Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) Valuable Features

DavidWood1 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

Citrix offers a range of products that can be used straight out of the box.

When it comes to Citrix, the main advantage is its protocol, which has gone through several name changes including ICA and HDX. It originally started out as Thinwire in 1988, and now they are back to using that name again. 

This protocol allows for faster transmission and beats competitors such as RDP. Citrix has tried various approaches with VMware, but nothing can beat the speed of their protocol, which works very effectively. 

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MB
CIO at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

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.

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JV
CEO at Lucid Tech Services

We leverage the following technologies: 

  • Application virtualization capabilities
  • On-premises, desktop virtualization
  • Cloud-hosted desktop virtualization
  • Citrix managed cloud-hosted desktops

The fact that we can work from any device from any location is the most valuable aspect of the solution for us. In the last year, people have been restricted in their movements and we haven't been allowed to just show up to work. The fact that my clients can leverage a remote-first workplace that allows them a greater ability to recruit from a larger geographic area is valuable for us. 

You don't have to be able to commute to a major Metro in order to work there, you can work from any location. If you want to take a few days with your family but you have some projects that you're working on, it's going to take some of your time, but not all of it. You can just go to your Airbnb or wherever your family is staying and work remotely, do your job, and spend the rest of the time with your family.

Team members are relieved that they can continue to work and put bread on the table. They are relieved in the dichotomy that says they can put their family's needs ahead of their workplace's needs or vice versa. Maybe a child has a medical appointment or a social engagement that they would like to be at. You can fit those around your work schedule, work it out with your children and with wherever it is that they're going. In that way, both the employer and the employee realize a lower cost of operations. They realize increased flexibility and agility in their life. That dichotomy is either minimized or removed entirely. That's been very, very groundbreaking for them.

The deployment and management of hybrid Cloud Apps and Desktops is not 100% seamless, although it is very good. When you start mixing a third-party or a cloud-hosted app, it is generally pretty seamless. You don't notice a difference between a web-based app that you run on a physical machine, on a virtual machine, or through a Workspace. I have not seen any problems with that. A legacy application or a computer-aided design program has very specific requirements that can be a challenge. But with a little bit of research, once you settle on the solution, it's pretty good.

Security is a shining point of the Citrix Workspace. Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops is a very robust solution when security is a concern. Furthermore, the content collaboration data-hosting that Citrix integrates with Virtual Apps and Desktops is among the best there is.

It is the same for the security of clients' intellectual property and data when remote employees use the solution. Content collaboration allows you to share data securely and is supported with two-factor authentication. You can have a consolidated data set with a widely distributed workforce and they can all be on the same sheet of music, all accessing the same data. Version control, access control lists, anything you could wish for, is available in their solution stack.

Citrix simplifies the adherence to industry regulations for data protection and for compliance. HIPAA, for example, if you share that data over two or three different clinics or facilities, you have to create and maintain some sort of SD-WAN or VPN in order to make sure that those applications and those datasets are shared only between those locations. With Virtual Apps and Desktops, that either reduces or removes the need for either the VPN or an SD-WAN, because they aren't actually sharing between various locations. You are accessing that data set through various locations. The benefit to that is that you have reduced complexity at the infrastructure level so there's less to troubleshoot. There's less to go wrong.

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Buyer's Guide
Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service)
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
AP
Director System Integration at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

Citrix tends to have the most capabilities surrounding desktops.

The application virtualization is very, very good.

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DK
Sr. Architect at Philips

The remote desktop connectivity is where we have our focus. That's the main use case. 

The product is stable.

We've never had scalability issues.

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IA
Group IT Manager at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

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.

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SC
Manager of Virtualization Services at a university with 10,001+ employees

We certainly get more bang for the buck with the XenApp environment because we can really stretch that platform to many. It's a low cost when you look at the number of users that we get to access our Citrix XenApp-published desktop and individual applications. Citrix doesn't really even talk about XenApp anymore. They are marketing everything under the XenDesktop piece of the product line. Traditionally, XenApp was just anything that was a server-based OS, and Desktop was anything that was a desktop-based OS. We do both here at the University. We just have more workload on a server-based OS environment than we do on desktop OS. There are ebbs and flows. We used to not have very many virtualized desktop OS deployments, before COVID. We've had to do a whole lot more of that in the last few months. So for us, XenApp is number one, and Desktop is number two. 

The other product that has really helped us quite a bit is that we have a Citrix NetScaler. They now call that ADC. That is our hardware appliance, the physical appliance that sits on the perimeter of our network. It acts as a firewall, router, and load balancer. That's where we can add the extra pieces of security. That's how we're able to use the same physical infrastructure to deliver virtual apps and desktops to everyone at the university and, at the same time, do more specialty, secure network offerings for our School of Medicine and researchers.

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FC
Virtual Desktop and Applications Offerings Global Offering Manager at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees

The solution effectively brokers a virtual desktop connection. 

Because of the solution's ubiquity, it is easier to find answers to problems than with competitive products. If we have a problem, somebody has blogged it or answered it in a forum. Frequently asked questions and white papers are readily available. 

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YM
Multi-Cloud Operations Engineer at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

The PVS technology itself, the provisioning, is great. It's very easy. It's very simple to alter the main image or the golden image. 

It's also very secure. 

I find Citrix is a stronger option in many other aspects since it's one of the most mature in the market. It's ancient and it's always developing itself to add new things. 

The initial setup is easy.

Scaling is straightforward. 

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RV
Vice President (Technology) at Shaligram Infotech LLP

The most valuable feature of the solution is that it supports team clients. That is the major advantage where a user can at one point in time work in a secure environment, where they don't have access to the internet, but just by switching the window, they can go to an environment from the same device and can start using the internet, the two are mutually exclusive. You can't share data unless there is authorization given.

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AH
Solution Architect at Kimberly-Clark

I have found the NetScaler or ADC devices by Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops valuable. The product is simple to set up, and its deep integration with Microsoft is also a valuable feature.

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Grant Waddell - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of IT Architecture & Operations Support at Lyntia

Citrix DaaS’s most valuable feature is the virtualization of applications and desktops.

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JF
Technical Manager at a computer software company with 11-50 employees

Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops is capable of deploying and managing all servers or virtual desktop infrastructures.

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Erez Baruch - PeerSpot reviewer
CTO at Integrity software

Remote access is useful.  

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RV
Delivery Head - Major Incident at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

There are many features that I like, but the stability over the Internet is exceptional. Even if there's bandwidth fluctuation or network jitter, it performs well, offering a seamless experience to end-users without noticeable disruptions.

From the productivity perspective, the seamless end-user experience is key for productivity and user experience. This is managed through the HDX technology, which ensures a smooth and efficient workflow.

The experience with HDX technology has been amazing, especially for organizations dealing with videos, AutoCAD, and 3D image rendering. 

Unlike competitors like VMware or AVD, Citrix DaaS handles these tasks smoothly without the choppiness, providing excellent video playback and stable collaboration tool calls, like Teams, Zoom, or Webex, by efficiently compressing voice data to utilize minimum bandwidth without distorting the original quality.

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Giovanni Golinelli. - PeerSpot reviewer
Hybrid IT Architect at Quanture Spa

In general, Citrix DaaS has the ability to be very granular in the policies part to achieve the best user experience possible, even in cases where the bandwidth is very poor.

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Vishakha Rathod - PeerSpot reviewer
Graduate Apprentice Trainee at Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt

I use Citrix DaaS to connect to devices.

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PB
Consultant at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

The architecture I built had a robust failover mechanism for the endpoints, and the interface was user-friendly. 

We were able to successfully publish the applications we needed without much difficulty. While understanding the background processes required some reading, I was able to deploy the system without any outside assistance or consulting.

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Onurcan Yahyaoglu - PeerSpot reviewer
Virtualization Solution Expert at Migros Ticaret A.Ş.

The product has reasonable licensing costs for hardware. It has the best remote working features. It helps us easily use and manage machines with system policies and other aspects.

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MA
Senior Manager, Corporate IT at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

The only thing that is really important for me is being able to connect from wherever I am. It is important for me because sometimes I am in places where there are not enough safe conditions to be able to work safely, in terms of security and confidentiality of my data. Being able to access internal resources from a secure platform allows me to work without fearing that my data has been stolen.

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RM
Technical Team Lead at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Overall, Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops are highly agile and supported on pretty much whichever platform that you're on. So, the features of Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops that we find most valuable in my organization overall are the agility, where we can deploy Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops at my organization. We have resources in Azure, primarily, but we also have resources in AWS and on-prem. We have all kinds of different operating systems as well. We have users who need to access applications on sort of a one-off basis. We also have users who need to access full-blown desktops that live within our data center, either in Azure or on-prem. Just having the ability to serve all those use cases and needs by using Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops is absolutely critical. 

Another thing that we really enjoy about it is the fact that we're in Citrix Cloud. Using the service within Citrix Cloud really gives us the ability to not worry about the infrastructure components, because it is a software as a service methodology. Citrix really worries about what those updates look like and ensures that the uptime is as high as possible. This allows my team to focus on the high value items, which is the end user, end user security, and user experience. I think having Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops as a service is really critical for us to do what we need to do and really focus on the things that are important to us as an organization, and we were able to do that quickly, rapidly, seamlessly, and without any user disruption.

When COVID-19 happened and other companies were faced with sending their workforces home, it was very quickly recognized that organizations, certainly in the city where I live, who weren't using Citrix technologies were really struggling with having their folks work from home. However, it has been widely touted within my organization, when we sent everyone home, there were no disruptions whatsoever. We were able to quickly and seamlessly build out and up our environment to suit the company's needs. All of those things have been of super high value, allowing our company to operate.

The third thing that we find absolutely valuable and critical are the Analytics. Citrix has been maturing their Analytics platform over time. It is in a mature state now where we are able to highlight any user's pain points around user experience, security issues/vulnerabilities or bad actors, and security scenario concerns that might be out there. This has been very important for us, as it allows us to get that data into the hands of the right teams so they can action it as quickly as possible. This way, we can offer a safe, secure, highly capable user experience.

We use Citrix ADC. Currently, that is where all of the traffic flows in for us. Anybody connecting to Citrix today flows in through a Citrix ADC environment. Through that, we are able to monitor all the traffic, where they are coming from, and how often they come through. So, we have our security analytics tools that tie into that information quite tightly. Therefore, any bad actors or anomalies get quickly identified, then they get quickly actioned by our operational team as soon as IT security makes us aware of them.

We also use Remote PC Access, which has been a huge bonus for us. It is number one from a security perspective. Our employees can sort of connect through to our Citrix portal and access desktops sitting in the office in a safe and secure manner. We have segregation and data leakage policies in place, which prevent any data from flowing outside of our organization. So, it is quite secure. If you think of it from a full-on perspective, we have Citrix Cloud users connect into our Citrix portal, then we have Analytics there monitoring for traffic and any anomalies or bad actors flowing through our Citrix Cloud implementation, where we have more analytics baked in where we can identify any sort of scenarios that might pose a danger to my organization. To the actual endpoint itself within our building, there are rich analytics, which are being drawn, and can help inform us around any sort of security concerns that might be going on.

Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops provide everything for us within one integrated platform. With COVID-19 and working from home, it has become clearly apparent that all the use cases currently in my organization have been absolutely met with the services and capabilities that Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops provide. This comes down to our users having a better end user experience and us having the capability of having analytics around that we can tweak and optimize as we go. The ease of manageability for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops is huge. We are able to get away with doing a much better job at managing that environment now with less people than we did before.

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GD
Manager - IT/Telecommunications at Banco Galicia

XenApp is a really good product. The user experience is awesome. The security features that it has are invaluable for a customer like us. Because we are highly regulated, we need to operate in a highly secure environment. 

We love Citrix SD-WAN and have it fully deployed on all of our network and branches.

We saw a huge improvement when we implemented Citrix Director. We have full visibility of our users' traffic, from their houses to our data center. This solution has provided a huge advantage with visibility.

The solution provides everything in one integrated platform. When it comes to monitoring their solution, it is really easy. We have all the information in one place so we can have the right information at the right moment. We can be proactive when it comes to dealing with performance, maintenance, and security issues. 

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HL
Head of Corporate Strategic Alliance and Partnership at LG Uplus

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.

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JB
Senior Engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

The most valuable feature is the ability to connect to our on-premise applications, through the Workspace app and the Workspace experience.

The user experience when using the solution's technology remotely is outstanding. Our users are able to work and it's seamless with fantastic performance.

The solution provides the flexibility of being used on any device. It improves the user experience because users are able to use whichever device they prefer.

The solution’s centralized policy control and distributed enforcement is a major benefit because it allows us to manage everything in one place. We can enable users to remotely connect and access local devices, and we can change that in one place. It will then either lock it down or give the user the abilities granted. It's all done in one place.

In addition, the solution's user behavior analytics for detecting anomalies and enforcing security policies works. When you put rules in place, they are enforced and the solution will immediately prevent unwanted activity from happening. Our security is improved as a result because our staff who manage security don't have to worry. Citrix is doing the work for them.

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GT
Solutions Architect at GE

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.

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ED
Works at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

We can provide tons of applications with different settings, behaviors, and operating systems. It is the same way for the user. Then, we are totally transparent for the user to use a lot of totally different applications, which is the most important part of Citrix today.

Remotely, the user can use his personal computer with a VPN to the bank, as there is not always WiFi. We have seen very low boundaries in some cases. With the Citrix application, we provide very beautiful applications. We are running without a lot of resources in the data center and the user doesn't see it. It's totally transparent for them.

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MS
Systems Architect at Conviso Inc.

The ability to allow users to have remote access is the product's most valuable aspect.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. 

The solution scales well.

For the most part, overall stability is what you would expect.

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Daniel Vásquez - PeerSpot reviewer
Bachelor at Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas

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

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Rey Mendoza - PeerSpot reviewer
Desktop Support Supervisor at Emirates Steel.

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

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Juan Pablo Fernandez Sabate - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Architect at Kyndryl

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.

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DK
Technical Architect at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

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.

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HS
Deputy General Manager at a construction company with 501-1,000 employees

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.

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JG
Citrix Engineer at a legal firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

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 ability to deploy shared, hosted desktops and published applications, is also important.

And I would rate the user experience, when using the solution’s technology remotely, as high as it can be. We have offices all over the world, and some of them are in areas that have absolutely terrible internet service. For users in those areas, while we do get complaints that the experience is bad, on most days it's tolerable, and that's even on the bad days when there is extremely high latency. Especially not knowing where people are going to be working from, I would say the user experience is very good.

When it comes to the solution’s centralized policy control, as in the policies you apply to ICA sessions and session hosts or virtual desktop agents, you can control those through group policy, in addition to group policy, or put them in from the console. But either way, as a central management point for the Citrix sessions, in general, it's very good. It gives us flexibility. For example, with the users who are in the bad internet service areas, those policies give us the flexibility to lower their user experience, to dim down the graphics and sound quality. We can do that on-the-fly when they report problems. That generally helps their experience a little bit. So the policy control is good.

And if you have the full line of Citrix products deployed—NetScaler, MAS, all of those items tied together—the visibility is second to none from a monitoring perspective. We use the NetScaler and the MAS and the data that comes through there is almost invaluable, if you have the licensing to use it.

In addition, the security of your intellectual property and data when remote employees are using Citrix, is very high because, with Citrix you can limit access to the local device and access to the network, so you can't copy files if you have certain policies set between the Citrix session and the endpoint. You can prevent printing. You can prevent any data from ever leaving that desktop. And if you're licensed for it, which we are not, they've recently added the ability to watermark screenshots and to have keylog protection in Citrix sessions. If you're licensed for it, that's just an added bonus to the security features that are built-in by default.

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it_user271662 - PeerSpot reviewer
Team Lead Global Engineering at Interpublic Group (IPG)
  • ICA protocol: Beats latency and improves performance for slow connections
  • Provisioning service (PVS): Makes deployment of VDI machines a simple breeze
  • Profile manager: Profile manager makes it very easy to retain user settings. The whole suite of Citrix XenDesktop provides a complete set for managing the environment.
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RohitSaluja - PeerSpot reviewer
Founder and Director at Decoding IT Solutions LLC

Instead of pointing to any single feature, I would say the most valuable aspect of Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops is the overall product itself. Virtualized apps and desktops, in theory and in practice, are very helpful to users.

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PH
IT Director at a legal firm with 51-200 employees

The most valuable feature has to be the non-persistent desktop. If one of my users messes something up and blows away their desktop, it goes back to what it was originally, before they had an issue.

Our employees also absolutely love the flexibility of using it on any device. We have quite a few people who use iPads and they really like the experience on that, regardless of where they are. The only difference is that the speed of the connection changes, but nothing else does. The consistency is huge.

The solution's centralized policy control and distributed enforcement work well. We have the desktops locked down so users can not add their own software. That's centrally controlled and it does make it easier to be able to present a consistent experience.

I also like that we have redundancy built in. The last time we upgraded, which was three years ago, we put in dual controllers and dual storefront machines. We have never had an outage that the users were aware of. I did have a desktop server crash and was able to restore that from backup. Nobody ever knew. They had had the same experience regardless.

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YG
IT Operations Service Delivery Senior Manager at e-finance

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.

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TT
Solutions Manager at ICSI

The most valuable feature of Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops is the security and it is easy to work with.

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Yash Saxena - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Consultant at MindTree

The App is the most valuable feature.

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RV
Delivery Head - Major Incident at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

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.

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Nicholas Stapley - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Architect offering Consultancy Services and Technical Governance at Various Clients
  • Remote access
  • BYOD
  • High performance
  • Feature-rich, full desktop experience
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EP
Senior Technical Consultant at The Instillery

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.

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Robert Prugarewicz - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Specialist at Unum Życie Towarzystwo Ubezpieczeń i Reasekuracji Spółka Akcyjna

The most valuable feature is the gateway to a remote connection, to a physical or a virtual PC. Compared to a normal VPN client and connection, the connection via Citrix is more stable and does not consume as much network bandwidth.

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RN
Owner at 1st Solutions

XenApp is fast and secure and reliable for remote connections. It is a solution that is completely different than older Windows solutions like Remote Desktop, Server Gateway, and Runtime Brokers. These Windows solutions have never really produced satisfactory results for me.  

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YG
IT Operations Service Delivery Senior Manager at e-finance

The most valuable feature is that users can work remotely from any location. The shadow feature is extraordinary and helps a lot when supporting remote users. The business support team uses this feature to connect to the user session when they are working and can provide instruction on performing complicated tasks.

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it_user482313 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Project Manager at a energy/utilities company with 501-1,000 employees

The main features that I felt were valuable to our organization were:

  • Ability to manage iOS and Android mobile devices.
  • Application white/black listing.
  • Comprehensive rule based policies with relative parity between platforms.
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it_user101136 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Director at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees

The user experience is comparable to XenApp (our past presentation server), with the same look and feel as a normal full desktop in the head office.

It still uses ICA protocol, which means we did not have to increase the WAN bandwidth to deliver same user experience across all the sites. We did not have to increase telco cost to provide same user experience from sites outside of the head office.

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MM
Sr. System Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Citrix Virtual Apps is the most valuable feature. Many customers use this feature to publish only applications, and not the full desktop. They can publish the internal resource or allow the end-user to reach a site or an application without having the full desktop. That's why they love this feature. It helps them save on resources.

It also provides the flexibility of being used on any device. It makes for a good employee experience because they are able to log in using any device and reach the resource.

We also utilized the centralized policy to apply things to all users or to categorize the users. Once users were categorized we could apply policies based on the categories. It was very helpful. We could allow users in category "A" to reach some of the resources, and allow users in category "B" to reach other resources, based on their requirements. For example, we could block USB for some categories and allow it for other categories.

There is also access control based on device, location, end-user device, or application. This is a good feature because it adds to the flexibility. You can give access based on many factors.

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DW
Senior Manager of Engineering at Mechanics Bank

I found the ease of deployment, scalability, and security to be to our benefit when supplying virtual applications/resources to our clients.

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DA
CDO at SGROUP

I'm not the end-user of the application. My position is very high in the organization. I know that the users who are using this product like it, but I don't know what exactly they like or what might make it separate from similar solutions. From my point of view, the reason they like it is this flexibility that they have. They can connect one application to another application or just to use the data. They have applications locally and use the data in the cloud in a very secure way. They have more flexibility using this solution.  

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SD
Citrix/VMware Administrator at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

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.

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PV
Senior Systems Engineer at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees

My focus has primarily been on publishing virtual applications.

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it_user221403 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Mgr at a educational organization with 501-1,000 employees

The most valuable feature to me is the flexibility to publish just apps, just virtual desktops, both, or even physical desktops. Having so much flexibility in one solution, especially one that works as well as Citrix, is a huge advantage.

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it_user90339 - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems Administrator at a government with 501-1,000 employees

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

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

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MR
Controller at a translation and localization position with 51-200 employees

The most valuable feature is how secure the solution is.

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it_user70641 - PeerSpot reviewer
Virtualization, Remote Access and Mobility Engineering at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

ICA and HDX are the most valuable features of this product to me. These protocols allow features that most other vendors either have not implemented yet or are too bandwidth-intensive to use in the enterprise with WAN users.

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it_user81906 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Sales Leader on IBM Cloud, MBA at a tech company with 10,001+ employees

Citrix XenDesktop is a great solution for VDI or virtual desktop environments. Its most valuable features to me are:

  • Pretty good management: You can manage a full environment for VDI, you have full control of what your users do, what they can or can't install and what resources your users can use.
  • Great performance: Of course, it depends on hardware and the hypervisor (Citrix XenServer and VMWare vSphere are the best). It provides great performance with NVIDIA GPU cards.
  • Great performance on low bandwidth links: Citrix was born when I still used a phone modem with 33.5 Kbps, so Citrix created the ICA protocol that provides great performance when you use low links.
  • Easy install: With a little bit of understanding, for a standard configuration, if you have a little knowledge of Citrix XenDesktop, you can implement a solution in a few days.
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DA
Implementation and Support Engineer at PRACSO S.R.L.

Relative to other solutions, Citrix has fewer conditions and fewer parameters. Citrix also provides some flexibility because it can be used on any device. It has a few security features that are interesting— actions that permit the user to access only the information they are supposed to access. It's extremely secure because all the data is encrypted. The work can be done remotely but the data never has to leave our data center.

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it_user200937 - PeerSpot reviewer
System & Network Engineer at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
  • ICA protocol performance on a slow network
  • Adaptive user constraint in a different user environment
  • Load balancing and HA
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SS
Assistant Manager - IS Infrastructure at a insurance company with 501-1,000 employees

The central administration and deployment of desktops and apps. Also, XenApp restricts access to those applications that you, as the admin, will define. XenApp works best if there are no bandwidth limitations in your area.

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SS
Assistant Manager - IS Infrastructure at a insurance company with 501-1,000 employees

The central administration and deployment of desktops and apps. XenDesktop gives a full desktop experience i.e. the user gets a Windows machine with a C drive and loaded with a set of applications such as mail, productivity suites and access to files.

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SN
CTO at Greenware Technologies LLC

The most valuable features are user experience and printing capabilities.

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it_user197484 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Administrator with 501-1,000 employees

The stars from this solution are its NetScaler and profile manager.

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it_user1266 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Manager at a local government with 51-200 employees
I love the extended features of this product. You can easily manage profiles and create desktops in minutes. You can also use your desktops on mobile devices pretty much anywhere. One feature that we use extensively is the WAN optimization. Our data backups are offsite, so moving data and virtual machines could kill our bandwidth, but this feature prevents that. XenDesktop 5 is lightyears ahead of XenDesktop 4. It is much easier to use, and the management interface is intuitive. View full review »
it_user283545 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Analyst at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

We can virtualize desktops as well as apps.

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VC
CEO at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

The most valuable feature is the desktop experience so that users don't see much difference between the remote desktop and the local desktop. Their files remain the same, so it's much easier to work from different locations. We use it for laptops and desktops only, but I believe it has the flexibility to be used on any device. If the desktop experience is good, the employees are happier. They are able to do what they want to do.

It also provides virtualization for high-end graphics so that they can be displayed. AutoCAD can be done on Citrix. The graphics are very good.

We also like the security features it provides.

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it_user174318 - PeerSpot reviewer
Architect at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
  • Protects web infrastructure
  • Ensures business continuity and IT disaster recovery
  • Consolidated multiple remote access solutions
  • Lowers WAN costs
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it_user212976 - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Assistant at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

The following are the product's most valuable features to me:

  • Quick provisioning: It is easy to make changes and see them reflected throughout the organization.
  • Document control: Enabling users to copy a company document to their hard drive or flash memory really protects our IP.
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it_user4695 - PeerSpot reviewer
VP of IT with 51-200 employees
Before we were on a VPN model for remote usage into our data center, the performance issues with large datasets moving cross country really proved to be an issue with remote users. This product really moved the needle in solving for this. View full review »
MP
Senior Site Infrastructure Engineer at Kurungsiku
You can try XenDesktop as alternative to VMware view. The Express edition allow you to use up to 10 machines / users. I use XenDesktop as a Proof of Concept when our lab plans to move to Virtual Desktop. I try to connect from a client on windows machine connecting to remote windows desktop, playing movie is smooth, connecting USB device on your client will show on your virtual desktop. View full review »
JL
System Administrator at a non-tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees

It's most valuable feature is its easy setup.

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it_user613110 - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant

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.

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FS
Senior Consultant/Project Manager at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

The most valuable feature of this product to me is its ability to provide a secure desktop to remote users.

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it_user330321 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Administrator at a construction company with 1,001-5,000 employees

In HDX, the graphics provide high-performance imaging.

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it_user334560 - PeerSpot reviewer
CIO at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
  • Reliability
  • Security
  • User Profiling 
  • Administrator's knowledge base
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MS
IT Infrastructure Analyst at a insurance company with 501-1,000 employees

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

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it_user2529 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager of Data Center at a transportation company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Good product, our POC proved that Xendesktop required lower bandwidth per machine than competitors. View full review »
UD
‎Database Administrator with 51-200 employees

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

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it_user560277 - PeerSpot reviewer
Citrix Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
  • Application virtualization
  • Virtual Desktop Interface (VDI)
  • Management and security using NetScalers
View full review »
it_user90252 - PeerSpot reviewer
Presales Specialist at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees

The most valuable feature of this product for me is that it provides secure access anywhere from any device.

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ER
Project Leader at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

The most valuable feature is the automatic software upgrades because they take place on only three or four servers, rather than on 50 or 60 machines.

The administration, security, and flexibility are very good.

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it_user311946 - PeerSpot reviewer
Citrix / Virtualization Pre-Sales and Implementation Engg. at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees

ICA/HDX optimization policies.

View full review »
Buyer's Guide
Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service)
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.