days to solve the issue. In between, we find the solution from the Google.

Neutral

Citrix Workspace offers several advantages over Horizon. It's a newer product with robust policy integration capabilities. Citrix Workspace integrates with IT directories and offers a Citrix profile solution. While Horizon may be suitable for small environments, Citrix Workspace is better suited for larger environments with a higher number of users.

The deployment process is simple. It offers a variety of components tailored to diverse needs. Its flexibility allows us to select and use components accordingly. Installation and configuration are straightforward, in smaller environments whereas in larger environments, it depend on the components used and the scale of deployment.

The pricing for Citrix Workspace is relatively high which is influenced by market competition and the availability of similar products. However, Citrix has been working on reducing license charges, as they include terminal service licenses. Furthermore, if one opts for cloud infrastructure, such as Azure, additional licensing fees may apply.

I rate the product’s pricing a seven out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive.

We use Citrix NetScaler. VMware may offer a similar device. Occasionally, we also utilize a load balancer from a different company. Third-party software integrates well with Citrix Workspace, as it is built to meet specific requirements and can easily integrate with other products.

Citrix has reached a high level of maturity with the introduction of their cloud technology. Although they encourage cloud usage, their on-premises environment still holds value. Additionally, their cloud-based PVS solution offers promising advantages.

Citrix Workspace provides a stable environment for users to access the Citrix build environment. Once modifications are completed, users can easily access it without encountering significant issues within the environment.

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

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. 

We use the solution for general purposes.

Citrix’s performance is good.

The solution is expensive.

I have been using Citrix Workspace as a partner for five years.

The product is stable.

20 users are using this solution.

The initial setup is very easy.

I recommend the solution.

Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

I use the solution as one of the main applications for my desktop infrastructure.

The solution supports all the essential features I require. Also, I can use it from anywhere.

The solution functions slowly. It takes a long time to load. This particular area could be better.

I have been using the solution for three years.

I rate the solution's stability a five or six out of ten.

The solution achieves all the goals I set it up for. Thus, it is highly scalable. I rate its scalability an eight out of ten.

The solution is average. I rate it a five out of ten.

We use the solution for our remote employees to access their information.

The solution helps us with our ERP.

The most valuable feature is how secure the solution is.

The cost of the solution is high and has room for improvement.

The initial setup has room for improvement.

I have been using the solution for two years.

The solution is stable.

I give the scalability a nine out of ten.

We have around 40 people using the solution.

The initial setup is complex. We used five people for the deployment.

We have seen a return on investment.

The solution is expensive and I give the cost a four out of ten.

I give the solution a seven out of ten.

My use case for this product is to connect to secure environments. I'm the owner of the company and a user of Workspace. 

This is a simple solution and I like that I can connect remotely. 

I think there could be better integration with other vendors. If you install it on  a Mac, you get a message to say it's not working properly. I'm not sure why they'd develop a product not supported by Mac. 

I believe the solution is stable. 

The solution works as expected and I rate it 10 out of 10.