Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) vs Microsoft App-V vs Microsoft Virtual Server comparison

"We recouped 60 to 70 percent of the hardware costs."

"It is stable, easy to scale, and provides secure remote access."

"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."

"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."

"The most valuable feature of this product for me is that it provides secure access anywhere from any device."

"Citrix Workspace and Virtual Desktops offer various features, including persistent and non-persistent environments, allowing different user personas to access their work environment efficiently."

"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."

"In terms of scalability, Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops have a lot of technologies baked in there that allow an organization to scale up or down, as required. Further, leveraging Azure for scalability has added value to our organization. For example, pre-COVID-19, we had very few resources in Azure. We had some Virtual Desktops and no application servers. When COVID-19 came along, we knew people were going to be home. We knew that we had to ramp up very quickly. We fully leveraged MCS to be able to scale. Being able to take a single image and build 400,000 Virtual Desktops, all within minutes, was second to none in terms of any other technology out there that we could have used. The scalability to be able to do that in Azure, where we really don't have to worry about storage and compute power because Microsoft does that for us, was fantastic. It was almost like giving our environments steroids. It has been amazing in terms of that scalability. Now, as people start coming back to the office, we can just as quickly scale down so the compute and resource costs in Azure aren't so great anymore."

"It is easy to scale. You can quickly deploy additional instances. Rollbacks are easy because there is an automatic backup every hour. Deploying the application is straightforward and efficient."

"From my point of view, it reached a maturity where we can consider it to be perfect."

"It is very easy to use from an administration point of view."

"We can deploy applications incredibly fast."

"I appreciate the process of being able to change or review my answers."

"Microsoft App-V is a simple, very good working product that just works."

"From a technical point of view, it meets most of the customers' needs."

"I would recommend Microsoft App-V for its simplicity and efficiency."

"I appreciate the ease and speed with which I can set up and manage virtual machines using Microsoft Virtual Server."

"The product is reliable."

"The most valuable feature is the tool's cheap cost."

"Microsoft Virtual Server machines are good compared to on-premises infrastructure; you can take a snapshot whenever we require it, and we can rebuild it, and the data is safe, easily accessible, fast, and scalable."

"The solution provides easy monitoring and easy troubleshooting."

"This solution helps us because our data center is in another part of the country, and we do not have to travel to work on it."

"Sussex County is envisioning the future of computing and communications technologies, anticipating a new path to business process management."

"The dashboard is valuable to us."

"Dependency on server virtualization after v7.x is an issue which I encountered in small environments."

"Pricing can be lower and roaming profiles need to be fixed to work consistently."

"When I needed support for a couple of things, three people intervened. Each time, three people gave me a different answer. In the end, they did not manage to give the right answer. At a certain point, they stopped replying."

"The dashboard should be more user-friendly as the tabs are not organized clearly."

"I would like to see better documentation of best practices and communication of newly available tools or troubleshooting tools."

"I think improvement around the Analytics piece is super important. There has been a lot of maturity over the last year in that area, though a lot more needs to be done. Also, a lot more of the value of those Analytics needs to be sold to end users. Citrix is working on a lot of things that are ahead of the curve and a lot of organizations aren't quite there yet with implementing those technologies and capabilities."

"The solution's technical support is not so good."

"Performance could be better if there was a low latency improvement."

"Regarding improvements in Microsoft App-V, I would appreciate seeing the successor, MSIX, work better, as nothing is going to be implemented anymore since it is end of life by the end of the year."

"The reporting features could be improved."

"If it were possible to integrate App-V with a cybersecurity solution then we could implement a documentation registry, which would be useful."

"The process was streamlined but didn't make our work simple. We encountered an issue with the person responsible for designing the website."

"There is definitely room for improvement with Microsoft App-V, especially in terms of enhancing troubleshooting resources and user guidance."

"The downside is that Microsoft bought this product and they are going to discontinue it in 2026. This is worrisome for us."

"The downside is that Microsoft bought this product and they are going to discontinue it in 2026."

"If it were possible to integrate App-V with a cybersecurity solution then we could implement a documentation registry, which would be useful."

"Support could always be a bit better."

"In terms of what could be improved, pricing is always too high of course."

"We've faced challenges with migrating virtual machines from one host to another. Also, managing Microsoft updates has been a struggle. We have to update the host node every month when new updates are released, and our virtual machines go down every time there's an update. This causes downtime repeatedly and irritates our clients. It should also be lightweight."

"It would be good if the tool's integration improved."

"The main thing that could be improved is the licensing cost."

"The response time from technical support could be faster."

"The P2V process had some issues."

"The tool must provide updates less frequently."

"As for the cost, it is neither cheap nor expensive. Personally, I find it quite expensive, especially if you want to add more features. The security features we use include App Protect and Endpoint Protection."

"I suggest using the concurrent user licensing scheme."

"You have to do some hard work in order to get the suitable licenses."

"In the past, the prices of the product were great. With the acquisition of Citrix by your company, the prices have drastically increased. For my company, it has become a bit of a problem to sell products from Citrix."

"It is a bit costly, but enterprise class features come with a cost."

"We have more than a million seats under management so we get the best price."

"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."

"We recouped 60 to 70 percent of the hardware costs."

"Clients do not pay licensing fees."

"The pricing of this product is competitive."

"The cost can also be optimized by changing the size of the implementation."

"The price of this product could be better."

"Microsoft Virtual Server’s licensing is expensive."

"The solution has a yearly license. If we switch to a yearly subscription plan for Microsoft Virtual Server, it would be cheaper in the long run. The price per month would be higher, but the overall cost for the year would be lower."

"The tool's cost has been taken care of with the help of Microsoft Fabric and with a consolidated or unified interface, where the entire product serves as a SaaS offering for the user."

"The product is expensive."

"It is an expensive product."

"There is no need for me to pay anything towards the solution's licensing costs."