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

Reducing traffic capacity is needed for more than 13000 remote end-users who are working on Oracle E-Business Suite with about 1600 concurrent remote users working simultaneously all over Egypt. These users connect through 3G mobile modems from different service providers.

It increased the no. of users and reduced traffic and data connection cost in addition to increased user productivity.

Application streaming and shadow feature helped end-user online support and training. It also increased user productivity. Since this application has its own traffic encryption proprietary technique, it increased data connection security.

Eliminating the need of Windows terminal server because it increases the cost for each user as each PC that needs to connect must have its own terminal service license.

Extremely stable.

It is flexible and very easily scalable.

Good customer service and excellent technical support.

Previously, I used direct user connection, but it was not secure enough and used a lot of bandwidth.

If you follow the vendor instructions, the setup is straightforward. But it might be a little bit complex in the tuning phase.

Our own in-house team made the full implementation and operation as well.

The setup cost is not much. Although trimming the application settings is somehow tricky and has a lot of effect on performance, it is done only once. For a large number of users, use the concurrent users' license model.

A direct connection was evaluated.

We primarily use it for user data access and for a virtual desk top.

It allows our users to connect back up to a central location for our data center to do away with individual desktop controls.

The monitoring and management is in need of improvement.

The stability has improved through the course of the last three upgrades.

The scalability is fine. We have about 400 users, who are supported by six staff members.  We use the product company-wide throughout 40 different locations, and we currently do not have plans to increase the scale of use. 

It was relatively straightforward. The deployment actually took three months. We used an integrator, and it was a bit challenging because our environment was a little bit more unique than the integrator was used to. 

I think it is a little high priced.

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?

I use XenDesktop to manage virtual desktops. I can manage home office's projects using it. I also use it to create work space for different users.

XenDesktop has helped our users to work remotely with a better user experience.

I love all its features. It lets me do almost anything.

The video conferencing feature needs to be improved.

Application publishing through the Citrix. We have been using Citrix XenApp to  deliver the business application to remote locations of our company. We highly  reduce our bandwidth through the XenApp application publishing.

It has improved delivering applications to remote locations with its lower bandwidth utilization. It gives better performance to the user though the lowest bandwidth.

Citrix Xenapp application publishing is a valuable feature that we highly utilize in our organization.

XenApp has helped many of my customers with remote access of applications, access on different platforms.

ICA/HDX optimization policies.

Dependency on server virtualization after v7.x is an issue which I encountered in small environments.

No issues with stability.

No issues with scalability.

Seven out of 10.

I used different application virtualization solutions, but I found XenApp to be the best of them.

Straightforward for up to version 6. After version 7 it became complex.

It is a bit costly, but enterprise class features come with a cost.

Thinspace, Propalms, VMware horizon, GO-Global.

Plan wisely for sizing, product is stable if sizing is correct. Try to use standard application for virtualization, non-standard application can lead to memory leakage which can hamper your sizing considerations.

Because this is a tech product, it has an app used for application virtualization.

Your servers are in a remote location, but your server is in UK and you are operating from Australia (theoretically). In this case, you want only Outlook to be used by your end users, therefore what you do is virtualize an Outlook from the servers located in the UK, but your users are using it in Australia as if it is in their local machine. It would be as if the user is utilizing Outlook in his/her machine, but it is running on the servers located in the UK.

This is an app. It virtualizes the application on your desktop. Supposing you have to enter it, you need to login and you will see the Outlook icon on the console. Outlook will open in your system, but the server is in the UK, which is utilizing the resources. Not your local resources, but those in the UK, the UK servers.

It helps you to virtualize your application, so whenever the user needs the application, they have it in virtualized form.

It is user-friendly and easy to use. It helps in many ways. The installation and maintenance are good.

It is progressing and improving day-by-day. Before, we had 6.5 version. The recent one that we used was version 7.1.5. 

There are many latency and slowness issues, which are things looked after by Citrix. 

There have been many issues with stability.

Scalability depends on the server and the number of users in the organization. You need to have capacity planning on how you are providing to users. If the server is a bit old, like the hardware is HPE Generation 4 servers, you are requesting the server to handle more than a hundred users, then it will work slowly. Therefore, capacity planning and the way you plan the architecture is very important for this.

Tech support is good. I would rate them as a seven out of 10.

Previously, I was using XenApp, but there were different products, like ThinApp and VMware. 

The initial setup is simple.

It is affordable. The product, XenServer, is free to use, and XenApp has a one month free license. The licenses are affordable, but the support is a bit expensive, though worth the value.

For three or four years, there were no other options other than the Citrix XenApp. Now, we have ThinApp, VMware, and one more application from Microsoft. While we have options now, XenApp stands out above the rest.

This is a very good tool for virtualizing your application. The support is good. It is affordable. I would recommend it to users who are looking to use XenApp. 

XenDesktop VDI is the best in class desktop virtualization solution with the best support for clients.

It has very good performance in delivering 3D applications over WAN.

We implement this solution at many customer sites. It directly affects the productivity and gives the customers a very flexible solution.

The customers have the possibility to provide access to their applications and data, but its data won’t leave their data centers.

I can't think of anything at the moment.

We have been using XenApp/XenDesktop for 10 years.

We sometimes have issues after updates.

I would rate the technical support at a 10 out of 10.

We did not use a previous solution.

You need a very good concept do the conceptual work before you start implementing. Depending on the concept, the setup could be straightforward.

You have to do some hard work in order to get the suitable licenses.

We looked at VMware View in some projects.

All Citrix products are very flexible and give you a huge amount of possibilities. From a consulting perspective, I recommend that you set aside adequate time for project planning.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The technical support is adequate.

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

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

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

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

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

• 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.