Citrix DaaS and Amazon WorkSpaces compete in the desktop virtualization space. Citrix DaaS appears to have the upper hand due to its richer feature set and advanced performance protocols.
Features: Citrix DaaS offers quick provisioning, WAN optimization, and secure access to virtual desktops on various devices. It enhances performance through ICA and HDX protocols, offering superior results on low-bandwidth connections. Amazon WorkSpaces provides reliable cloud-based desktop deployment with seamless integration and ease of use, emphasizing security.
Room for Improvement: Citrix DaaS struggles with setup complexity and a confusing licensing model, along with integration challenges with third-party applications. Amazon WorkSpaces could improve in video conferencing capabilities and VPN stability, with both needing pricing structure enhancements.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Citrix DaaS supports on-premises, hybrid, and public cloud setups, offering flexibility but posing deployment challenges. Technical support satisfaction varies. Amazon WorkSpaces, with its focus on public cloud simplicity, is noted for responsive customer service despite occasional support speed issues.
Pricing and ROI: Citrix DaaS is costly due to features like XenApp and XenDesktop but offers potential long-term savings via reduced hardware costs and stronger security. Amazon WorkSpaces provides more budget-friendly pricing, though perceived as expensive, with ROI dependent on cloud service savings and operational continuity.
I would rate the technical support from Amazon as nine out of ten.
The best support I have received is from Ireland, Dublin.
The first level often wastes time because I usually have to escalate to an engineer for proper support.
Citrix support is better than Microsoft support.
Compute can be increased or decreased as you pay as you go for Amazon WorkSpaces.
The solution is highly scalable.
The platform can scale to very large numbers.
It supports over 100 apps and 20,000 users in our organization, demonstrating impressive scalability.
Citrix DaaS offers vast scalability options as workloads can be deployed across multiple data centers like Azure, Google, or AWS.
The fact that it is scalable makes it easy to adapt to new business directions and adopt other software.
Citrix DaaS allows for satisfactory stability by facilitating workload deployment in various data centers including Azure, Google, or AWS.
Amazon WorkSpaces can sometimes function as a black box, making it difficult to diagnose why a workspace is slow on any given day due to limited visibility into network latency from the client, real-time CPU and GPU utilization, and storage bottlenecks.
A single orchestrator tool could assist with discovery, implementation, and image building for Amazon WorkSpaces.
This makes it challenging to remain with them, and it becomes necessary to explore alternatives to achieve the same performance with less expense.
Creating App-V applications is not an easy task and could take from hours to weeks without success.
More direct access to engineers would speed up resolution.
Citrix DaaS is considered expensive, especially for companies that do not require multi-cloud.
The positive impact of Amazon WorkSpaces on the organization includes teams becoming productive on day one, reduced cost per employee, the ability for contractors to join instantly and leave without paying for the full term, easier compliance, lower risk of data loss, peace of mind when using contractors and remote staff, easier onboarding, easier offboarding, and security cleanup.
Multi-factor authentication is enabled on AWS WorkSpaces, which provides additional security when connecting.
The scalability of Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) is impressive, supporting over 100 apps and a user base of 20,000 within our organization.
With Citrix, all connections are outgoing, minimizing firewall vulnerability.
Multi-factor authentication has helped secure applications because users typically have two-way authentication software on their phones.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) | 15.4% |
| Amazon WorkSpaces | 1.8% |
| Other | 82.8% |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 6 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 2 |
| Large Enterprise | 10 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 44 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 21 |
| Large Enterprise | 69 |
Amazon WorkSpaces is a fully managed desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) solution provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS). It allows users to access a virtual desktop environment in the cloud from various devices, including laptops, tablets, and thin clients.
With Amazon WorkSpaces, users can have a complete desktop experience with their familiar applications and data, while the underlying infrastructure and management tasks are handled by AWS. The virtual desktops provided by Amazon WorkSpaces are persistent, meaning that user data and settings are retained even when disconnected from the virtual desktop.
Amazon WorkSpaces Features:
Amazon WorkSpaces Benefits:
Reviews from Real Users
Sachin Narvekar, IT-IS LEAD at Tata Consultancy, writes that "Amazon WorkSpaces is a virtual desktop platform. So, instead of having your laptops, and desktops, you can have your data on the cloud.”, he also adds, "Security, streaming, faster performance, scalability, and the fact that it is very much cost-effective, are some of the solution's valuable features."
Ravi-Bhardwaj, Manager at Ravi RITS Enterprice, states that “The solution has improved the organization because now any user who doesn't have a corporate laptop can connect to the system, security is still high, and it uses very low bandwidth.”
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