My use case for this product is to connect to secure environments. I'm the owner of the company and a user of Workspace.
Owner at EPPM Services s.r.o.
Simple to use with the ability to connect remotely
Pros and Cons
- "Ability to connect remotely."
- "Integration with other vendors could be improved."
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
This is a simple solution and I like that I can connect remotely.
What needs improvement?
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.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I believe the solution is stable.
Buyer's Guide
Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service)
April 2025

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What other advice do I have?
The solution works as expected and I rate it 10 out of 10.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

CDO at SGROUP
Provides flexibility in the architecture but it needs better integration into other environments
Pros and Cons
- "This is a very stable solution which you can feel confident using."
- "The product should expand its capabilities for integrating with other environments."
What is our primary use case?
Our installation is currently on-premises, but we have already decided that we will move to the cloud. In general, we are using XenApp to make a virtual protected environment in order to link our other applications through Citrix. We want to link data or applications, it depends on the case. Sometimes we don't want to have links from application to application but just for the applications to share the data which they are using. This product provides us some flexibility in the architecture.
What is most valuable?
I'm not the end-user of the application. My position is very high in the organization. I know that the users who are using this product like it, but I don't know what exactly they like or what might make it separate from similar solutions. From my point of view, the reason they like it is this flexibility that they have. They can connect one application to another application or just to use the data. They have applications locally and use the data in the cloud in a very secure way. They have more flexibility using this solution.
What needs improvement?
The place where this application can most probably be improved is in the integration with other environments. Right now we have it on-premises, but our plan is to have it on cloud and we have already taken steps with Microsoft to implement this goal. After we move it to the cloud, we will want to add other applications and other data sources to what is already available in order to more easily move the data from one place to another and to use it from different applications. Broader integration would give the user more flexibility. This is why, from my point of view, integrating with other environments is the most important feature that needs to be expanded.
As an example, IBM has a cloud solution that gives users the capability to connect between different clouds. No matter what kind of cloud you are using the data becomes universal through the capabilities of the IBM solution. You can ensure data security and can move data from one cloud to another. This is the kind of thing I mean by integration. It is an integration of administrative work, resource usage and also of the different environments. Right now we have some things on-premise and we have part of it in the cloud. Most probably will be not only be using Microsoft cloud in the future but also Amazon and Google as well. We want to have this application everywhere in this environment and to be able to use only one interface to let us know what volume of resources we are using, how much different solutions cost us, and if our usage is effective. This way we can make evaluations and change if necessary. The economy of our model is very important for us.
The other less important point is that the deployment could be faster. We deployed the solution with the help of a vendor, and I do not blame the vendor that things seemed to come together a little slowly because it was not easy to do. I think the implementation can be simplified a little by the manufacturer.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this product for around three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
XenApp is a very stable solution. This is one of the reasons we were using it. I had some experience with the product at the previous company and we decided just to use the same solution for this company because it is really stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I don't know yet how the product rates in the area of scalability. We are currently moving from one environment to another, and that is an early step in our process. I don't know about scaling because it is a step we will worry about later. These are interim steps we are taking in the plan that we have right now. Our end goal is to be completely in the cloud or in some kind of hybrid environment. When we achieve that, the next step is to use the application to scale. So we are still in a sort of proof of concept period right now where we don't want or have the need to test scalability.
We currently have 53 people using the solution. Most of them are just users from the office, but we have around 10 engineers and IT people who are capable of doing everything we need for implementation and maintenance.
How are customer service and technical support?
Because we are using a partner to interface between us and Microsoft, we do not have contact with Microsoft's technical support. The partner has been successful in covering everything we need.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I changed my employment over the past two years. Earlier, I was part of the pharmaceutical company Bcom and we were using the same XenApp product there. Then I moved to a smaller Bulgarian company. We were using a different version of Xenapp there and we had a somewhat different experience. The support that Microsoft provided was different in each case. In the first case, it was a global corporation. In the second case, it was a local group of companies and we were supported by the local Microsoft office.
But in each case, the reason why I switched products was that I changed employment and not that I changed from an entirely different solution to this one.
How was the initial setup?
The level of difficulty of the initial setup depends on the situation. Because we have this application through a Microsoft provider which is directly working with Microsoft, they have enough staff and experience with it to set it up. It was very easy for us just to use them.
If we had to do it alone, I don't believe we had the capacity to do it without a lot of trouble. We prefer this model of having some kind of agent who is more knowledgeable and experienced do the setup. They already know exactly how to set up the environment for using the application, and we would have had to learn it all anew.
The deployment of the solution was more than five months, but it took that long because we probably caused some delay. We were not pushing for the implementation to be completed, we changed our offices, and many other things happened in between. So it is not because of the application or the group doing the deployment, but because we were moving slowly ourselves.
What about the implementation team?
We had a third party, the supplier, do the initial implementation for us.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We did not evaluate other options when making the decision to take on this solution because I already had a positive experience with this product in the past. I wanted to use the same solution because I know it and I know that it works and that it would do what we needed it to do. Stability was the main factor in making the decision.
Right now the computing environment is changing very fast with cloud, hybrid, containers and other options like that. We wanted to have something which was going to allow us to use a hybrid solution until we define the final model that we want to use.
What other advice do I have?
Advice that I would give to people considering this solution is to use our model of implementation. I absolutely recommend using a local supplier who is knowledgeable and who has experience with the product and deployment because then you won't have any problems. We are only using it. We don't care how it is set up. We don't care about the model itself, but only that the result fits our requirements. This supplier is doing all the things we don't want to have to learn for us.
On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate this product as a seven-out-of-ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Buyer's Guide
Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service)
April 2025

Learn what your peers think about Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2025.
848,716 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Virtualization, Remote Access and Mobility Engineering at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
It improved application response time and used a lot less bandwidth. Better QA, please.
What is most valuable?
ICA and HDX are the most valuable features of this product to me. These protocols allow features that most other vendors either have not implemented yet or are too bandwidth-intensive to use in the enterprise with WAN users.
How has it helped my organization?
Our organization was a VMView shop. Due to issues with application responsiveness / perceived performance, our users had a very negative perception of the technology and were opting for physical PCs instead of VDI. During an extended pilot with these users leveraging Citrix XenDestop, we were able to improve the perceived performance / application response time, as well as use significantly less bandwidth. This was a huge cost savings for the firm.
What needs improvement?
The biggest area for improvement is in QA testing. The last few releases of either the VDA or updates to the broker either reduced functionality or re-introduced issues that were previously addressed.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this solution for five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The only issue that we had was early on in our implementation with a “Black Screen”. Although we were never able to determine the root cause with Citrix Tech support and escalated engineering, updating form 5.6 to 7.6 greatly reduced this issue / impact to our users.
How is customer service and technical support?
I rate technical support 5/10.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was straightforward. We were able to get three farms up and running within two hours. The migration from older to newer was relatively easy as well.
What about the implementation team?
Implementation was done in house. My best advice if you are migrating from another product to XenDesktop would be to deploy new VDI’s and migrate the users. This allows you to validate the stack and avoid legacy configuration and applications that might have issues. If that is not an option, researching what the VDI’s have installed, and what other remoting technologies are in use, will prove valuable and avoid some of the pitfalls that we had.
What was our ROI?
ROI I believe is close to three years.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
IT Director at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
The user experience is comparable to XenApp (our past presentation server), with the same look and feel as a normal full desktop in the head office.
What is most valuable?
The user experience is comparable to XenApp (our past presentation server), with the same look and feel as a normal full desktop in the head office.
It still uses ICA protocol, which means we did not have to increase the WAN bandwidth to deliver same user experience across all the sites. We did not have to increase telco cost to provide same user experience from sites outside of the head office.
How has it helped my organization?
In the past, when we were using the presentation server from Citrix, login time was taking up to eight minutes. XenDesktop reduced login time to less than two minutes. Managers who move around can take their work at any point in time to a new location without having to login from scratch. That increased productivity.
What needs improvement?
Our organisation has not been successful in delivering a multi-media experience via VDIs. This is one of the areas we are hoping to improve by upgrading to version 7.8.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this solution for more than four years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Stability issues due to storage performance caused initial grief. Now it is working. We are using dedicated VDIs for users. We have half of the 1200 VDIs running from one DC and the rest from a secondary DC.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability is good, but it required a lot of learning while our organisation were going through it.
How are customer service and technical support?
Citrix support was good. They can always do better.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Since we already were using Citrix presentation server, our migration met the same look and feel requirement for the business. Citrix XenDesktop is the leading product for VDIs.
How was the initial setup?
Initial backend infrastructure was easy for our organisation for VMWare and storage, because we were already running VMWare for server virtualisation. Now it is just too many. We are running 1200 VDIs.
What about the implementation team?
It was a hybrid implementation. Design was done by vendor and implementation was done jointly.
What was our ROI?
Our model for ROI was not financial. It was user experience and opportunity productivity loss savings. If we are to do this work again, I would recommend using DataCore Software Defined Storage using commodity hardware to run a VDI host farm to reduce storage and DR cost.
What other advice do I have?
Get the full business requirement and test the end-to-end performance and the capacity for DR before going full-fledged. Also, understand the licensing cost. Having dedicated VDIs for our organisation saved us lots of headache:
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
IT Operations Service Delivery Senior Manager at e-finance
Application streaming and the shadow feature helped end-user online support and training
What is our primary use case?
Reducing traffic capacity is needed for more than 13000 remote end-users who are working on Oracle E-Business Suite with about 1600 concurrent remote users working simultaneously all over Egypt. These users connect through 3G mobile modems from different service providers.
How has it helped my organization?
It increased the no. of users and reduced traffic and data connection cost in addition to increased user productivity.
What is most valuable?
Application streaming and shadow feature helped end-user online support and training. It also increased user productivity. Since this application has its own traffic encryption proprietary technique, it increased data connection security.
What needs improvement?
Eliminating the need of Windows terminal server because it increases the cost for each user as each PC that needs to connect must have its own terminal service license.
For how long have I used the solution?
More than five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Extremely stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is flexible and very easily scalable.
How are customer service and technical support?
Good customer service and excellent technical support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Previously, I used direct user connection, but it was not secure enough and used a lot of bandwidth.
How was the initial setup?
If you follow the vendor instructions, the setup is straightforward. But it might be a little bit complex in the tuning phase.
What about the implementation team?
Our own in-house team made the full implementation and operation as well.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The setup cost is not much. Although trimming the application settings is somehow tricky and has a lot of effect on performance, it is done only once. For a large number of users, use the concurrent users' license model.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
A direct connection was evaluated.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Managing Director at a tech services company
Our clients can work from anywhere, while access according to security group makes things very secure
Pros and Cons
- "It provides the flexibility of being used on any device which makes the employee experience better, in terms of ease of use."
- "As an end-to-end solution for implementing Zero Trust principles I would rate it a six or a seven out of 10, because it doesn't cover all aspects of Zero Trust. There are quite a few aspects you need to cover."
What is our primary use case?
We use Remote PC Access and Remote Desktop Access. We use the solution for two of our clients. For each, we virtualized their whole workspace, so if they log in from anywhere, they get access to all the applications.
We've locked down their data centers, so some of the users, depending on their rights, cannot even copy stuff from the Citrix environment to their local desktops. Some users with more elevated rights are allowed to access their local.
It's for work from anywhere, but we had it before COVID. We've had it like this for a very long time.
How has it helped my organization?
One of the benefits is that our clients can work from anywhere. It's all consolidated in one environment. It makes it easy for them as things easily accessible from any environment.
It provides the flexibility of being used on any device which makes the employee experience better, in terms of ease of use.
We've also set up access according to security group so it's very secure. We can lock down the environment completely.
What needs improvement?
As an end-to-end solution for implementing Zero Trust principles I would rate it a six or a seven out of 10, because it doesn't cover all aspects of Zero Trust. There are quite a few aspects you need to cover.
For how long have I used the solution?
We've used it since 2011.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability is very good. In some of our environments, we are on old versions so we're busy upgrading. On the old versions, we have to do a lot of session resets. Hopefully, on the newer versions, after we've upgraded, we won't have so many instances where sessions need to be reset.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability is good because, once you've set it up with the correct architecture, you can just add servers. It's very easy. You can't clone it because there's something with the SID that makes it difficult to clone. But with the latest version, you have that ability where you provision a server according to a template. It's very good.
One of the environments we deployed it in has about 180 concurrent users, and the other one has about 85 concurrent users.
How was the initial setup?
If we upgrade or we set up a new environment, it takes us three months. We do have Citrix consultants who help us. We're thinking that we're maybe doing something wrong because it takes so long, but even with their help, it takes long. It's very complex to set up. If we set up an RDS farm, we can do it within three days.
What was our ROI?
Our clients have seen return on investment with Citrix in the security and through work-from-anywhere.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We use other technologies. For SD-WAN and web filtering we use TIBCO.
We use RDS in environments where people can't afford Citrix, because Citrix is very expensive. But in terms of security, the Citrix environment, and how you can set it up, is a bit more secure.
What other advice do I have?
The centralized policy control and distributed enforcement is an eight out of 10. It's complex to set up.
When it comes to the security of intellectual property when remote employees are using the solution, I would also rate it at eight. You can protect your environment, but I don't know if you've got logs or things like DLP that can assist you to see what's being moved out of the environment.
Citrix plays a part in our clients' business continuation strategies. We will continue to make use of it as is, because it's much easier to manage the environment, the access, and upgrades. We install the applications only on the application servers. It's secure and makes it easy to work from anywhere, and it makes it easy to lock down the environment.
My advice would be to get a Citrix engineer to assist you with your architecture and to send your engineers on training.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
Senior Manager of Engineering at Mechanics Bank
I found the ease of deployment, scalability, and security to be to our benefit when supplying virtual applications to our clients.
Pros and Cons
- "I found the ease of deployment, scalability, and security to be to our benefit when supplying virtual applications to our clients."
- "There are a lot of shortfalls with supporting printing over XenApp."
What is our primary use case?
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.
How has it helped my organization?
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.
What is most valuable?
I found the ease of deployment, scalability, and security to be to our benefit when supplying virtual applications/resources to our clients.
What needs improvement?
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.
For how long have I used the solution?
More than seven years.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Very easy to scale, virtual servers can be stood up quickly on your virtual platform using Citrix PVS
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
No previous solution
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Senior Technical Consultant at The Instillery
The Provisioning Services and Machine Creation Services features allow you to provision workloads by following a wizard, and depending of what you have in your environment.
What is most valuable?
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.
How has it helped my organization?
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.
What needs improvement?
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.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using it for three years.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
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.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
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.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
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.
How are customer service and technical support?
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.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
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.
How was the initial setup?
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.
What about the implementation team?
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.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
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
What other advice do I have?
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.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: We are Platinum partners of Citrix and their support and guidance for us have being invaluable to our success.

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Learn More: Questions:
- Any documentation about Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops with Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)?
- VMware Horizon View vs Citrix XenApp: which is the better product and why?
- Do you have any PDF documentation for the Citrix Virtual Desktop solution?
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- When evaluating Application Virtualization, what aspect do you think is the most important to look for?
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