We performed a comparison between Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) and Parallels Remote Application Server (RAS) based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Application Virtualization solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
"Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops is a stable solution."
"The most valuable feature of Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops is the security and it is easy to work with."
"We've been able to scale the environment quite nicely by using the Citrix Remote PC. I can't say enough about that. And because that relies on utilizing your existing hardware resources, and making those available as a part of your Citrix farm — with a second level of authentication and security pieces around it — we added some 4,000 workstations without an additional overhead or cost."
"Citrix offers a range of products that can be used straight out of the box."
"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."
"The Provisioning Services are the most valuable feature. We have Premium licensing, so Provisioning Services is huge for us, along with the Virtual Apps and Desktops part. It allows us to have a vDisk for every region, one that can easily be copied between them if we need to, to limit the amount of updates we have to do."
"The shadow feature is extraordinary and helps a lot when supporting remote users."
"The product is simple to set up, and its deep integration with Microsoft is also a valuable feature."
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"It permits us to control the applications that our users are able to get to, in a seamless manner. We're able to distribute applications to users' desktops, just like those applications are on each user's computer, but they're not."
"Its price and ease of use are the most valuable. It is simple and has good performance."
"Allows us to publish applications accessible by current-generation HTML5 browser or OS-specific client (Windows, Android, iOS), and it supports popular single sign-on and multi-factor authentication protocols."
"It is a stable solution."
"The connection is compressed so we don't need a lot of resources to run it."
"It is robust. We have some 75 users using it and it doesn't lag. It's very speedy."
"Setup was straightforward. Our particular use case involved an Active Directory forest involving two data centers and three domains. User authentication against Active Directory was the easiest to set up and validate of any application installed in the last three years."
"You have the opportunity to virtualize applications in different locations. Everything is in one pane or one window, which is quite good."
"Licensing service installation and configuration was the biggest challenge for all Citrix solutions, but now they have fixed a lot of issues."
"Citrix has to support all of the hypervisors including KVM and OpenStack KVM."
"The sales team does not focus on client needs but instead focuses on selling higher-priced items."
"We encounter compatibility issues related to hardware, scanners, and other devices."
"The product should expand its capabilities for integrating with other environments."
"I think improvement around the Analytics piece is super important. There has been a lot of maturity over the last year in that area, though a lot more needs to be done. Also, a lot more of the value of those Analytics needs to be sold to end users. Citrix is working on a lot of things that are ahead of the curve and a lot of organizations aren't quite there yet with implementing those technologies and capabilities."
"Tech support can be slow if you do not receive help from the US representatives."
"It would help if it were a little simpler. It's a bit complicated and we have hired Citrix administrators. But it's a good solution."
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"We use several gateways because access to our secret zone requires two-factor user authentication. It is a lot of hassle differentiating among users with or without two-factor. Of course, we could use two farms, but that would mean more management too."
"Opening a ticket should be available from the actual RAS console. It is cumbersome to go to a portal, hunt around for five minutes for a link to open a ticket, answer questions meant to direct you towards FAQs instead of live support, then fill out information (license #, version #, etc.) which could more easily be supplied by sending a ticket straight from the console with all of that information automatically specified."
"It would be great if there were more sophisticated GPO templates/options."
"We would like to be able to re-label the OTP (One Time Password) popup so our users can easily recognize that they are to put in their DUO code on that line. Most users see OTP and ask what that is."
"HALB is not stable in our environment. When running two HALBs we have stability problems, so we use an active one and a passive for backup. Also, it would be nice to implement an upgrade of the environment without having to stop the servers. As it is, this must be done during off-hours."
"We would like the ability to provide a popup message, such as a maintenance notification. That same notification on the Parallels client would be awesome."
"A web-based management interface for administration and reporting would be nice, instead of needing to log into a remote server."
"The customization of the web interface could possibly use some improvement. Little things, like being able to place a background image instead of just choosing from a palette of colors, would be nice."
More Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) Pricing and Cost Advice →
More Parallels Remote Application Server (RAS) Pricing and Cost Advice →
Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) is ranked 1st in Application Virtualization with 90 reviews while Parallels Remote Application Server (RAS) is ranked 5th in Application Virtualization with 24 reviews. Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) is rated 8.4, while Parallels Remote Application Server (RAS) is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) writes "Flexible Deployment, reliable performance, and fast transmission speeds". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Parallels Remote Application Server (RAS) writes "Provides good scalability and a secure environment". Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) is most compared with Amazon Appstream, VMware Horizon View, Citrix Workspace, Amazon WorkSpaces and Microsoft App-V, whereas Parallels Remote Application Server (RAS) is most compared with Microsoft Remote Desktop Services, Citrix Workspace, Parallels Desktop, NVIDIA GRID and VMware Workstation. See our Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) vs. Parallels Remote Application Server (RAS) report.
See our list of best Application Virtualization vendors and best Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) vendors.
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