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

I use the tool to connect to the other apps of the company.

The tool helps me to connect with some apps of our company and resolve the tickets.

I have to re-enter my user password when I am not using the tool for some time around ten minutes. I want to also improve the need to download other Citrix apps.

I have used the solution for two weeks.

I would rate the solution’s stability a seven out of ten. The tool’s download time is slow.

I would rate the tool’s scalability a nine out of ten.

The solution’s setup is simple.

I would rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.

The primary use case is to allow our employees to work from home.

We are using the solution with some of our light users. There is less maintenance cost for the hardware.

The remote desktop feature is valuable because it allows employees to work from home.

USB devices are a common issue. I am not sure if this is a Citrix issue or an operating system issue because we are using Linux.

I have been using the solution for one year.

At this point, the solution has shown to be stable.

The solution is scalable.

I had to use customer service once or twice and they solve my issues immediately.

The initial setup is complex.

The implementation was done in-house. 

We recouped 60 to 70 percent of the hardware costs.

I rate the solution seven out of ten.

Although the initial setup is complex, deployment is easy. We already have the images used for deployments of the virtual machines through Citrix Studio. The thin client already has an operating system that connects directly to the Citrix server. All we have to do is assign the virtual machines and deploy them.

We currently have 97 users for the solution and are looking to increase that to 300. Two engineers are required to manage the solution.

I recommend you test everything first before implementing this solution. We are facing issues with Microsoft Teams, and the presentations which have no option to share with Bijo and Ojo. You should also test the hardware, especially the USB devices.

We use Citrix Workspace to login into our system.

We have several users and there are standards in the installation process because of the security. They have found that various systems with standard installations, restricting users to go ahead and install on their own.

Everything is managed through the infrastructure. ServiceNow is used for the CCM.

Everything is automated machine creations and installations. They take care of the machines with regular updates on weekends.

Everything is automated here, and there is no manual intervention for setting up any system if a new user is hired.

The feature that I like is that it is fast. For example, if I am new to the company, setting up systems can take up a lot of time, but, having standard automation in place allows this user to have the same set of software installed on his or her machine.

The only area that takes some time is that it requires us to get the approval. Once the approval is given, the system with everything is installed as a prerequisite.

Because it's a prerequisite, it's a standard installation in all the systems, there are no discrepancies because everything is standard, it's automated. If I am using a particular version, it will be the same version in my colleague's system.

It's very easy.

Performance is an area that can be improved. The meetings that use Skype in Workspace will lag when they run long or we screen share. At times, it is slow when there are multiple users on the server.

When it lags, we restart it to get it resolved. If multiple users are using a single server it will lag. 

The lag when using Skype or Screen Sharing with multiple users needs to improve, as it makes it difficult for us to continue when we have to restart the system. 

I have been using Citrix Workspace for almost one year.

The solution is stable, however, there are version discrepancies. For example, a new version of Citrix has become available and I am using the old version of Citrix the new version is not compatible with the Media version, which creates problems when using Skype or any video meeting.

Lag is something that we observe frequently, but it can be resolved because we have a guideline page that shows us the versions that should be compatible with our systems or Windows Operating System, and the Media Version, which is the Citrix HDX Realtime Media Version, should also be compatible with the Citrix Workstation that we are using. If both are good your system will work well.

It's a scalable solution and everyone in the organization uses it. We have more than 15,000 users.

We plan to continue to use Citrix Workspace.

I do not have experience with technical support. I have a PoC team that deals with them. They are quick to resolve issues.

We just need to create a ticket and ask for support.

Ther support is good and they are quick to respond and resolve issues.

Previously, we used A3 Machine, which was replaced by Citrix Workspace.

It is easy to install. There is a link provided on our homepage for login.

We just need to install it and restart the system.

It is very fast. It took half an hour or so.

Azure Desktop has been released and we will be using this along with Citrix Workspace. When we want to use something, we need to first have Citrix Workspace.

I have Citrix Workspace and on top of that, I can use Microsoft Azure Desktop, which may allow me to program in that machine. Citrix Workspace is the base and it works fine with most of our products.

Definitely, I would recommend Citrix Workspace to others who are interested in using it. It's very handy, portable, fast, and easy to install. Also, it is the standard amongst all users.

I would encourage everybody to use Citrix Workspace.

We are quite satisfied. I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

• Remote access
• BYOD
• High performance
• Feature-rich, full desktop experience

• It has enabled remote working from anyplace, anytime, and anywhere
• It has simplified, secured, and centralized the challenges of O/S deployment across the enterprise.

They could reduce the number of bugs and fixes required post release. This would ensure a smooth integration with any flavour of hypervisor or cloud provider.

I have been using the product for fifteen years.

Over the years Citrix has increased the pace in which new versions are released, and often the product has not gone through thorough enough testing so the consultants are left very challenged trying to resolve bugs, and obtaining post-release fixes from the Vendor (Citrix). It would be much better if Citrix could slow down the rapidness of their updates and give a bit more time and consideration to belt and bracing the solution prior to general public release.

For the most part, we did not encounter stability issues. However, owing to the complexities involved in working with multiple vendor platforms, and by the nature of the Microsoft O/S, there are sometimes gremlins and bugs which affect deployments for which hot fixes are often required.

These bugs can sometimes affect stability, but often only affect it when mixing multiple vendor solutions.

We did not encounter any scalability issues. By design, Citrix offer a very modular solution whereby you can bolt-on and build-up on features and functionality as required. Citrix tends to do future-proofing. It is still the market leader in Server Based Computing deployments.

Technical support was usually excellent. However, you sometimes have to push to ensure that you get to the top level of engineer to deal with the case. This is the case with most vendors.

We have worked with all competitors over the years. I think that the "Ferrari" Citrix is still your best choice

It depends on what business needs you are trying to achieve and which product features you need to enable.

Installation and setup have been improved over the years. However, to implement a truly robust, performance rich solution, you still need an SME to help design and implement the solution.

We have a teamed on seasoned Citrix Consultants, specialists in their chosen field covering off the complete Citrix Product Suite from XenMobile, to XenDesktop

We recently implemented a new on-demand private cloud solution for SAS Software to replace their aging PC/Ghost imaging within their classroom environments throughout the UK. The new XenDesktop solution is completely hands-free enabling the end user to provisioning the desired desktop image on-demand within a 3 minute end-to-end process. Previously, it use to take the SAS Support staff an entire weekend to rebuild a classroom ready for the SAS Software training course to commence on Monday. They realized their ROI within just one year.

Citrix is competitive when compared to other vendors. Often you get what you pay for. In this instance, if you want an enterprise-class and future-proofing solution, then Citrix is a good choice to make.

We have evaluated, and continue to evaluate all the main competitors since 2000.

We looked at VMWare View (now Horizon) and Microsoft RDS/VDI.

We are brand agnostic and we go with the best solution which fits the customers' needs and budgets.

As professional consultants, we will advise and present the pros and cons of each solution when explaining our recommendations.

• Talk to fellow experts who have worked extensively with the technology.
• Ask them to come over, showcase, and demo the solution so that you can cover all your business objectives and ensure the right vendor.
• We always recommend an onsite PoC for 5-10 consulting days to prove the technology and to thrash out what can and cannot be achieved.

The Provisioning Services and Machine Creation Services features allow you to provision workloads just by following a wizard, and most importantly depending of what you have in your environment, either a below average network (Machine Creation Services) or fast and large storage (Provisioning Services). You are able to use either one of them to improve the time it takes to build workloads and make them available to users.

One of our clients where we implemented XenDesktop has a highly mobile fleet of users, and providing access to shared desktops either via Wyse terminals or tablets has really shown what a difference in improving efficiency and reliability can do to a system. What we love the most about XenDesktop is the simple and easy way to scale on-demand depending on the workload.

Citrix Director, which is like the monitoring interface from Citrix could use a revamp in the way that it displays information. The display is not very intuitive, and it could also have better integration with SCOM via Comtrade MP (now Citrix) and other monitoring tools. This is in progress with v7.8 using SNMP traps which will allow Director to talk to upstream monitoring systems like BMC Patrol, CA Spectrum, Tivoli, etc.

I've been using it for three years.

With the deployment, it was only doing the design that took a while to build. It was a very particular client with a not so good network, so we had to work around that, but Citrix adjusted perfectly, for every issue we found when designing XenDesktop had a feature to make it happen.

XenDesktop is a very mature product and since implementation early last year, we've only had couple of issues that required our attention. As the solution was built with High Availability in mind, we only suffered from a degradation in service rather than a full outage of the system.

If you need more hosted shared desktops, boom it's really easy, and only takes couple of clicks and in minutes the new workloads are available and ready to be used.

Excellent, Citrix support guys are top of the line, and when we required a Citrix Consultant on premises, Citrix sent one straight away to assist us.

Previously, I used VMware Horizon View. This solution is simple and elegant, but it lacks the robustness Citrix has. Protocols and features to improve user experience when the network is not the best, are features that VMware has but they are not as effective as Citrix ones. The ICA protocol from Citrix has been maturing for many years, and the amount of settings you can tweak to deliver a great user experience is incredible. It can be a bit complicated, but if you work with the product you can work out what option suits best your scenario. VMware is still behind but let’s not think it is the underdog as they are gaining market share and it is a cheaper solution than Citrix.

After the design was built, agreed upon, and firewall rules were defined, deployment of the solution was a breeze. Having XenDesktop running on top of XenServer as native hypervisor is the best way to go. When machines are created via MCS or PVS you don’t need to do anything else for the VMs to be created as XenDesktop talks directly to the hypervisor and instructs it to create whatever workloads you need on the fly.

The implementation was done in-house mostly, however with the design considerations we approached Citrix for assistance and to confirm whether or notour design considerations were following best practices. One thing to consider when implementing Citrix and a set of policies is that if it is a big environment, you are deploying, please ensure that the person or team that's doing the design knows what they are doing. Citrix works marvellously when properly configured but if not, you will find a world of trouble trying to make it work as you want.

For implementation, my advice is if you are designing a big environment contact Citrix Professional Services. If you're not sure on some aspects of your design, and have a CCE-V in your team, this is the key person to contact when doing a design for a large environment - 5000+ workloads for desktop or server.

Citrix is a pricey product, but it is the best product for large corporate companies that want to squeeze to the last buck the life of their existing computers. Using Citrix allows medium to large companies to save money when computer hardware refreshes need to happen; Using shared desktops with Windows Server 2012 R2 as OS you can provision this for a large fleet of users that are probably still using a Windows XP computer but the user experience they will have will be like using Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 if you use the latest version of XenDesktop

Plan your budget, and do a PoC first if possible to get key users feedback, work with Citrix licensing team to find out what best license scheme adjust to your needs, don’t go out and buy the Enterprise license because it has it all, check first what your design requires and after that make an informed decision.

My focus has primarily been on publishing virtual applications.

Pricing and technical support need improvement. 

I have been using Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) for fifteen years. 

The scalability of Citrix matches with almost all devices. 

The technical support was challenging in the beginning but now it seems to improve. 

The initial setup is straightforward. 

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

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.

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.