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

We are using this solution for enabling remote workers. 

The primary example right now is the pandemic. People can work remotely without having to use VPNs. We prefer people connecting from home to an institutional system, rather than bringing every random person's home system into our internal network via VPN.

The basic virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) feature is most valuable. We were lucky to have it in place when the pandemic hit. It is used very heavily now.

They can simplify the process of printers. Printers were quite a difficult issue. It took us a long time to iron this issue out.

We have the most simple use case where people connect from home to either a virtual machine or their physical desktop. We tried more complex solutions like Machine Creation Services, and they were more overhead than they were worth for us. I found them difficult to work with and confusing, and they were not worth the work for us.

The basic VDI is quite good. It is pretty stable and reliable. 

It is very scalable. We have 400 end users.

I have used them, and in general, I have been very happy.

Citrix is the only VDI I have used.

It was in place when I was hired. I have been involved with upgrades. Mostly, I have just been filling out the infrastructure and adding more machines. My supervisor was the one who handled the setup. 

For its administration, we have two FTEs: myself and a senior systems engineer. There are a couple of other systems administrators who spend a little bit of time working on it. It requires nonstop maintenance every day. It requires four to five hours a day.

I'm not involved with the money aspect at all, but from my perspective, we've got a very good ROI. Particularly during the pandemic, it has enabled the institution to keep working. We seamlessly transitioned to an entirely remote workspace.

We are just now approaching the end of our initial purchase, which was an excellent price for us as an academic institution. We got a very good deal to get us on board. That license is up for renewal in about a year, and we are nervously waiting to see what the pricing will be.

I know that other vendors were evaluated. I was not part of that. It was before I was hired.

It is a good solution, but it is not always a straightforward solution. Don't underestimate the complexity of a large-scale deployment of infrastructure like this.

I would rate Citrix Workspace an eight out of ten.

On-premises

• ICA protocol performance on a slow network
• Adaptive user constraint in a different user environment
• Load balancing and HA

• This product can reduce the cost of a user environment, but only if all components are included for a migration to a Citrix environment.
• A Citrix environment can increase the security by centralizing and controlling the user environment.
• The application deployment was also accelerated.

Citrix needs to ameliorate their administrative panel and provide a tool to
add more control in the user Citrix environment. An example is Norskale,
recently acquired by Citrix. Actually the user profile can only be modified
by third part tools or by a system tool (like : regedit, script and other).
In addition the AppCenter (XenApp 6.5 version) is not a simple tool and
need to be optimized (too long to load, too many options in different
submenus) and debugged (some columns added in user view corrupt the access
to the AppCenter).

We have used this solution for four years. We used Citrix XenApp when the product was called Presentation Server.

There were some stability issues, primarily with printers and some device drivers. It's important for an administrator to configure policies correctly to prohibit some devices from connecting.

We did not encounter any scalability issues. However, scalability is the key to user performance. The administrator needs to check performance counters to ensure the best user experience.

The technical support is adequate.

We used Microsoft RDS, but it did not have the same performance as the ICA protocol. It lacked the load balancing and high availability functionalities.

The initial setup is pretty simple, but you need to follow the manual as with any software installation.

Beware! It is expensive. You need to include all variables when you are going to migrate your users or applications to a Citrix environment. Remember to establish a global strategy.

We did not evaluate any alternatives. Other products on the market lack the same functionalities.

• Keep calm and take some time to install, configure, and optimize. Test with users as well.
• Remember to keep your users in the project loop before releasing the architecture into production!

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.

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 this for secondary use coming from our side.

It's most valuable feature is its easy setup.

For us, pricing is the most important feature to improve.

I have been using XenApp for a couple of years.

It is a stable product.

In terms of scalability - it is easy to scale it.

We have about 200 people using this solution.

The initial setup was straightforward. It took about two or three days from the start.

We deployed it with the use of one consultant.

I would recommend this solution to other people. On a scale of 1 - 10 I would rate it an 8.

On-premises

We use Citrix to unite data sets for remote work and media services. Citrix is used for application virtualization as well as remote access to desktop workstations. We have 30 employees using this technology in various roles, including customer and tech support as well as accounting.

In terms of the employee experience, I would say I think Citrix is quite good. It has also helped us to comply with industry regulations on data protection by allowing us to maintain our target policy of controlling clients' access to information. 

Relative to other solutions, Citrix has fewer conditions and fewer parameters. Citrix also provides some flexibility because it can be used on any device. It has a few security features that are interesting— actions that permit the user to access only the information they are supposed to access. It's extremely secure because all the data is encrypted. The work can be done remotely but the data never has to leave our data center.

I've been using Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops for about four months.

It's efficient. Because there are fewer parameters, the base application runs in less time with less effort.

I think Citrix's support is good, but sometimes it is a little slow. I would rate it a seven out of 10.

Compared to other desktop virtualization products I've used, Citrix has more compelling features that are much more extensive.

Setting up Citrix wasn't complex.

The whole organization is more productive because Citrix allows us to coordinate together and share information.

My advice would be to test this solution and see if it meets your expectations.

On a scale of one to 10, I would rate Citrix a seven.

On-premises

We are using it for the VPN.

It is a good product. I don't have any complaints.

I've recently tried to use Citrix on Ubuntu, and I don't know if this is an Ubuntu issue or a vendor issue, but you can't use Citrix right now on Ubuntu 20.04.

We have been using this solution for maybe six months. We're now migrating most of our machines over to that.

It seems fine on Windows.

We have probably just under a thousand users.

I don't think I ever had to open up a ticket with them for anything.

We've been on Citrix as long as I've been here.

It was pretty straightforward.

I would rate Citrix Workspace an eight out of 10.

On-premises