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

We have two primary use cases of this solution. One, the final users use their main interface to log in to the system. The Citrix team publish all the applications they are accessing with their laptops. We have an end terminal that is a small PC with just access to Citrix, so they don't have a real PC.

The other use case is my personal use case. I use Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops to access the network to jump into the infra. I am using it to access the network and to go through the infrastructure level for monitoring. I do not use the business application as I am from IT, we just support the IT infrastructure.

Centralization and security are the most valuable features of Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops. You have a controlled environment that doesn't allow your employees to install software on the machines and connect to the network. It is more secure than personal laptops everywhere.

Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops is easy to manage. Our organization has a hybrid environment. We have a large percentage of our users that have their own laptops, which requires a lot of effort to manually maintain support, update and patch. With Citrix, we have three or four people that work on the infrastructure to support over 2,000 users.

The solution works as it is designed to work. However, when you are at the office you do need to log in and load your profile, which takes time. But that is the way it is designed.

I have been using Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops for four years.

Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops is very stable. It is our responsibility to have it up and running with good performance. The environment is very stable. Any impact on Citrix is immediately reported to the users. We are always one step ahead in checking performance and getting alerts.

Any issues we have are small and resolved quickly by our team. 

Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops is a complex solution. It requires many licenses in a big environment. Anyone considering the solution needs to assess and analyze the cost benefit. As a VDI solution, I do believe it is the best one out there.

I would rate Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktop an eight out of 10.

The Citrix Workspace is a little easier compared to Citrix Receiver. We used to use Citrix Receiver and then switched to Citrix Workspace. Previously, we had to install five browser components and a couple more things to launch these applications.

Six to seven months after we started using this solution, we had an issue when we were using the Citrix server. We needed to install the Citrix Runtime in the server where the application was hosted. When we installed the Runtime, we needed to restart the production server. So, whenever our EMR application was going live, we had to plan to upgrade all our other surrounding tools and applications, so we could complete one restart and achieve everything at once.

The engineering team installed certain things to fix the issue, and now it is resolved. There are so many links within the Citrix application, so when we tried to launch it, we initially used IE. Initially, we never had an issue, but when we made Chrome an enterprise browser, then we were facing some slowness. But later, we realized that it was not a Citrix issue, it was some additional components of the browser that we needed to install so that it would be rightly redirected to the EFC.

We have been using this solution for ten years from a configuration perspective and almost three years from an automation perspective. We are using the latest version.

We are planning our next upgrade around mid-September. The solution is deployed on-premises.

It is a stable solution.

We have more than 500 people using this solution.

We have not used the technical support from Citrix. However, we reach out to our technical team for any issues.

I rate the pricing a five out of five because it is a good price.

I rate this solution a nine out of ten. We have been using this solution for a long time and are comfortable using Citrix.

We are using Citrix Workspace for the people who are roaming employees, those who rarely come to the office and access applications and data from outside the office.

Citrix Workspace has benefited organizations from the security extension after implementing it.

The most valuable feature of Citrix Workspace is its security.

The Citrix Workspace interface could improve. Additionally, if they are able to provide a mobile application

I have been using Citrix Workspace for over six years.

Citrix Workspace is quite a stable solution provided it is implemented as part of best practices provided by Citrix Workspace. If any of the organizations are not following the best practices, they are bound to have, challenges with regard to stability. 

Citrix Workspace can be scalable. However, the scalability of the solution depends on how it has been implemented. If the implementation is done, keeping scalability in mind, it would be scalable. If scalability has not been considered at the time of implementing the solution, then any organization is going to find it difficult to scale.

We have approximately 100 users using Citrix Workspace in my organization.

My experience with the support from Citrix Workspace mix and match experience. Earlier, it used to be a good experience, but over a period of time, there have been a lot of changes within Citrix.

I rate the support from  Citrix Workspace a four out of five.

The initial setup of Citrix Workspace is a bit of a complex process, which should be made easier in the future. If somebody's looking to extend the reach of this solution, then the implementation of this has to be super easy. It should be very easy that would make somebody wants to use Citrix Workspace on a regular basis for their personal use. Security is something that is and is going to be a big concern for everybody down the line.

The length of time it takes to implement Citrix Workspace depends on how complex the environment is. If it is a project with very minimum applications to be published through the Citrix Workspace, then it can take approximately 15 days to one month to complete. 

If it is a complex environment where there are multiple applications posted on different platforms with multiple application stacks, that may take up to three months time or even more than that in some cases.

The implementation was done in-house. 

Citrix Workspace doesn't acquire any specific maintenance, but if we want to reduce the maintenance overhead from the organization's point of view, to do that, we can try to make it easy for end-user to use it, such as not raising tickets to IT teams to sort out. They should be able to resolve their issue. In most of the cases, I have seen that the issues are related to end-user only.

The price of the solution could be less expensive. There are different versions to their solution and the price keeps increasing.

If someone is trying to enable their employees to work from anywhere without compromising security, I would recommend a Citrix Workspace.

I rate Citrix Workspace an eight out of ten.

Everything requires improvement, nothing is perfect. Everyone should consider improvement.

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.

We use application virtualization capabilities and on-premise desktop virtualization. In one of the companies, we are using remote PC access or remote access to physical desktops. We used cloud-hosted desktop virtualization for a PoC.

Our organization has over 15 companies all over the eastern region. We are in manufacturing, distribution, technology, and many more things.

It provides the flexibility of being used on any device. It is good in terms of user experience. Generally, if you want to run an application over the internet on your virtual desktop, you need to have many things working well to have the same experience that you will have if you were are working on your own laptop. It provides a good user experience in terms of working even with not-so-high bandwidth.

There is end-to-end security not only for the application itself but also for the users. We need to ensure that the applications are always protected and the connection between the user and the application is also protected. 

Integration with the cloud provides a seamless experience. You can publish applications over the cloud, and you can access the workspace and your application on your computer, your laptop, your tab or iPad, or on mobile devices. It works well with your Apple, Android, or Windows devices. It works with everything. There is also a system where you can remotely assist any person who is running any specific application.

There is good integration between Citrix and Microsoft applications. You can also optimize the user experience with certain configurations. Security plays a very important role in working with Citrix in terms of dealing with group policies, legal policies, and application policies. You can apply the required policies. For example, you can have a clipboard policy where people cannot copy or screenshot stuff.

It is very easy when it comes to the deployment and management of hybrid cloud apps and desktops. You are working only in one console, and it is straightforward. You can see everything there. You can see the policies, rules, profiles, and whether you want to have it on the cloud or on-prem.

When it comes to the security and protection of critical business applications and desktops, 
there are certain business applications that some companies prefer not to publish or not to have on virtual desktops in the cloud. However, when we're talking on-premises solution, it can integrate with any published application. If you're working on certain projects or certain versions, you will not have any issues in terms of the version because the configuration is based on the server and not on the client PC. For example, some Oracle application or ERP application needs certain plugins to be available, and users didn't have those on their laptops. In spite of not having them, they were able to work on these applications through a virtual desktop.

It simplifies adherence to industry regulations for data protection and compliance with all kinds of security policies. 

It benefits the overall business operation and reduces the total time of managing big applications. The applications are available at any time of the day. Previously, if anyone lost his computer or had his computer damaged or something like that, we had to take that computer and reinstall everything for a staff member to be able to access the application, whereas now, the staff member can access the application through his phone or another computer. His information is there on the service from any place. So, it impacts the availability of applications, and it saves a lot of time to replace a damaged PC. In certain cases, it also saves a lot of cost of buying new Windows or new hardware for the applications, so we can use old laptops to run these applications. It saves time and money.

It saves the cost of buying new PCs and the maintenance. It saves 50% to 60% of the total cost of a new device that needs to be bought for any new employee or for a specific service. It saves a lot of money and reduces wastage.

It provides security of our intellectual property and data when remote employees are using the solution. The main thing is that you can create your own policies and you can specify what applications users can run based on the locations. For example, if they are working in Dubai, they don't need to access all data in Lebanon. We can create profiles and policies for them. In the group configuration, you can just integrate it with Active Directory or another security platform so that the configuration can be applied to the region.

It is very efficient to work with a thin client. There are no problems with integration with various devices.

We're running it on-prem. We are working with Hyper-V and vSphere, and we don't have any problem with that. We can run any server and storage. It can work with any hypervisor. There are no restrictions.

First of all, the manageability of the applications for publishing is valuable. Second, it is about being able to run the applications on all main platforms. Third, its licensing is valuable. You can either switch to the cloud and keep on-prem. You can work with this hybrid scenario.

As an admin, for managing the devices, the interface is very user-friendly. There is no problem, and it is very good.

Licensing service installation and configuration was the biggest challenge for all Citrix solutions, but now they have fixed a lot of issues.

I have been using this solution since 2013.

We have companies that have around 500 users, 100 users, and 50 users. The biggest company has around 1,000 users. This company is all across the region.

We will increase its usage depending on the business and the requirements.

They were excellent from a project management standpoint. They helped us with issues related to licensing. 

If we need any online support, they are able to provide that. Their support is fine.

I used to work with VMware Horizon.

It didn't take a lot of time. Within a week of entering into an agreement with Citrix to use their service, I was able to administer and work with it.

We had everything that we need, and their support team in Lebanon was very helpful. In less than a week, we were able to administer and install applications. At the initial stage, we also had to develop our own profiles and policies, but it was very straightforward. There was no complexity. It took around two hours for installing the Citrix and the license service, and it took around two days to configure the profiles. We had three people for deployment.

You can buy an on-cloud or on-prem license. You can switch between on-cloud users and on-prem users.

Its licensing is cheap. It is from $8 to $15 per user. It is not that expensive when you compare the cost of buying new hardware with the cost of the license. For example, at $15 per user, it costs around $180 for a year, which is cheaper than buying a $600 PC that at a certain stage, you will again have to change because its hardware is not supported. It may also get damaged or stolen. So, you can compare the cost of the actual hardware that you have to buy and the time spent in supporting the clients with the cost of its license.

I evaluated other solutions such as VMware Horizon and Microsoft Remote Desktop Services. Citrix works seamlessly on different platforms, and its bandwidth consumption is very low. Desktop profiles, integrations, and remote assistance were also the main factors for going for Citrix.

To get the benefit of the return on investment, you need to plan well in advance when to change all of the laptops, and you also need to train the users to cope with the new environment or new structure.

I would rate this solution a nine out of 10.

The challenges we were looking to deal with by using Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops were: How do we protect our data and how do we make sure that our data is not leaked out? We have deployed Citrix for most of our critical applications so that our users are using the Citrix VDI.

We have deployed it for a small number of users, between 1,500 and 2,000. To deploy it, we are using some Cisco hardware that we had available and some of the existing hardware within our data center. We have it on the web right now, but going forward, we are also moving some of their solution to the cloud.

We are using the application virtualization capabilities, on-premise desktop virtualization, cloud-hosted desktop virtualization, remote PC and physical desktop access.

The solution simplifies adherence to industry regulations for data protection and for compliance. Overall, from a cyber security point of view, in terms of data leakage as well as patches and upgrades that are required to be deployed to multiple endpoints, Citrix makes it very simple. That clearly helps in terms of mitigating risks at a very early stage.

The security of our intellectual property and data is enhanced because of the roles we have defined very precisely. People only have access to the data they are supposed to have access to.

The most valuable features of Citrix are the remote desktop advantages and the remote desktop environment for our remote users.

When it comes to the security and protection of critical business applications and desktops, it works very well. We were able to achieve what we were looking to do using the Citrix solution. It provides all of the features required for the protection of data. For example, we don't want to allow any copy/paste of data to an outside environment, and we are able to restrict the VDI to not allow any data transfer from the VDI to the local laptop's hard drives. That is one of the greatest advantages the solution provides. We also lock the USB.

We get complete control using the single, cloud control pane of Citrix. Using it, we can control the deployment of VDIs, which helps.

There is room for improvement because it has a lot of dependency on Active Directory and other things. If they could come up with something similar and native, a complete solution portfolio would help.

We have been using Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops for about one year.

As of now, we don't have any plans to increase our usage. Our consumption has been good during COVID, but we have been able to achieve what was required from our existing licenses.

There were some issues initially, in terms of the requirements, and there were some delays.

We did not have a previous solution.

Once we entered into an agreement to use the service, it took three to four months before we could start using it. The initial setup at our end to use the service took about a month to a month and a half. It was complex to some extent in our scenario, but as we worked on it and did a deep dive, we were able to do what was required for the deployment.

In general, they met our expectations for services delivered on time, on budget, and on spec.

We had our enterprise architect team and the project teams deploying the solution, as well as the respective business people who would be working very closely with their end-users. It was a team of 45 to 50 people. For maintenance, we have administrators as well as people who handle the required setup for the environment and who do troubleshooting.

We had help from a Citrix partner. From a project management standpoint, I would rate them at eight out of 10. The project management resources are not available from Citrix itself. They have to rely on partners and, sometimes, the partners also have to rely on the OEM.

The prices quoted initially were on the very high side, and there was room for negotiations, considering the competition and the options that are available directly from Microsoft now. The Microsoft options were not that mature at the time we were looking for a solution.

We looked at other solutions to some extent, but Citrix had already been in the market for a long time, so we started using Citrix. 

Citrix does not have its own hypervisor and VMware was very close competition. It would have also been a good, equivalent choice and there would not have been a problem using it. Then we looked at the financials and that aspect was left to the procurement department for negotiations. Overall, we gave a slightly higher rating to the VMware product, but senior management said that they would like to go with Citrix.

My advice would be to look at the options available and at your specific requirements. You need to find the best match for the overall integration of your ecosystem in terms of how it is with Office 365. And you may be using multiple SaaS solutions. The product you choose should be able to match all of those requirements.

The biggest lesson is that, during COVID, Citrix has come in handy for us for working remotely. It's a good solution.

The solution provides the flexibility of being used on most devices, but not on every device. It covers 80 to 85 percent of devices. In terms of the user experience, when we asked employees to work on the VDI, they were not entirely happy, considering the performance compared with a normal laptop or a desktop. But overall, the user experience is good, an eight or 8.5 out of 10.

The solution has enabled us, as an organization, to embrace thin-client computing, but I wouldn't say we have seen savings as a result. Citrix cannot function alone for organizations that have Office 365 deployed. Office 365 forces you to pay for a lot of other solutions and services that Citrix also has to rely on.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's been around 10 years or so.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I would rate Citrix seven out of 10.

As a care provider we provide hospital and community health services with around 3,200 staff at the hospital and a further 650 community staff who work in local clinics and in patients' homes. On 1^st April 2020, we acquired our first primary care practice as part of our move towards being an integrated care system.

In terms of Citrix our biggest use case is for remote access and remote control. The former provides a VPN connection and the latter a published desktop. Prior to the onset of the COVID virus we had a 200 concurrent connection license covering both types of connection but today, following an NetScaler upgrade we now have a license for 1,000 concurrent users. Typically we're running 500 to 600 connections out to those locations every day.

Our hospital systems are a mix of SaaS and on-premises solutions. Our primary clinical platform is the Cerner Millennium electronic patient record (EPR) system, and that is delivered entirely over Citrix. However, we also use Citrix on-premises to deliver a range of services, including modern workspace, sharefile, load balancing (over 4 NetScaler’s) and of course remote control and remote access. Recently we have been working with Citrix to develop a thin-client workstation-on-wheels, for use on our hospital wards and believe this to be the first of its type. That's really where the relationship with Citrix has stepped up, because we're doing some new, innovative work.

We've consolidated all of our previous licenses into the latest version of the Citrix Workspace Premium Plus package to optimise the value received from the investment and are shortly to tender for a new support package that we expect will see us engage directly with Citrix.

The Citrix technologies allows us to do some clever things. For example, it has enabled our Radiologists review images that are quite large at home. Imagine trying to squeeze a 20Gb mammogram down a broadband connection, it is simply not practical. Yet by combining the Citrix technology with a specialist workstation from our Imaging partner, we're now able to have radiologists working successfully from home, reviewing MRIs, CTs, plain films, etc., because all we're sending are keystrokes and screen updates.

In terms of Security. Our organization has achieved the Cyber Essentials Plus security accreditation. My organization takes security very seriously. In fact, as far as I know, we're the only hospital in our region that has three full-time staff who work on security within the IT department. We very much take that Zero Trust position and ensure that we provide the necessary policies and controls to protect our organization, but not to the point where we impact our agility or flexibility in terms of supporting people who genuinely have a need.

We've built a strategic relationship with Citrix and we use a lot of their products for everything that we do. I would rate the Citrix stack highly as an end-to-end solution for implementing Zero Trust principles. It's allowed us to do a lot of things quickly and flexibly, and some of the functionality that has become available as we've moved into the newer, more advanced versions of the Citrix software, have proved very beneficial.

Among the most valuable features is the Citrix Workspace, which allows us to drive that thin-client connection and the remote control/remote access capabilities. Those things have allowed us to connect an awful lot of people quickly from home and that's obviously helped during the pandemic. There's a concern right now that a second wave of the Corona pandemic is on its way so we're gearing up now to enable a second wave of staff work either from home or from an alternate location. This way we can reduce the number of non-clinical staff in the hospital whilst not degrading the services we provide in any way. Fundamentally we are seeking to keep the number of staff working at the hospital down to only those who actually need to be there.

The user experience, when using Citrix technology remotely, is very good. It's easy to use and I say that with some authority because I've been working from home now for about six months. I've been able to do my role as the CIO entirely from home. I log on through the Citrix gateway first thing in the morning when I start the day and I stay logged in until 5:30 or 6:00 o'clock at night. I've been able to gain access pretty much whenever I want and it's just two clicks to get me there.

I've got friends who work on the wards who use the Citrix client on our workstations-on-wheels and they find it relatively easy. They load the Citrix client, they click on the link to the EPR, and that's it, off they go. Because it's a thin client, because we're not dragging huge amounts of stuff over the network, they get very good performance out of their equipment. And that's allowed us to extend the life of some of our very early workstations-on-wheels. Some of them are now four years old and are coming up for replacement. Indeed that's what we've been doing with Citrix, building the next generation of workstations-on-wheels, to benefit from what we've learned by working with Citrix and partners to deploy this new technology.

The prototype is built and is currently being tested. When we go live we'll see a big step forward in terms of the performance, a notable increase in battery life and the corresponding reduction in the number of times the unit has to be recharged.Those are things that our nurses have told us will be of benefit to them.

The solution also provides the flexibility of being used on any device. We have a mixture of Windows PCs, Android mobile devices, Apple tablets and other Apple devices. We have Citrix installed on all of those and it allows our users to use these devices for any number of things. They can use it for clinical access, bringing patient data quickly to the clinician. For example one such system is the EDM (electronic document management) system that holds the scans of all of our paper documents and using Citrix staff can switch between the EPR and EDM and so get a complete picture of the patient's health. On a more basic note it can also be used to access tasks lists, calendars and email – helping to manage busy lives at a time when hospital staff are working under extreme pressure.

It affects the employee experience in a very positive way because of the way in which we have combined the remote connectivity with the Citrix tools. That means that as long as you have the right level of authorization, you can access a great deal of information from anywhere, and you can do it in one of two ways. If you have a hospital device that belongs to the Trust, then you've got a very high level of access to a lot of information because we can then employ end-to-end security. But if you're at home and you're using your home computer, you can still connect. It's just that there is no data transfer and the performance is less through the published desktop than it would be through the remote connection. But both situations work really well and, obviously, have been tested very severely with the Coronavirus where, very quickly, we had to give a lot of people the ability to work from home. One of the ways we did that was to allow them to use their own computers and come in through the Citrix desktop connection.

It takes a little bit of work upfront to get it configured and operable, but given the length of time we've been working with Citrix and the strength of our relationship, we're normally able to get any glitches ironed out and resolved quickly. That allows us to provide both a strong suite of applications to our users and a good user experience.

In terms of automated analytics to detect serious performance issues, what happens is that Citrix work with us and provide a monthly health check. This service monthly provides a series of analytics reports and tell us that it's all working, or if there is any issue they work with us to get it resolved.

Where improvement could be driven is in terms of clarity as to the functionality of some of the solutions. If you go back to the older Citrix Xen products that we had, we understood those really well. As we've come into the new workstation premium suite, there is a lot of additional functionality that we perhaps have not yet fully exploited. It is not because we can't, but simply because we don't yet understand the depth of functionality that's offered.

We made the upgrade to the Workspace suite last year we had planned to train this year but then the pandemic struck. We've only had one thing on our minds since March and that's how do we keep the hospital running? How do we make sure we keep people safe? And how do we treat patients in the face of a once-in-a-century experience?

Citrix have offered to help with demos or presentations of these new features, but we also simply haven't had time to dive in.

I joined the Trust on the third of January, 2017. At that point the Trust was already engaged with Citrix, so it's at least five years or more.

The solution is absolutely rock-solid. I'm almost scared to say this, but throughout the whole stress of what we've been through over the last six or seven months due to COVID, Citrix hasn't missed a beat. It's been solid and reliable. We've had no downtime. It's been absolutely on the money, and given how critical it has been to get people connected and working, the 100 percent reliability has made me very happy.

We're happy with the scalability. We were able to increase a 200-user solution to a 1,000-user solution simply by buying an upgrade to the license. We chose to buy two additional NetScalers, bringing our total to four, but that was largely because we bought the initial upgrade from 200 to 1,000 to allow us to connect the 640 staff who work in the community. But then, the hospital's need for remote access and remote control overtook that. That's what drove us then to buy a second set of NetScalers because we didn't really want to put some 4,000 users through just one gateway (pair). We felt having two gateways would be safer from a resilience point of view. And having two NetScalers per gateways means that we can take one down to do maintenance updates without disrupting the service.

In the next couple of months, we'll start to plan what next year's digital program looks like. The way in which we operate is that through November, December and January we engage with operational and clinical colleagues to determine how we are going to exploit IT to enable transformation going forward. We then build a digital program for our Digital Board to sign off on. As we go through that exercise, looking at how we can deliver better healthcare for our patients and improve the clinical experience, we will be looking to Citrix to help us understand how we can better exploit the new software that we've invested in. Normally by now, having bought it last year, we would have been well into it, but the pandemic has somewhat focused our minds elsewhere.

Given that we are building these new, next-generation workstations for use in the clinical areas, it's been great to see just how much support and help we've had from our partners including Citrix. They've recognized that it is something new, that it is something that will help hospitals (not just ours) to deliver services that are more reliable and quicker in busy clinic areas and on wards. It's been a huge pleasure to work with some of their very senior people on a project of this scale.

You often find when you're working with tech organizations, and you step it up to do something that's not straight out of the sales catalog, that some step up well and some don't. Citrix have really stepped up well. They've kept in close contact with us, they've supported the design and they've helped us to consider options at the build level. We're delighted with that. We've built a prototype that's being tested at the moment and we look forward to that going into production. We'll probably hold some sort of press event to talk about what we've done. It's the strength of the partnership that we enjoy with Citrix has allowed us to do that.

The very initial setup was done before I arrived at the Trust, but I have been involved in all the major iterations that we've gone through since. Some of them were relatively easy to do, others were more complex. Getting the license upgrade to increase the number of remote access sessions and upping the size and capability of the gateway was relatively easy. It took a few phone calls, purchasing of the license, and off you go. But configuring the VPN and the Citrix published desktop so that they work within the security model that we have did take more work than we had originally expected.

In some aspects, when you bring software products together from three different vendors, there is always a little work to do to get APIs aligned and to get the solutions talking to each other so that the user then gets a very slick experience. We do such things all the time with our IT department usually spending the most time on testing, especially when the solution is for use with patients. We seek to ensure that when we hand something to a busy doctor, a senior nurse or a therapist that they don't need to have an enormous amount of tech knowledge to be able to use it. They just click on the buttons, enter the information and press go, and it does what it needs to do.

In terms of how long these updates take, the remote access and remote control was a solution that was built for 200 concurrent users. Today, it's built for 1,000 concurrent users. It probably took about two weeks to agree on exactly what software license we needed to buy, about a week to procure it, and about three hours to embed it. That was quick and easy to do. 

In terms of the Citrix desktop, we couple that with a second form of authentication that comes from a third-party, and that took six to seven weeks. It didn't take that long to get it to work—we got it to work quite quickly—but it took that long to get it to work smoothly. It took time to work with the three different application vendors that were involved and iron out the bugs and make it work as we wanted. But most of it, particularly where it's just us dealing directly with Citrix, happens quickly and easily.

If you think about our ability to continue to operate as a healthcare organization during the pandemic, without Citrix we would have struggled. We would have found it very difficult to have so many people able to continue doing their day jobs from locations other than their normal bases. It is therefore fair to say that the ROI on our connectivity investment was excellent. Yet this does not stand in isolation as the delivery of our electronic patient record system using clinical workstations-on-wheels is all built over Citrix technology. Absolutely, for every pound we've spent, we've seen a good ROI.

I'm happy with the pricing. The cost of the Citrix software reflects what I would expect a product of that nature, in that market, to be.

Understanding the licensing is quite a bit more complicated, because one of the things about Citrix is that you can buy licensing at different levels. You can buy a basic license, which will give you the core functionality. You can buy an advanced license that will give you the core plus another layer, or you can buy a premium license, which provides a much wider set of functionalities. In truth I still struggle with some of the variations but with the aid of our reseller we usually find what we are looking for. Yet I still like the idea because it means that if all you need is a basic load balancing solution, then you don't need to buy an advanced or premium license. On the other hand, if you want to use the extra features that come with those higher-grade licenses, you can choose to do so, but you only pay for what you need.

The only comparable I can think of is that we use software from a different party for virtualizing servers. But we were aware that in terms of the ICA-type protocol, Citrix was the product that everyone was saying was the best. Indeed, I've worked with Citrix for a very long time - I guess a little over 20 years, so I never had really had any intentions of looking anywhere else because I believe that it's the right tool, to do what we need. In truth I have not seen any compelling evidence to make me think otherwise.

My advice is to spend more time planning than you do implementing. Get what you need—the components that make up the solution—all agreed and lined up before you then commence the build work. I know that's really easy for someone like me to say, when you're under pressure and your organization needs something built very quickly. Therefore, to make sure that you generate the most benefit from your investment and you drive the features that really help, spending a little more time in the planning phase and making sure that you've got the right type of license, the right application or appliance required to do the job as this will save a lot of rebuild work or remodelling work down the line. It will also mean that if you want to grow it for scaling purposes, it will be far easier to do if you've thought about that before you implement the solution.

One of the lessons I have learned from using this solution is the fact that we have been able to be agile and respond to the needs of the organization through the use of the product. That has been a very good side of things. Another side of the lessons learned is that when we paid for the upgrade to move to the premium suite, we could have engaged earlier with Citrix to understand the additional functionality. We knew ahead of time that there was additional functionality, but in terms of the detail, we didn't get into that and then we got overtaken by the pandemic. In a normal year that wouldn't have mattered, but the lesson I've learned is that if we take an upgrade in the future, if we take the next step forward to a next generation of that software, I want to try to ensure that the purchase and the training of my engineers are closely coupled.

As for protecting our environment, we use Citrix Gateway, but the single sign-on is provided by another partner of ours. We have Tap and Go, Remote PC Access, Web App Gateway. We do have Web/URL filtering, but not from Citrix.

In terms of maintaining the solution, I have resources at both 2^nd and 3^rd line engineering that have Citrix skills and who look after the day-to-day stuff. In addition we have a contract through a Citrix partner and so can escalate calls that we can't handle. We spent time and effort putting our engineers through Citrix training. But occasionally, something comes up and we're not able to resolve it. At that point, we log a call via the partner and the partner's engineers, and Citrix's own engineers, get involved. Normally that results in a relatively quick resolution. The Citrix engineers clearly know the product really well. They'll quite often say, "Oh, we've seen this before. You need to do this or that or the other." As I said, we've had very few issues with reliability on the Citrix platform so those calls are actually quite rare.

Overall, I love it. It's been a really good product. It's helped my organization and helped me to deliver what the organization wants. For me, Citrix takes 10 out of 10.

For example, right now I'm at home, and my connection to the hospital runs over the Citrix VPN that we've created. We also have Citrix Remote PC Access, so if you are home and you're on your own computer, rather than one that belongs to the hospital, you can access the published desktop rather than having full VPN access.

We're a fairly big Citrix customer. We're doing some quite ground breaking stuff with them. We're beyond just being a customer. Traditionally, Citrix is positioned in the marketplace as a manufacturer. They sell through channels and the customer deals primarily with the partner. Because of the amount of work we've done, we primarily deal directly with Citrix themselves. There is a partner involved because that's the only way of doing the sales component of it, so if we want to buy something that has to be through the channel. But the work that we're doing is being done alongside engineers who are employed by Citrix rather than by the partner.