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

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. 

We were looking for a way to deliver the desktop to the end-user securely and within a short time. We leverage their cloud-hosted desktop virtualization.

We use Azure Cloud and, in terms of laptops, we give them to our employees but, because of the COVID situation, sometimes they work from home using their personal laptops to connect to the office environment. They use Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops as a medium.

Before we used the solution, when an employee would join our company it would take us between seven and 14 days to completely configure and give them a laptop. Now, within a maximum of one day they get their computer and can start working on that system. It has simplified things for us.

The solution also simplifies our adherence to industry regulations for data protection and for compliance. For data protection, we have watermarking enabled and the solution opens in full-screen mode so that end-users cannot toggle between VDA and their desktops. The solution also disables use of the clipboard to copy data from the VDA desktop to an endpoint device. Moreover, there is an option to disable even taking a screenshot of the virtual desktop. All of these features help with data protection.

For compliance, we have our own URL to access our desktop server. We can also create a tenant-based method for deploying the virtual desktop for each project, and we can group them. Also, the communication between the endpoint and the virtual desktop is encrypted end-to-end. All communication is over SSL and TLS connections.

The most valuable feature is the watermark because most of the time our employees connect from a remote location. In case they photograph the DDA or some data, the watermark will show which user did so and from which IP they connected. That makes it more secure.

The solution also provides us with flexibility so that it can be used on any device. We mostly have Mac and Windows machines.

In addition, Citrix uses its ICA (Independent Computing Architecture) protocol and for end-users with less bandwidth, the Citrix connectivity enables them to work.

They need to adapt more quickly to the latest additions to the Microsoft operating system. If Windows 10 comes out with a new version, there are compatibility issues and it takes them a lot of time to release an update.

Also, even though they support Linux, as with Windows, we are not able to use the latest version. They need to bring more simplicity to the Linux Virtual Desktop.

I've been using Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops for one year.

We don't have that many users, but the scalability is good. If required, there is no limit on the number of users. Currently, we have about 5,000 users on virtual desktops and about 1,000 are using Citrix.

In terms of support they are lagging. They take a lot of time to respond. Once they connect, they take a lot of time to resolve things, especially when moving things from L1 to L2 and L2 to L3. Their backend people keep on changing and it can be annoying for us. It is not that easy to get support. The support is not that great, although it has improved when compared to a year ago.

Neutral

Once we put it on a Cloud Connector, and if we are using a test cloud, it is very easy to deploy. If you want to deploy the ADC, then it takes some time to consider things, but otherwise deployment of Citrix consists of simple steps.

Because we are deployed in the cloud, it took us some time to configure the ADC. The rest of the components were deployed in a week's time, but the ADC took a lot of time, because there were a lot of compatibility issues. We followed the documentation, but it took some time for us to settle the configuration. The ADC is used to connect Citrix to the end-user system so it is a critical component. Deploying the ADC on the cloud is a complex process.

From the time we entered into an agreement to use Virtual Apps and Desktops, it took about six weeks to eight weeks until we could use it. On our end, there were two or three IT people involved.

The Citrix integrator we used was moderately helpful. They tried to help but they didn't have much experience with a cloud deployment. They were able to do on-prem fast, but GCP took them a lot of time.

Our deployment is in its initial stage so we cannot say there have been cost savings, but in terms of security, it is good. It has also improved the efficiency of our IT department by approximately 20 percent.

The pricing is a little bit high, but it's good value for the product's stability and efficiency.

You need to choose the right licensing, whether it is the Advanced or Premium Edition.

We have used Azure Virtual Desktop and some other solutions as well, but compared to all of them, in terms of the performance, the screen refresh, and security, Citrix is number-one.

Citrix is an enterprise leader for virtual desktops. We cannot compare Citrix options, usability, and simplicity with Azure Virtual Desktop. With Azure Virtual Desktop, there is a lot of slowness and audio will not work. When it comes to an enterprise-grade or first-class option, you need to look at Citrix.

You need to think about ADC. If you are planning a deployment in the cloud, you need to be well aware of what will work and what will not work with ADC. Otherwise, it will be difficult.

The tool supports remote work, allowing users to access apps and data from anywhere with the same speed as if they were in the office.

The most beneficial feature is seamless remote access, particularly for applications rather than full endpoints. Security features include full data encryption and integrated SSL VPN through NetScaler for secure access.

I have found that Citrix DaaS is still a complex product, especially on the desktop side, which affects scalability. Although it works well on the apps side, the desktop aspect still has room for improvement in scalability. Managing multiple OSs centrally doesn't reduce many problems, and the product remains almost on par with its competitors like VMware Vue.

The tool was once the leader in this market, and while it still offers competitive functionality, it could have enhanced security features and third-party integrations. For example, OneDrive can't be fully integrated, and Outlook's email indexing often has issues, leading to search problems for end users.

In the last two years, Citrix DaaS' technical support has lagged, particularly in India, where it was previously quite good. While I wouldn't say it has completely deteriorated, there has been some slowness. If earlier the quality of support was around 85% to 90%, it has now slowed down to about 70%. This decline might be related to a decrease in customers using the product.

Neutral

The initial setup is also complex due to the number of components in Citrix DaaS' architecture, and customers typically need partner support to deploy it. While it has tried to simplify by moving complexities to the cloud, the on-premise components still pose challenges.

I rate the overall product a six out of ten. 

I use the solution in my company for hybrid users and support.

The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the convenience and the ease of setup the tool provides.

From an improvement perspective, I want to have multiple logins in one JUMP file, if possible. Nowadays in my company, we have to spare one PC as a jump point for the user. My company's purpose is to have multiple jump points. Improvements are required to be made in the solution since, presently, with the tool, hybrid users have to get involved with multiple logins.

In the future, the product should have some mobile applications. Though in our company, we can use the product through mobile by using Microsoft desktop, the screen is not that friendly enough.

I have been using Citrix Workspace for two years.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution as seven and a half out of ten. There are some issues with the product's scalability, considering that Citrix found a loophole in the solution after my company had used it for two years. My organization needs to see whether the loophole found by Citrix is dangerous and whether we will be exposed to vulnerabilities. Most organizations use Citrix Workspace with standard settings and as per what is suggested by Citrix.

More than 1,000 people use the tool in my company.

I rate the technical support a nine out of ten. I am happy with the support offered by the product.

Positive

I have experience with Microsoft Remote Desktop. If I compare Microsoft Remote Desktop and Citrix Workspace, I would say that Microsoft Remote Desktop is used internally in our company. Citrix offers license-based tools. In our company, we prefer using Microsoft Remote Desktop. Microsoft Remote Desktop uses more resources and networks compared to Citrix. Citrix offers more optimized solutions.

The product's initial setup phase is simple and easy.

The solution is deployed on the hybrid model.

If one is a high price and ten is a low price, I rate the tool's price a three.

In terms of security features, the product offers MFA functionalities. Citrix has yet to disclose some issues with the tool's security features. I heard that Citrix found some loopholes in the product, and they have yet to be covered up.

The product can be easily integrated with other tools.

I recommend the tool to others.

I rate the tool a seven out of ten.

The most valuable feature to me as IT is that the disk is non-writable. This means that, during the course of computing, nothing permanently bad can happen to the computer. Viruses and malware can’t corrupt it. So instead of a rebuild of the machine, which used to happen at least twice a week, and take as much as 10 hours, it’s a simple reboot to fix.

The second most valuable feature is the ability to deliver a full-featured desktop to our users anytime, anywhere with an internet connection.

My organization is a 24x7 organization. About 2/3 of our users work a schedule that is 48 hours on, 96 hours off on rotating shifts and many of them live a minimum of 70 miles away. They frequently need to get into our computer system to adjust their work availability schedule for overtime and out-of-area deployments, as well as to keep in contact with other divisions that are on more-regular work schedules. We can now access our system in the field, which is valuable when interfacing with our constituency.

I would like to be able to document the VDIs better in XenServer and in the Delivery Controller, so that I could know which snapshot and image goes with which machine. I can do it now, but it takes some digging.

And I still think the training costs too much in relation to the cost of the software.

I have been using it since 2009.

In this newest version, I keep running out of allocated space on my storage server for the virtual desktop images. This is because I am used to the older Provisioning Server model where I had one image that streamed to many desktops. Now, I am using the Machine Creation Services model where each desktop has its own image. That’s okay, but the snapshots of previous images - so that versions can be rolled back - are giving me some problems to get used to. It’s not a terrible problem, it’s just me getting used to it and figuring out how to allow for it.

Customer service and technical support is great, but you do have to pay for it. Don’t skimp and don’t try to do without it; you’ll be sorry. There are great knowledge base articles and a lot of active users, but there is also a lot that happens that never hits the knowledge base. The risk you run by trying to figure it out for yourself is dissatisfied and tremendously frustrated users - and this is not an area where you want to encourage a howling mob.

My experience is no longer very valid as it was seven years ago and Citrix has made many changes and improvements. It was a nightmare. XenServer was, and is, pretty easy. XenDesktop was, and is, fairly complex. At that time, XenDesktop was poorly documented (as in, barely documented) and I ran into problems with everything, including lingering problems with the Nehalem processors in the hosts and problems in my storage server that caused the virtual desktops to arbitrarily hang for the first year or so. Every piece of the technology has matured, both hardware and software, since that time.

The XenServer piece was done by a VAR from the RFP process. The original plan was for them to also do the XenDesktop piece but, as I mention elsewhere, while they were familiar with Virtual Iron, they were not familiar with XenDesktop and did not wish to undertake it. They subcontracted it to another installer, who tried to set it up but didn’t get it done past the problems I mention elsewhere. Then another VAR took a shot at it, but also couldn’t fix it. I spent a lot of time studying, learning, and trying to fix the issues and found the hardware problems and fixed them. But it still didn’t work properly. I finally bit the golden bullet and paid the price for a Citrix gold partner who rebuilt the XenDesktop installation correctly and taught me at the same time. From then on, it worked beautifully and met our vision. But that first 1.5 years was a bear to wrestle.

We extended our hardware replacement lifecycle by not having to replace endpoints. We no longer use PCs, but use thin/zero clients with no moving parts. So instead of a PC refresh every three years, we went 5-6 years and used a less expensive machine. Instead of three servers for the hosts, we were able to use only two when we replaced them and didn’t do it until seven years. Our fuel costs are down because a “broken” machine is a reboot, not a rebuild. We use less electricity. We are able to provide 24x7 on-call support with only 1.5 IT personnel instead of only 40 hours to our 24x7 operation. All our employees, many of whom live in another city, can access our system anytime they need to sign up for overtime or change their schedule (this is a fire department) or interact with any division on a different work schedule than their own. And our overall IT costs (hardware, software, utilities, etc.) dropped 44 percent over what we were spending in 2008 and certainly over our trajectory.

The initial purchase for the first three years will be more expensive than what you have been spending. There will be a higher cost in time, in the learning curve, and in effort. You won’t start to see a savings until after that; the savings comes over time and will affect many areas.

This is a disruptive technology and it will disrupt your organization; you’ll have to learn to think differently both in a technological fashion and in a budgetary fashion. If you’re used to measuring your ROI in terms of years, you’ll need to take a longer view. If you measure it by line item, you’ll need to take a wider view.

Initially, we were going to use Virtual Iron as it looked to be the simplest and least expensive to implement for a small organization. Oracle bought the product in the middle of our implementation process and killed it. Our implementer had a business relationship with a Citrix sales engineer who was able to show us the XenServer/XenDesktop product. It looked very similar, so we went with that. XenServer was; XenDesktop, not so much.

Virtual desktops aren’t for every user and it takes some thought to apply them correctly. Heavy graphics programs will benefit from the use of GPUs in the host. Your best bet will be to use a Citrix partner VAR who knows what they’re doing to implement and train you; even though it costs more initially, it will prevent so much dissatisfaction, it will really be worth it. There are a number of little “gotchas”, optimizations, and tweaks they have already known about and Citrix has worked through and patched that will greatly impact the user acceptance and affect it will have on your organization.

Implementation will also take some user training and you’ll get some pushback. For example, people will need to be trained to use shortcuts on their desktops and to not put a lot of files and folders on them. Why? Because Microsoft Windows loads everything up on load and it will slow them down. It will make their user experience unsatisfactory while they WAIT FOREVER (more than 30 seconds to as much as minutes, depending on bandwidth and user perception) for their desktop to come up. They’ll get used to the new way of working and come to appreciate the new amenities, but you may have to keep reminding them of what they’ve gained when they complain of what they think they’ve lost. And they will lose some things; a virtual desktop is more locked down. The desktop is non-writable, which means that nothing writes to it. This is great for IT support, but not so great for some apps. Think about that in relation to software packages that you use as you’re planning. If you’ve got software that MUST write to the disk, you can do that, but you’ll have to allow for an additional writable disk to the desktop image for any user using that software.

The entire development environment is accessed only through the virtual desktop setup using Citrix DaaS.

The most valuable feature of the solution is the desktop virtualization, which allows me to connect from anywhere. The solution's security feature provides a secure environment for the organization by preventing copying the content outside the virtual desktop.

The Citrix DaaS application is a bit heavy when it comes to mobile access, and it should function more smoothly. For example, the Citrix mobile app takes a long time to log in and should work even faster. Compared with the Outlook mobile app, the Citrix mobile app shows some lag in authentication.

I have been using Citrix DaaS for four to five years.

I rate the solution’s stability a nine out of ten.

Citrix DaaS is quite a scalable solution. We can quickly set up new desktops. With a simple configuration, we can create multiple instances and seamlessly give users access. Around 20 to 25 users use the tool in our organization, and we have plans to increase the usage.

I rate the solution ten out of ten for scalability.

I previously used VMware Horizon. I switched to Citrix DaaS because it seemed more secure.

The solution’s initial setup is very easy.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy, I rate the solution’s initial setup ten out of ten.

The solution has a fast deployment, and it can be deployed in less than ten minutes.

The tool provides a good return on investment because it reduces the maintenance of user hardware. We don't need powerful user hardware, like a powerful laptop; any simple laptop is enough to connect. We can add the required intra virtually to the virtual desktops so it gives the required performance.

We are using Citrix DaaS in the IT industry. The solution's security aspect has influenced our trust in using it for remote access. I would recommend Citrix DaaS to other users for its security and performance.

Overall, I rate Citrix DaaS a nine out of ten.

I use it for VDI.

Citrix Workspace's standout feature is its flexibility, enabling me to access my virtual desktop seamlessly from any location, anytime.

While Citrix Workspace provides remarkable flexibility and remote access, there is room for slight improvement in performance optimization and interface refinement.

I have been using Citrix Workspace for ten years.

Citrix Workspace is highly scalable. You can easily expand the solution by installing additional servers to support the growing number of end-users. I would rate its scalability as a ten out of ten. We have approximately 2,000 end users at our company.

I used VMware Horizon View several years ago but switched to Citrix Workspace because it offered essential features, specifically support for Lexi App migrations, better meeting our requirements at the time.

The deployment time for Citrix is flexible and depends on the complexity of the solution. It can range from one day to several months, influenced by factors such as scaling, global availability, application count, and the time invested in configuring virtual machines. Deploying Citrix is complex because it involves various technical skills, including server administration and network configuration. Maintaining it is straightforward by following the vendor's instructions.

Citrix Workspace doesn't directly save time, but it is invaluable for accessibility. If hardware fails, it is a backup option for staff to access our corporate environment, reducing the impact on business operations. That is where its real value shines.

When considering Citrix Workspace or similar solutions, my advice is to assess your specific needs and preferences. There are various reputable vendors, so compare based on factors like functionality, user experience, and budget. Each organization is unique, so conduct a thorough evaluation before making a decision. Overall, I would rate Citrix Workspace as an eight out of ten.

Use cases are situations where multiple people require the use of some apps, whether Chrome or SAP, for example. We primarily use it for app launches and we deliver multi-session OS.

The solution has improved over time. For example, one of the functionalities that has been incorporated into the latest versions is the Local Host Cache. Another improvement is zones. There is also something called Local Text Echo that was introduced with version 7.9 or 7.11. These features have helped us to adapt the product within different customer organizations and within our own organization as well.

Additional benefits the solution has provided are work from home and bring your own device. These have made us more efficient in terms of being able to work wherever we want and through whatever device we'd like to work on. Encouraging people to work from home and reducing dependency on fat clients, like laptops and desktops, and providing them with thin clients or zero clients, we'll be able to save on costs. With fat clients, the renewal cycle is around three to five years, whereas the renewal cycle for thin clients or zero clients is around seven to 10 years.

The app protection feature is one of the most valuable because it provides good security, as nobody is going to be able to look into your screen while you are sharing the screen. And if someone has installed a keylogger in your system, your keystrokes will be jumbled up and they would not make any sense to the keylogger. App protection is one of the coolest security features that I have encountered on any platform.

Our company is a systems integrator and I have been using Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops for around eight years.

We have multiple versions, including Citrix Cloud and 7.15 LTSR (Long Term Service Release). Some customers are running with 7.6 LTSR and some are running on 1912 LTSR as well. But none of them are using the current release. In our organization we are also running on 1912 LTSR.

Right now it is on-prem, and in the next three to six months it will be going to the cloud.

The solution is quite stable. Approximately 60 to 70 percent of the time, I find that issues belong to the dependent components, like network, storage, another profiling solution, or the cloud. Around 30 to 40 percent of the time it is Citrix that is the culprit. But it is quite stable.

It is quite scalable and robust as well. On our platform we have more than a million users. And we are trying to increase the use cases so that we will have better penetration among all users.

I'm an ex-Citrix guy. I was part of support and post-sales activities and I was involved in sales activities as well. I would not rate their support as high as I would have during the time I worked there.

In part it's because they hire people from the market who may or may not have a complete understanding of the product. That is okay, but once you onboard them for support, you need to get them trained properly. Once they are trained, you need to understand their current skill set and level, and that may not be happening. That's the reason, when you jump on a call with Citrix support, they lack some basic understanding. Troubleshooting is an art. It is not just knowing about technical things. It is also asking the right questions. That level of understanding and knowledge only comes with a lot of practice.

Neutral

Setting up the solution was straightforward because, at the time, it was all on-prem. But today's solutions that we are deploying are not straightforward to set up. There are cloud, SaaS, and PaaS products, and different profiling solutions. Customers want the best of everything, and that makes the solution a bit complex.

The setup time depends on the number of users. If I look at a standard of 10,000 users, it may take 45 to 60 days, post user-acceptance testing. But if you include the UA phase, the time may go up to three to four months.

To manage Citrix for that same, standard 10,000-user environment, one that is operational 24/7, you would require one SME, two level-threes, four level-twos, and six to eight level-one people.

Citrix solutions cost a lot in comparison with competitors, like Azure Virtual Desktop or VMware Horizon. Those solutions cost around 50 to 60 percent less, per month per user, than Citrix. The leadership of Citrix should really consider the pricing factor. Apart from that, they are the leader in the virtualization of desktop applications.

In our organization we have Azure Virtual Desktop and VMware Horizon. Citrix is not the only solution on which my team and I work.

Scalability is the biggest factor, along with ease of use and the security features that we get. The kinds of features that we get in the Citrix security stack are really phenomenal, and I don't think that kind of feature set is available with any other platform. In addition, it is highly usable, even on choppy or low bandwidth. If customers have issues in their network, it works pretty well.

These days, Citrix lacks innovation, so I would rate the current product stack as an eight out of 10. If they innovate more features for more business use cases, and they try to take more users from on-prem to the cloud, with reduced pricing and better after-sales services, they will definitely get a 10 from me.