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

We normally use Citrix for delivering applications remotely. Our experience is with the government and companies that have branches.

XenApp made our Application environment secure and restrict the data transfer.

The most valuable features are user experience and printing capabilities.

Citrix has to support all of the hypervisors including KVM.

The technical support is not as good as it is with other vendors and it should be improved.

We have been using XenApp Citrix since 2007.

This is a very stable solution. The security updates are always being done.

Citrix is scalable. In my company over the past seven years, we have had many users. In addition, our clients using this solution have many thousands of users.

The Citrix technical support is not as easy as other vendors like F5 or VMware. Obtaining technical support is a little bit tough and it should be improved.

We had tested Ericom, 2X and find better performance with Citrix.

The initial setup is straightforward.

The length of time for deployment depends on the environment and the requirements. For example, last year we deployed this solution for an airline with 27,000 users and it took approximately three months.

Our in-house team deploys this solution for our clients.

Our ROI was 144% .

A perpetual enterprise license costs approximately $300 USD.

I have evaluated a lot of products and the latest solutions. Citrix, among all these products,  has added value because of the user experience and its printing capabilities. You can connect to any printer, and from anywhere you can print documents using a compressed channel. It is easy and the bandwidth is very low.

Citrix has its own training and certifications available, such as CCA-V, CCA-N, CCE-V,CCE-N. For anybody who is implementing this solution, I would suggest that they start with the training. That will help them with the product in learning what it is, how it is going to be implemented, what the requirements are, and so forth. The training is easy and once it is complete, implementing and using the solution will be easier for them.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

On-premises

The stars from this solution are its NetScaler and profile manager.

This was a breakthrough for us; we reduced our user base from 2000 client machines with Windows OS and all applications installed on all computers and so on, to 40 application servers and 2000 thin clients that don’t need any management. If one has a problem, it’s replaced.

Many of the improvements that we have identified for this version already appear in the newer version. For this version, we thought they could improve management access to the applications, organization in the console, and revise server management – these are in newer versions.

The solution has been in production for three years.

The solution has been in production for three years with no major problems; zero down time from the solution.

No scalability issues at all; in the beginning, we had only 20 application servers and 900 users. At this time, we have double the application servers and more than double the number of users. The process was straightforward.

The level of support is very good. We have support from a company that is Citrix certified and if we need some core development, such as in the client for end users, Citrix had been wonderful.

I did not previously use a different solution. This was the solution that we chose for the business need that we had at the time. And from the search conducted at the time, this was the best solution for us.

The solution was straightforward; it’s like, if all of the network requirements have been done, it takes 4-6 hours to have the infrastructure working in a production environment.

Thera are two types of licensing, per user or per device. This is a point that needs a lot of attention. It varies from case to case. In the infrastructure that I administrate, the (concurrent) per-user license was the best choice.

At the time, we did not evaluate other options. This was the best solution available for us.

Citrix have online sites that help designing, planning and implementing the solution; use them.

It’s a strong solution for application virtualization. Works on a Windows server base, so compatibility with applications is easier.

I love the extended features of this product. You can easily manage profiles and create desktops in minutes. You can also use your desktops on mobile devices pretty much anywhere. One feature that we use extensively is the WAN optimization. Our data backups are offsite, so moving data and virtual machines could kill our bandwidth, but this feature prevents that. XenDesktop 5 is lightyears ahead of XenDesktop 4. It is much easier to use, and the management interface is intuitive.

Sometimes creating good Active Directory policies can be confusing. Also, there is a lot of work in optimizing desktops so that they don't unnecessarily reduce server performance.

High initial cost, but over time it allows a much longer desktop refresh cycle. Our organization is using fat terminals instead of buying thin clients. Once those machines break, we can begin replacing with thin clients.

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.

Hybrid Cloud

We can virtualize desktops as well as apps.

We can create desktops per project.

I haven't seen any areas for improvement, but I am still learning.

I've been using it for four years, and I started with Citrix Presentation Server 4.5, and we are migrating it to XenApp 6.5.

No issues encountered.

There were some issues.

There were some issues.

Customer Service:

9/10.

Technical Support:

9/10.

We also looked at VMware View.

One of the things we wanted to achieve was the ability to work from home and have the same environment. We use the application virtualization capabilities, the on-premise desktop virtualization, and the cloud-hosted desktop virtualization.

A lot of people are going to a hybrid working model and they can work in the same environment, whether they're at home or in the office. They're able to work efficiently.

Security is also of critical importance. It provides a very secure environment with several security features that can be implemented. We are an IT infrastructure company, so infrastructure passwords are very critical. It provides us with a tremendous amount of security, which is very valuable.

Citrix also simplifies adherence to industry regulations for data protection and for compliance.

The most valuable feature is the desktop experience so that users don't see much difference between the remote desktop and the local desktop. Their files remain the same, so it's much easier to work from different locations. We use it for laptops and desktops only, but I believe it has the flexibility to be used on any device. If the desktop experience is good, the employees are happier. They are able to do what they want to do.

It also provides virtualization for high-end graphics so that they can be displayed. AutoCAD can be done on Citrix. The graphics are very good.

We also like the security features it provides.

It would help if it were a little simpler. It's a bit complicated and we have hired Citrix administrators. But it's a good solution.

We have been using Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops for about two and half months.

We have about 400 people and we have implemented it for about 130 people. We're implementing it for the other employees as well.

We went with Citrix because of its security and the user experience.

Deployment and management are not easy, but because we are an IT company, we are able to do it. We provide a virtual desktop service to our customers, so Citrix fits into our business model. You have to set up all the Citrix components, drivers, and Netscaler. You need to deploy three to four servers for a basic Citrix setup, as well as servers that give the remote desktop to your users.

If you have Citrix experts, deployment should happen in a month's time. But if you don't have experts, it can take more time. Now that we have the expertise in managing Citrix on the cloud, the time it takes to get our customers on board and into the service that we are providing to them with Citrix, depends on them. We can get them on board very quickly because now we know what to do and how to do it.

We haven't embraced thin clients or low-cost device computing yet. We were of two minds about whether to take full laptops or thin clients for access while working from home. We are experimenting with thin clients now, and the experience has been positive, but until now we have used only laptops. We are going to further test thin clients and then we'll be giving them to some of our users.

• Protects web infrastructure
• Ensures business continuity and IT disaster recovery
• Consolidated multiple remote access solutions
• Lowers WAN costs

A cements customer uses the application for truck shipments from the United States by connecting to the infrastructure in Colombia, as the solution can only be found in that country.

We are already evaluating the latest version, 7.9, because Citrix continually updates everything.

For optimal and stable infrastructure products, the people who develop software in-house should provide IT architecture updates.

All implementations of Citrix have problems with stability; that is normal. This type of infrastructure should be integrated with the many software and hardware components that are currently implemented in the company.

Customer Service:

Very good customer service.

Technical Support:

Technical support is improving.

I have worked with VMWare as a hypervisor as the suite is very wide. However, Citrix is less expensive.

All Citrix configurations have a certain amount of complexity.

In-house application deployments are not always easy to integrate, because it is not always compatible with client-server environments.

For a project to be effective, you must coordinate with Citrix to divide the licenses into stages and not affect costs.

It is important to do a good sizing of users. In addition to Citrix' own online calculator for sizing users (https://www.citrix.com/products/xenapp-xendesktop/savings-calculator.html), I can help with dimensioning the server infrastructure for different virtualisation projects.