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

The main focus of Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktop is remote access, mobility, and speed of deployment. 

Our most important use case is remote access. We had to deal with a lot of complaints from our users that were really difficult to troubleshoot. 90 percent of the issues were related to the local connection with the Internet and traffic problems with the ISP, which were not related to Citrix nor our infrastructure. This was difficult to troubleshoot. Since we have had Citrix Director implemented, every session looks crystal clear on the platform. We know exactly what each one of our 7,000 users is doing with the platform and how their sessions are performing. It has helped us to give better support and recommendations to our employees regarding the use of the product and their requirements for their welcome networks and Internet access. It has been a huge improvement for our Internet service.

Our organization has the following protecting its environment:

• Citrix Gateway/Single Sign-on (SSO)
• Remote PC Access and Remote Desktop Access
• Web/URL Filtering
• Contextual Access
• Citrix Endpoint Management
• Citrix ADC
• Citrix SD-WAN.

We are mostly an on-premise customer. Most of the visibility that we need, it is inside our network.

Citrix is a key solution for our business continuity plan/strategy. We are using it for remote access for every single employee, business partner, and service provider. Citrix is used for anyone working with Banco Galicia. One of the most interesting examples is what happened with this pandemic. At this moment, 95 percent of our employees are using Citrix as the only tool to do their job. That's it. It is as simple as it sounds. 

There is no difference between being at the office or home when using the solution’s technology remotely. You can't even feel the difference.

The solution provides the flexibility of being used on any device. We designed this solution with Citrix and our local partner, and one of the main aspects of the project was the ability to use it everywhere and with any device that you want. That was one of the requirements. We encourage the use of corporate-owned devices, but if you prefer your personal devices more than the corporate provided ones, then we make sure that you can use it safely without putting our business and infrastructure at risk. This is a really good solution from a bring-your-own-device perspective.

Our organization supports Zero Trust as a security strategy. In the last three to four years, Citrix has made huge improvements so we can have all its features on the same solution. Even with the simplest Citrix deployment, you have all its features available without additional products so you can provide safe access to your apps and infrastructure.

We have some protections for location-based access on our network delimiter. Our business is 99 percent locally in Argentina, so we have different policies on our network access. Then, we are evolving our deployment of interpretation and analysis from Citrix based on the software that you have installed, device that you using, and different policies.

XenApp is a really good product. The user experience is awesome. The security features that it has are invaluable for a customer like us. Because we are highly regulated, we need to operate in a highly secure environment. 

We love Citrix SD-WAN and have it fully deployed on all of our network and branches.

We saw a huge improvement when we implemented Citrix Director. We have full visibility of our users' traffic, from their houses to our data center. This solution has provided a huge advantage with visibility.

The solution provides everything in one integrated platform. When it comes to monitoring their solution, it is really easy. We have all the information in one place so we can have the right information at the right moment. We can be proactive when it comes to dealing with performance, maintenance, and security issues. 

The product advances really fast. For some customers, we need better backwards compatibility. 

For products that we still have to use some legacy software, the virtualization of applications works okay, but sometimes it requires some additional effort from our team to make it work.

For more than 10 years.

The stability is good. It is one of the most important aspects that we took into account when we decided that Citrix would be our platform for mobile access and remote access. The platform is completely stable.

We have done a lot of integrations using different applications and vendors with Citrix. Everything is well-documented. All integrations have been tested, and we have proof that they work. You feel confident when you move forward. An example is that four months ago we had our Citrix solution sized for 2,000 employees. Since the pandemic exploded, we were able to scale up to 7,000 users in 48 hours. If that is not simplicity, I don't know how to define it.

From an administration point of view, everything looks simple, consistent, and seems to have been designed to provide the same type of user experience that we are providing to our users. However, you have the same kind of feeling when you have to perform all the administration of the suite. It's very simple to use it and perform all the maintenance and monitoring activities. We have only two administrators for 7,000 users. This means that it's not that simple because it does require skill, but the experience is good and everything looks simple on the platform.

We have always had support from the Citrix working team as well as the business partner working with us here in Argentina. The Citrix people and their partners have a good skill level. Every project that we start with them, we always can move at a good speed because everybody knows what they're doing.

Previously, we used a combination between regular VPN access plus Citrix. Then, we decided to remove the standard VPN product and move ahead with the Citrix's solution.

The initial setup was straightforward and easy. 

It is well-documented on the Citrix support side. All the official documentation is accurate.

Our deployment never ends. We have been working with Citrix for more than 10 years, so we are always deploying new things.

We have seen ROI using Citrix from time savings, employee satisfaction, and security. 

The Citrix licensing scheme is really straightforward and simple. It doesn't have hidden costs. You get what you pay for. It is easy to understand what is on the product, so it's simple to get a clear idea of how much it costs. Licensing is not an issue. 

We evaluated Cisco, Fortinet, and Check Point. The main differences between these products and Citrix were the user experience, ease of deployment, and end-to-end solution. With other products, when you try to enforce your security policies, the experience turns difficult and messy for the end user. With Citrix, when you deploy your solution from day zero, you can focus right away on delivering a good experience for your end users, customers, or business partners. You can be also focused on security, which is one of the key topics that IT professionals must focus on.

We use products from other vendors to provide intelligent analytics for proactive detection of malicious user behaviors.

Once you give it to your internal customers or your employees, it won't be easy for you to take it away. Therefore, training is one of the most important things. It's really important to have all your team trained and certified on your products before starting a deployment. 

Security is the key to everything right now. With Citrix, you don't have to focus only on delivering virtual apps on your desktops or remote access because there is no trade-off between user experience and security or speed of deployment and security. 

We have been doing a deep dive with things related to endpoint analysis and security policies, but we haven't taken a look at the analytics part.

I would rate this solution as a nine (out of 10).

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'm an infrastructure architect.

We frequently use the Workspace Environment Manager service, which is a valuable feature. We're also happy with the interaction between our collaborative tools. 

I think the ITSM adapters need to be enhanced. Currently, even though it says the solution is a PaaS, there are a couple of activities happening between the cloud and on-prem environments that could use some additional detail. Even though we see our collaborative tools working well with Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, on a practical level we face challenges due to various factors. Our users are in different regions; their endpoint device is in one location, but the collaborative controls are in a different data center. Given our VDA infrastructure, accessing collaborative tools is becoming a little challenging. It might be fine on paper, but when it comes to actually working with it, improvements could be made. From our end, we need to make sure our collaborator tools are working as expected.

I've been using this solution for four years. 

The solution is stable. 

When you compare the cloud version to the on-premise Citrix environment, the cloud version wins out. You don't need to worry about scalability. Once you have a license, you just start adding the load you want. We have around 8,000 users. 

We contact technical support when we are in urgent need. They have a process where they ask some basic questions and that seems unnecessary as it wastes time when you're looking for a rapid response. We get an engineer on the line and he asks the basic questions and then a new person is brought in and starts all over again with the same basic questions. 

If you know your prerequisites, the initial setup is simple. Without the proper advanced knowledge, you may end up in a situation where you will not be able to achieve what you need or want. 

We evaluated Horizon View as a possible option. Whenever anyone thinks of a virtual desktop environment, they think of Citrix. Horizon View comes into the picture when you don't need any extra features, just a reliable and secure infrastructure. Citrix fitted our needs more closely. 

There is still some room for improvement so I rate this solution eight out of 10. 

We initially implemented it so that our attorneys had an option to work from home. The majority of them did not want to carry a laptop back and forth. Prior to 2020, we did have four of our 40 attorneys using it almost full-time on a work-from-home basis.

We use the following in protecting our environment: Citrix Gateway, Remote Desktop Access, Citrix Secure Browser, Web/URL Filtering, and Contextual Access.

It's amazing that if someone has a sick child, they can still work. It's not that they are completely dead in the water. They can log in and access 99 percent of what they need to, as if they were in the office, and the workflow is the same.

Our previous solution was Terminal Services and that had very low security. My only security concern with this solution is users saving their logins and passwords in the browser. The security it provides is relatively high. The built-in security of Citrix is leaps and bounds above what the basic Microsoft solution had. I did request we add two-factor authentication, but that has not yet been approved. My management feels that I am doing a disservice by trying to add security measures.

But something that makes our security easier is that Citrix provides access control based on device, location, end-user device, or application. One of the reasons we chose Citrix was because it was one of the more secure offerings for remote access. I have faith that Citrix will continue to have that.

In addition, when COVID hit and I maxed out my Citrix licensing, I used the automated analytics to try to ensure everything was running well. It was very nice to be able to log in and see that I wasn't exceeding any capacity of Citrix or the servers themselves.

It provides everything in one integrated platform, and most of it is on one dashboard, which makes it even better. Monetarily, Citrix is a mid-range cost solution compared to some others out there. It does help our attorneys because, with attorneys, time is money. It helps alleviate downtime. I don't think that Citrix actually saves me any money, but it prevents me from losing any.

The most valuable feature has to be the non-persistent desktop. If one of my users messes something up and blows away their desktop, it goes back to what it was originally, before they had an issue.

Our employees also absolutely love the flexibility of using it on any device. We have quite a few people who use iPads and they really like the experience on that, regardless of where they are. The only difference is that the speed of the connection changes, but nothing else does. The consistency is huge.

The solution's centralized policy control and distributed enforcement work well. We have the desktops locked down so users can not add their own software. That's centrally controlled and it does make it easier to be able to present a consistent experience.

I also like that we have redundancy built in. The last time we upgraded, which was three years ago, we put in dual controllers and dual storefront machines. We have never had an outage that the users were aware of. I did have a desktop server crash and was able to restore that from backup. Nobody ever knew. They had had the same experience regardless.

The only thing we have found to be detrimental is when we have tried to find training. I realize that we're looking at it at the worst time possible, with a pandemic going on, but it seems that most of the training offered is learn-by-yourself online. I have a desktop admin who would love to be able to dig deeper into group policy and settings, to be able to admin Citrix a little bit more easily. That's the only thing that I would like to see an improvement on, the availability of training for novice users.

I've been using Citrix for at least 14 years, maybe 15.

It's very stable. It's one of the most stable software applications I run. You set it up and it just goes.

In terms of scalability, it seems that the only things that limit you are your number of licenses and your compute. So scaling is very easy.

Prior to the work-from-home initiative, I had about a dozen users who consistently used it. After COVID and the work-from-home, even though I had only 20 licenses, I had 24 people who were using it. Those four extra people were working part-time in the office and part-time from home so they shared the license. When one was in the office, the other would use it, so I never exceeded my license capacity. And now, since the State of Idaho lifted work-from-home, I'm back down to about eight people who are on it consistently.

The support is excellent. They are wonderful. Luckily I have only had to use them once for a critical issue. I got on the phone, was transferred to an engineer, and had it resolved in less than 20 minutes. For minor issues that are questions, they usually have those resolved in less than 24 hours. And usually, the delay is on my end getting their fix implemented and responding.

We had tried Microsoft Terminal Services and found it sadly lacking for the user experience. We went ahead and implemented Citrix and we have been using it ever since. Terminal Services was Microsoft's attempt to do a remote desktop presentation and it failed miserably. There were a lot of issues and items with Terminal Services. The biggest advantage with Citrix was the consistent experience. Terminal Services was not consistent. If you got too many users on it, desktop icons would move and applications wouldn't load.

While the centralized policy control and distributed enforcement work well, I wish we understood it better. I had a local engineer with Citrix certification build my farm for me. Since it was a brand new concept for me, it was very difficult to grasp at first. He did some preliminary training for us: How to admin it, how to update, how to make things run. But I am in no way an expert on the back-end. If I was able to take the time, which is kind of hard, to learn how all of the nuts and bolts work, I could improve the user experience a little bit. It's a lack of knowledge from my side.

From start to finish, our deployment took about two weeks, and that was mostly because the engineer could not dedicate his full time to me. It was a couple of hours here and there. Overall, the time billed was about 20 hours.

We built the servers, we tested the servers, and then we pushed them out to the handful of attorneys who had requested the ability to work from home. Then we fine-tuned it from there. I really let my users be my test-bed.

Any maintenance is done by me, but it requires minimal maintenance, mostly upgrades.

My advice is get an engineer. Their knowledge can't be matched. A very good one will do it as an educational experience, so you learn as you go. Having somebody who knows Citrix inside and out build it, with best practices and what would suit our needs the best, was invaluable to me. And our engineer has provided support on the minor things afterwards and that has been wonderful. I love the support.

My users either love it or hate it. There is no in-between. The ones who love it do so because it is very consistent in how it works. You log in, everything works. It's the same desktop, the same software, every single time. The people who hate it are the ones who use their desktop to store things, and I don't save the world on their desktops. As soon as they hit that 2 GB mark, I start deleting things. Those are the people who don't know how file stores work.

Even though we run the servers on-prem, we advertise it as a "cloud solution" since it's accessed through a web portal, and that has helped quite a bit in pushing my user base to understand what "cloud" really means. I can see moving this off-prem to a cloud solution in the future, but at this time my budget is frozen, so it's not going to be anytime soon.

I usually don't have to refer to the solution's behavior analytics for detecting anomalies because if something isn't working optimally, my users let me know immediately. They're very vocal if something isn't the way they expect it to be.

Our primary use case became present during the COVID-19 pandemic where we were forced to send all employees home and deploy Citrix Cloud Virtual Apps and Desktops to enable users to work remotely.

It's deployed as a hybrid cloud, the Citrix cloud with on-premise workloads. We deployed the hosted shared desktop, so we have terminal servers running on-premise in our data center, and users connect via Virtual Apps and Desktops to their desktops. This allows users to use their own laptops.

We also use Citrix Gateway, Access Gateway, and SD-WAN to protect our environment.

It has given us the ability for people to access the apps that are on-premise, meaning users can work from home or from anywhere. It's allowed the business to carry on like it did before COVID. As a result, COVID hasn't had an impact on the productivity of our users while they're working remotely. Users have been able to carry on working the way they did when they were in the office. If this was not in place, our staff would not have been able to work and we would have lost productivity.

Our company supports Zero Trust as a security strategy and Citrix is excellent as an end-to-end solution for implementing Zero Trust principles. We are able to use security analytics to determine whether a device or a user has been compromised and we can actually then log the user off or block the user from accessing our Citrix environment. That gives us great peace-of-mind.

In addition, the security of our intellectual property and data when remote employees are using the solution is strengthened significantly because data does not leave the business thanks to Virtual Apps and Desktops. Our previous solution was a full VPN, and that gave users the ability to leak data. With Virtual Apps and Desktops, it's a lot more difficult to do that.

It has also given us the ability to implement business continuity plans, with the example I mentioned above being one that we have already implemented.

Another way this solution improves the way we function is that it provides intelligent analytics for proactive detection of malicious user behaviors. We're using the security analytics from Citrix and it improves our security operations because we've made central rules. If somebody breaches the rules, the analytics will kick in and stop that user from working. It has enabled us to detect breaches both before and during their occurrence. It has saved us a lot of time because it automatically blocks malicious users.

Furthermore, it provides access control based on device, location, end-user device, or application. That improves our security posture because if you don't want somebody from a malicious location to access things, it will block them.

The most valuable feature is the ability to connect to our on-premise applications, through the Workspace app and the Workspace experience.

The user experience when using the solution's technology remotely is outstanding. Our users are able to work and it's seamless with fantastic performance.

The solution provides the flexibility of being used on any device. It improves the user experience because users are able to use whichever device they prefer.

The solution’s centralized policy control and distributed enforcement is a major benefit because it allows us to manage everything in one place. We can enable users to remotely connect and access local devices, and we can change that in one place. It will then either lock it down or give the user the abilities granted. It's all done in one place.

In addition, the solution's user behavior analytics for detecting anomalies and enforcing security policies works. When you put rules in place, they are enforced and the solution will immediately prevent unwanted activity from happening. Our security is improved as a result because our staff who manage security don't have to worry. Citrix is doing the work for them.

At the moment, we are not using Citrix Endpoint Management. It has provided obstacles preventing it from working on our system.

The visibility the solution provides across SaaS, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments, for user and application traffic, is also limited if you do not enable all the services and is based on which services you are utilising. Citrix provides end-to-end visibility based on their services you are utilising.

In addition, improved "how-to" guides would be hugely beneficial in setting the products up.

We have been using Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops for the last seven months.

It's very stable at the moment. We haven't had any issues.

The solution is incredibly easy to scale.

We have about 200 users of the solution in our company. Everybody, every single role in the business, uses it. It has been adopted 100 percent in our company, but we use the solution to showcase what's possible to other companies.

Technical support is not too bad. It's okay. It's not 100 percent great. I would give it 85 or 90 percent. There's room for improvement.

With the cloud services there isn't enough understanding of the different services within the solution. We've got more than one product from them and for some of the products there is good support and for some of the products there is not good support. I've had a call open for quite a while and it's still not resolved.

Before Citrix we used VPN. We enabled Citrix for the business because it was a simpler solution and provided a great user experience. To roll out the VPN solution for everybody would have taken too long during a state of urgency. Also, there was a concern that capacity on the firewall might not handle all the user connections. With Citrix, there will be limited impact on the network and cost savings on data usage compared to normal VPN.

The initial setup was easy. The team built the whole environment in two weeks, and it would usually take six months if you had to do so on-premise. With the cloud, it's a lot faster.

The implementation strategy was to make sure we enabled users to work from home and that we provided them the tools they needed to be able to do their daily work. The strategy was to go with the cloud because it was quick and easy to deploy. With on-premise, while it wouldn't have been more expensive, the time to do it would have been much longer.

We use two people to deploy the solution, senior engineers or one of our leading architects.

We did it ourselves as we're a Platinum Citrix partner.

There would have been increase in data cost for the business as the usage for VPN would have required bigger data bundles to be provided for the end users and with Citrix the data usage went down as the technology does not required a lot of data. The users were also able to process more activities with Citrix Workspace in comparison to utilising VPN connections. The business had capacity on our current infrastructure which limited the cost to deploy the solution, the only cost was the software that was required like Citrix.

The licensing, in general, is expensive. A lot of customers battle to pay the amount. It's very difficult to ensure that your solution provides the business value that the customer is after.

In addition to the standard licensing fees you need to pay Microsoft licensing as well.

Make sure you do a proper assessment and plan the rollout properly. That will ensure that the product is a success. Understand what the use cases are and if the Citrix solution is the right use case for the problem that you have. Explain what the business value is, because sometimes it's difficult to explain that.

User training is something that is important so that people understand how to use the product. This is important because the new way of working through one workspace is something that users still need to understand and get use to.

It provides an integrated platform but I wouldn't say it does everything you need to do. It's a step in the right direction. The value that the security analytics bring is to ensure that there are no malicious attacks. You enable the product and you don't have to worry about it. You need to do some maintenance on it at times, but it improves security for you.

I have been using this solution for quite a long time. We have seen it evolve over the years. We primarily use this solution for virtual desktops and virtual applications.

We use the entire Citrix Suite. This XenDesktop solution helps with applications or desktops. It tunnels data into the system and the internal network. Employees can access the network anywhere. They can save files, print files, and access the network from home or the office in a secure environment.

We are looking for speed and agility in an environment. We want to see that the SAN storage can be policed and can detect a network latency. 

It is pretty stable. We have five of us on staff to maintain the stability of the environment of the solution. 

It is scalable. We have about a hundred desktops and we have about 1,100 people that access it externally.

The tech support is pretty good. My only complaint is that if you are calling in a ticket, you need to know who is answering the call. The overseas support is more delayed. If you ask for a US representative, they are quicker to respond to the ticket. 

The setup was easy due to our extensive use of Citrix products. If a rookie was installing it, I would suggest looking at the website and the Citrix whitepapers.  

Our deployment took about a year because we wanted to vet it correctly. The vetting process took about four and a half months to deal with the bugs. We slowly ramped the system up into a working phase. This was to ease our network into the system without a lot of issues. Our test users really helped iron out the issues before deployment.

The ROI for us has been that when we had Hurricane Harvey last year, XenDesktop came in very handy for us. Even though people had electricity in Texas, many networks were down. Our offices could still get into our network and do work that was needed. It is an excellent virtual office that works anywhere, anytime, and anyplace. It is worth our investment.

It is quite expensive, but so are the competitors on the market but, you get what you pay for.

We looked at VMware Horizon View which compliments nicely with VMware products. Since our team was all familiar with Citrix it made the most sense. It makes our job much easier to use a product our team understands and has prior experience using.

My advice is to really vet the system a bit before choosing a solution. Always make sure you have a budget for it.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• Does the solution work well in your lab?
• Does it work well in your office?
• Do you have a good network infrastructure? 
• Will it support your needs?

We use the product to give application access to external providers. It helps us publish remote desktops and applications.

Citrix DaaS’s most valuable feature is the virtualization of applications and desktops.

The product’s customization feature needs improvement.

We have been using Citrix DaaS for two years.

I rate the product’s stability an eight out of ten.

We have 400 Citrix DaaS users in our organization. We might increase its usage. I rate its scalability an eight out of ten.

The technical support services are good.

Positive

I rate the initial setup process a five out of ten. It is simple. However, you need to have some knowledge of how it works. It is a quality learning experience. It takes a few hours to complete for an advanced user. At the same time, it takes a day or two to study the process.

We recently received the product’s renewal quote, three times the last price. It is an expensive solution. I rate its pricing a nine out of ten.

I advise others to get training on how to use Citrix DaaS. It will help them understand the functionality before purchasing it. I rate it an eight out of ten.

We use Citrix for VDI and publishing applications. My company only has 50 users, but some of my customers have more than 10,000 users.

Remote access is useful.  

Citrix is a highly mature product, but they could always add more benefits by acquiring a third-party software product to integrate with their their solution and make it more complete.

I think they can improve the troubleshooting to make it easier for users to solve problems on their own. For example, it could provide an error code and some instructions on how to reconnect to the database or do something proactive to fix the issue with the system.

I have been using Citrix for more than 20 years.

Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops is a backbone platform that organizations rely on. If Citrix is down, then the organization can't function, so it must be a stable solution. If we are working in a thousand-user organization and Citrix goes down, then 1000 employees are left idle.

If you can afford the licenses, you can scale Citrix up as much as you want. 

The initial setup is easy and only takes two or three hours. The most complex task is coordinating between the golden image and organizational resources. You need to install all the organization's applications and adjust the settings to meet the company's needs. Setting up a Citrix farm takes less than five hours, but tailoring it to the organization requires another three or four days.

The Citrix license model has changed. It costs around $240 per user for a single username, but a concurrent license costs double.

I rate Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops nine out of 10. This is the leading solution in the world for remote work. Citrix has had the top remote display for the last 20 years, and there is a huge technological gap between Citrix and its competitors. However, Citrix doesn't have the same level of marketing as its competitors. Many times, people don't realize that Citrix is the best until they've deployed it.

I recommend taking advantage of Citrix eLearning online courses. Four or five days of online training can help you overcome a lot of shortcomings, but you need two or three years of experience working with the Citrix system and infrastructure to be a system admin.