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

We were used to working on different proposals and implementations from Citrix through the GSI partnership.

It integrates various tools and features into a single platform. It offers enhanced user experience, productivity tools, VDI, and virtualized applications. This unified platform provides a single pane of glass, allowing management and control.

Remote work has been enhanced. Citrix Workspace and Virtual Desktops offer various features, including persistent and non-persistent environments, allowing different user personas to access their work environment efficiently. These solutions enhance the user experience, especially for remote work, which significantly improved during the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, Citrix has integrated many enhancements into its products. Applications can be provisioned through published or streamed apps via Citrix Virtual Desktops. 

Recently, Citrix has undergone significant changes, primarily due to its acquisition. This acquisition impacted Citrix's value because of increased licensing costs under the new model. As a result, many customers are now considering alternatives to Citrix. This shift has created numerous opportunities for migration from Citrix or VMware to Microsoft and other platforms.

I have been using Citrix Workspace as a partner for two years.

We recommend Citrix Workspace primarily to BFSI customers, followed by financial institutions, media and entertainment organizations, and oil and gas corporations. Virtualized infrastructure is already in place for most of the verticals we work with.

Our company has Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3 support teams, which can provide the necessary support for Citrix Workspace.

Citrix had its licensing model, which also worked with Microsoft user licenses. This collaboration between Microsoft and Citrix created a consortium that handled the licensing. However, Citrix has changed its licensing model due to a recent merger. Comparing the earlier Citrix days to the current situation post-merger, there is a significant difference in Citrix's licensing prices. 

Citrix Workspace is a suite of solutions. With a single pane of glass, administrators can monitor the Citrix environment to identify and resolve any issues or bottlenecks. This setup enhances user experience through Citrix Analytics dashboards, which provide insights into the Zen desktop environment. These dashboards allow you to pinpoint real-time issues that may affect users or applications. Citrix Workspace functions as a unified solution, though you can also opt for Citrix Workspace apps and desktops separately. By choosing Citrix Workspace, you benefit from administration, management, and user experience.

Citrix Workspace can be recommended for remote work requirements. However, given the current market conditions and the various options available, it is important to consider cost-effectiveness and suitability. There are also some cheaper options.

If they can make it comparative, then it's a perfect solution.

We usually recommend Microsoft AVD solutions based on customer suitability. Everything is there with AVD because of the combination of Azure, the robust security, and everything borrowed from Microsoft. When integrated with Microsoft, Citrix Workspace complements Microsoft's zero-trust security model by enhancing authentication and authorization processes. Historically, Microsoft and Citrix have collaborated to provide comprehensive solutions to customers, combining their strengths to deliver robust security and efficient management.

We recommend Microsoft AVD. The majority of our customers also use Citrix. There are some VMware Horizon View customers, but their numbers are currently very low due to recent acquisitions. As a result of these acquisitions, many customers are considering moving away from VMware.

I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

I used it because we had to work from home during COVID, and that's about it. I'm not using it any longer because we're now back to work.

I work for the State of Illinois, and we were able to stay open and provide the services for the needs of the people of the State of Illinois during COVID, which included unemployment services and everything else like that.

Its user-friendliness is most valuable. It was easy to log in and navigate. Some of such solutions are not very user-friendly, but this one was.

In the beginning, it did not go so well because, depending on the type of internet service at home, some people didn't play very nice with it, but once we got over that initial internet incompatibility, it worked fine.

It is slow. When everybody is logged in, it does have a tendency to slow down. You can tell the connectivity slows down a little bit, but it's still a good product. 

When you're doing Webex, there are a few features that are disabled when you're working from home. Sharing screens is a bit hard. The screen is grainy. It doesn't look as clear if you were just sitting at your desktop.

I last worked with it in March.

It is a good, stable product, but if there is bad weather or if you live out in the country, it has a tendency to drop. Connectivity can be a little flaky.

It is very scalable because we started with 15,000, and by the time we finished using it, we had almost 30,000 people on it. We doubled.

We had directors using it. We had techs. All kinds of people who worked for the State of Illinois were using it to do their jobs. It was used all the way down from maintenance people to all the way up to even the governor. The governor was using it.

We still have some people who are working from home. So, some people are still using it.

I didn't take care of any of the tickets. If I had a problem, I called our help desk, and within two to three hours, the issue was fixed.

It was very user-friendly. It was one of the easiest software I've installed. To deploy it, it took us less than a week, and that was for over 15,000 users.

It was deployed in-house. We have an in-house Citrix group that basically takes care of all the updating, the patching of the server, and everything. When we purchased the product, they did come in and train some of our people. We were very pleased with that.

If you're a medium-scale or a small-scale business, it works great. As far as I know, our agency didn't have a whole lot of issues other than the people who live out in the country. We did have a few issues with those people, but once we got them set up through their own Wi-Fi and everything, it was great. It was just a simple tweaking, but it's a good, stable product. It really is.

I would rate it a nine out of ten. The reason I'm going to give it a nine and not a ten is that overall, it is a good, stable product, but people who live out and not in city limits could have issues setting it up at first. If there's bad weather with rain or wind, they may have some connectivity issues.

LG Uplus is using Citrix for internal groupware. Every employee here uses Citrix to access the VDI to make some Word documents or PowerPoint presentations. We are not allowed to use our local PC resources at all. 

The second use for my team's project is that we are reviewing the potential for a virtualization solution for our customers, who are mainly video editors. We offer them a low-price alternative. Instead of buying our high-end desktops or workstations, they can save money by virtualizing some application solutions. 

This is deployed in LG CNS, which is a subsidiary of the LG group. Most LF subsidiary companies are a part of the LG CNS solution. LG CNS solution is combined with Citrix, which means that if you work with LG CNS, you have no choice but to use Citrix.

First, since we adopted the Citrix VDI, we are no longer dealing with the problem of leaking the customer's personal information. Second, we aren't investing a lot of money in buying new personal laptops. With the VDI, we aren't relying on a high-core CPU or memory in each employee's laptop. Because the functions that require a lot of memory and CPU are happening in the cloud, we can just give the employee a basic Pentium CPU laptop.

The Virtual Desktop Interface is very important because we have many departments for customer service. For example, we have operational storage and also we have a customer call center. Most of the customers are calling about a security problem. 

Before we adopted a VDI storage solution, our customers' personal information was leaked. This happened a lot. But since we adopted a VDI solution, these kinds of issues have happened rarely. Of course, we banned each user from installing or sharing software, like peer-to-peer sharing software. There is no chance that a single user could leak personal information by mistake through unauthorized access.

Virtualized solutions are very important. Because of the high-speed internet service here, I think the virtualization application solution can be adopted in a B2C market for customer service.

We've tested a lot of cases with the Citrix solution and found that it's okay when the Citrix virtualized solution is adopted over the laptop or desktop. But it has some latency issues—a lag between the input device and screen—when we test it with a smartphone or tablet. The reason that users use the virtualized desktop is they want to access a Windows 10 application, but they need their keyboard and mouse. Every employee complains about the performance or quality of their VDI. After we adopted the security solution, I think the performance is quite better. But employees are still complaining about the speed of the VDI.

Latency is also a major problem when adopting Citrix for video editing software or 3D editing software, especially editing 4K video or large file size. The Citrix virtualized solution becomes too slow, so we cannot use the VDI. For the streaming, Citrix needs to improve its screen resolution problems because this is a market trend. We produce and use a lot of high-density videos. If Citrix cannot improve these kinds of issues, then we might not be able to use VDI anymore two or three years from now.

Citrix doesn't offer any solutions for the virtualization of macOS, either. I think we could use that kind of service.

It's been around 10 years or so.

I would rate it very low actually. Because here in Korea, most of them are for sales, not technical assistance. For developing some applications, we have to choose or test virtualized applications. But call up Citrix agencies—sales agencies—they say they cannot solve the technical issues. We have to find some technical references through the internet or through developers who have some experience with Citrix.

Internally, the IT department uses Citrix. For developing customer service for my team's product, I use Hyper-V's client solution instead of Citrix, because the price of the Citrix virtualized application solution is too high. Citrix only provides the B2B license here, so they don't have any B2C license. I use Hyper-V-based applications and virtualized solutions because of the price issues.

I think it was very complex. It was difficult to install Citrix by ourselves, but we have an IT department and a PC maintenance department. The initial setup required around three people. But after the initial deployment, most employees don't have any trouble with installing Citrix solutions. For each user, it takes around half an hour. For example, I broke my laptop and had to get a new laptop. I personally asked the IT and PC maintenance departments to install the systems again. It took them around 30 minutes.

We have a dedicated IT department. They have a contract with Citrix and they're employed here. 

It's tough to say whether we've really seen any cost savings. Many people don't believe the Citrix solution lowered the total cost of the whole system. But I think if we adopt an application virtualizing service, then we can reduce costs a little bit more. 

Currently, everyone here is using the same public cloud server resources for every software. but if we adopt a virtualized application solution, then the IT department can choose which software needs a lot of resources and which can adopt lower-tier public cloud resources. That way, we can save a lot of infrastructure costs.

It's my understanding that the solution license fee for each user is around $300 US. If we buy a personal laptop for each employee every five years, then the total cost is five times $300 US, or $1,500 USD. So we could buy 100 personal laptops instead of the Citrix solution. If we compare the cost of a high-performance laptop and the price of the Citrix solution, the total cost savings is very small. But we can improve the security issue.

I think the speed and latency of Hyper-V are quite good, but one thing I worry about is the security issues. Our internally developed client for the Hyper-V solution doesn't have as many security solutions as Citrix does. As I recall, LG CNS has its own VDI solution. At this moment, there are some solutions that can replace Citrix, like FreeVDI, an open-source VDI, for example. We have tried using those kinds of service solutions in some departments, but they didn't quite meet our expectations.

I would rate Citrix seven out of 10.

My company started with Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service, which is presently renamed and referred to as Citrix DaaS. The majority of my company's customers use Citrix DaaS to deploy specific kinds of virtual desktops. Citrix DaaS is also used to deploy virtual machines with GPU or with a certain graphics capacity.

In general, Citrix DaaS has the ability to be very granular in the policies part to achieve the best user experience possible, even in cases where the bandwidth is very poor.

Recently, my company has started to face some troubles with Citrix at an organizational or corporate level, meaning we have no problems with Citrix as a product. After some new company recently acquired Citrix, my company has observed that it has become quite complex for our partners to maintain apps and follow the vision of Citrix, which expects its users to use Citrix products. I have issues with Citrix as a company and not with the products.

I have experience with Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) for twenty years. My company deals with multiple versions of the product. My company has a partnership with Citrix.

For our company's customers, I feel that the product is stable. My company has planned out well enough to do some periodic checkups and update patches for our customers, but not in the time frame that falls in less than six months.

My company deals with around 12 to 15 customers Who need the product in their complex Citrix-based environment.

In our organization, we have very little installation of Citrix products for our administrative purposes, so not more than five people use Citrix DaaS in the company. If you look at the number of our customers using Citrix DaaS, I would say that there are about 2,000 users.

The solution's technical support is not so good. The solution's technical support was great in the past. Considering the past, I rate the technical support an eight out of ten.

Under the present circumstances, I rate the technical support a six to seven out of ten.

Neutral

Half of my company's customers deployed the product on an on-premises model, while the other half deployed it on Citrix Cloud Broker. I feel that the majority of my company's customers have deployed the product on an on-premises model. Citrix Cloud is for the brokering process only.

Speaking if the product is worth the money, I would say that I need to think twice or thrice before investing in it.

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.

We started to use Citrix DaaS in our company, and I had the opportunity to hold on to my experience related to products from Citrix even when I moved from one company to another. I used Citrix in my company, Quanture, to deploy applications from the beginning, but it is mostly used for virtual desktops. My company uses Citrix DaaS for some specific phases in the tile industry, where the work is about manufacturing or producing tiles. In the production area, the tile company I deal with needs to develop a schema and design of the tiles using virtual desktops and virtual workstations with a certain graphic potential functionality. Citrix DaaS was a solution my company could provide to our customers so that they could replace costly workstations with virtual machines.

To those who plan to use the solution, I suggest that they initially take care of the PoC area because it is only useful, and they would appreciate the product if they intend to use it.

Citrix DaaS is a powerful solution. I recommend the product to only those who involved their IT staff during the PoC process, along with some end users, since if you don't involve the right people in the initial phases, there could be future problems with the product.

I rate the product a nine out of ten.

I rate the company named Citrix a six or seven out of ten.

I rate the overall product an eight out of ten.

The main use case for me is the solution’s ability to provide remote users access to enterprise LAN over thin Internet-connected devices securely and efficiently.

I have found the NetScaler or ADC devices by Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops valuable. The product is simple to set up, and its deep integration with Microsoft is also a valuable feature.

Their customer support can be improved a lot as it lacks a lot of knowledgeable help.

I have been using Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops for the past 14 years.

It is a stable solution. It is a fire-and-forget solution. Once you set it up, things keep happening, and you don't even have to monitor it until you want to get some statistics.

The solution is scalable. Approximately 10,000 users use the solution in my company. We often use Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops in our company, but it all depends on the use cases. If we find the solution convenient for our projects, we will definitely use it. However, we'd only do it on a case-to-case basis. Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops is our go-to solution for any server-based computing.

The customer support for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops should be more knowledgeable.

The setup is pretty simple and easy. We keep deploying it very often based on our requirements, but the complete setup can be done in three days or less than three days for a 1000 people user base. It's more of a fire-and-forget solution. It will take three days if you have the entire idea. If you want to chart out from the beginning, that could take around two months. However, if you know what you're doing, it can be done in three days.

Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops is a decade-old technology. We don't need any consultants to set it up. Any candidate with five to six years of experience should be able to set it up. We analyze the applications, the customers, and the users. We also consider the type of user base and the type of applications, and then we plan our infrastructure to meet their requirements and do a POC before deploying the solution. Considering Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops is a 24/7 uptime solution, we need at least six technical staff for its deployment and maintenance.

We do have an ROI using this solution.

Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops is an expensive solution.

I use the latest LTSR version of Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops.

Someone who needs an enterprise solution with a stable working environment should go for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops. If there is no 24/7 requirement, and they can manage a few hours of outage, people should look at alternatives for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops. This solution is for critical users who cannot do without it. Banking and finance customers should adopt the cloud version of this solution and not the enterprise version.

Overall, I rate Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops an eight out of ten.

I use it for VDI; it's a virtual desktop community.

It's a full SSL solution, so no additional VPN or security features can be added. The solution itself provides SSL connectivity. It's a good solution.

It would be great if they included VPN features and improved connectivity.

I have been using it for four years now.

It is stable once configured.

It is a scalable solution. There are around a thousand end users. 

It is regularly used. We plan to expand its usage in the future.

We have vendor support. Because it's a new solution for us, we wanted support directly from the vendor until we build internal capacity.

The tech support is fast, knowledgeable, and customer-friendly.

The initial setup's complexity depends on your expertise. It should be done by an expert. For our team, we have an expert who handles installation and deployment.

So, it was straightforward for us.

It integrates smoothly with our existing infrastructure without needing additional resources. It's straightforward.

We have seven experts who manage everything from the Citrix side. It depends on the client's interests and requirements.

It is good in ROI aspect for our case.

Overall, I would rate it a nine out of ten. I would recommend it if anyone with VDI connectivity use case wants to use it.

If a client wants remote connectivity and resource sharing, I recommend Citrix. VMware Horizon is another option with similar features. It depends on the requirements.

We are using Citrix for remote connectivity. We have multiple types that are deployed in different clients. Some are desktops as services, some as workspaces, et cetera.

Our company is procuring the license for it; the customer is using it.

It's for engineers to remotely connect to the console or desktop of the client or the customer side for debugging or resolving issues. That's where we use it primarily.

The remote desktop connectivity is where we have our focus. That's the main use case. 

The product is stable.

We've never had scalability issues.

We want to reduce costs. They should offer a different pricing model. 

Some manual work is required now with Citrix, like installing some client agents, et cetera, which could be automated. We'd really like to see more automation in the future. 

It is not easy to set up. 

It's part of our application, so we've been working with the product for more than a year or so.

So far, the solution has been quite stable. I would rate it eight out of ten. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

We haven't had any issues with scalability. That said, scaling also depends on how many users are trying to access it at a given time. As we move some of these applications to the cloud, we will face the scalability question. However, those issues will be addressed later. 

We currently have hundreds, or even thousands, of users on the solution right now.

Technical support is good. I would rate them eight out of ten. 

Positive

I've also worked with AWS Workspaces. I also have experience with Microsoft Remote Desktop Services.

I haven't previously worked with any other solution in this company.

The initial setup is not easy. For example, there are agents that need to be deployed and the agent deployment has some issues when the customer has certain patching or operating systems that are not compatible. 

While this solution is mostly on-prem, we are working to move more toward the cloud. We'll have to explore how we can leverage cloud capabilities in the future. 

I'm not sure how long the deployment takes precisely. 

There are a few ways customers may save costs by using this solution. 

It's basically to maintain the applications, especially medical devices. Typically, one way the product can save a company money is if a person would traditionally have to go to the site and find the problem. If there is no option for remote connectivity or desktop, then that can be expensive. That will add to the costs. 

A second issue is uptime. If you don't have the capability to jump on a machine and start troubleshooting right away, then it'll take more time to get the system up if something happens.

We'd like the solution to be less expensive and are looking for alternative options. The cost is on the higher side. We pay for the licensing on an annual basis.

The technical support costs depend on the contract. We have separate contracts that are different based on the customer. If the contract covers technical support, that is fine, however, if it's a basic contract, then we have to pay for the technical support.

I cannot speak to the exact amount the company pays at this time. 

We now want to see the other options in the market and make some comparisons. As we go forward with the next application, we will probably look at the whole picture and see the best product, especially from a feature and host perspective.

We need to see what's there in the market and which has less manual work. We want to see how we can reduce costs and also improve the overall CI/CD process of packaging something with the customer.

We're a partner. We are using Citrix both for ourselves and our customers. 

Citrix is one of the pioneers in this area and has been around for a long time. The technical support is good. From a usability standpoint, it's also good; however, there are some aspects, like hosting, and especially on-prem deployments, where some manual work is needed. It could be that we are not doing as per the latest guidelines or something, which we need to look at and see what we can improve. That said, overall, it's a good product for remote connectivity and remote desktop applications.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. 

Our company uses the solution to gather user abstractions from their machines, locations, devices, and work areas. Classic use cases include mergers, acquisitions, and work from home scenarios. 

We have a partnership, are resellers, and generally provide services to clients based on their use of the solution. 

The solution effectively brokers a virtual desktop connection. 

Because of the solution's ubiquity, it is easier to find answers to problems than with competitive products. If we have a problem, somebody has blogged it or answered it in a forum. Frequently asked questions and white papers are readily available. 

The sales team does not focus on client needs but instead focuses on selling higher-priced items. 

I have been using the solution for twenty years. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution is quite scalable. 

Support is no better or worse than other vendors. 

The setup is straightforward. 

We implement the solution for customers. 

I cannot comment on pricing because we have more than a million seats under management so we get the best price. 

Our pricing view is very different than most users. 

It is important to find an integrator who has experience. Do not try to implement the solution yourself. 

I rate the solution a ten out of ten.