Overwhelmed by Citrix?
Problems with Citrix DaaS™ and Citrix® VDI implementations hamper user productivity and effectiveness. Issues can range from an outage, where users cannot work, to minor irritations like latency, which makes employees less productive (and probably exasperated). Citrix DaaS issues create challenges for IT teams, too, to diagnose and solve the root cause quickly to enable a good user experience and less downtime for employees.
Why are Citrix Daas and VDI so problematic for users and IT? Here’s an overview of Citrix Daas issues and challenges with Citrix VDI solutions.
Citrix is Complex
Citrix deployments are complicated to architect, implement, and manage, especially in organizations with a diverse IT infrastructure. Why? Citrix environments are highly complex, with numerous components and interdependencies. For example, Citrix components include Citrix Workspace™ app, Citrix Application Delivery Controller™ (ADC), StoreFront™, License Server, Virtual Delivery Agent (VDA), and many others.
Configuring Citrix environments requires significant expertise and careful planning, and any misconfiguration can lead to performance issues or security vulnerabilities.
Citrix Performance Issues
Depending on the configuration and network conditions, Citrix deployments can experience latency and performance issues which degrade the user experience and can leave workers unproductive and frustrated. For example, even slight miscalculations of virtual machine size, RAM, and network bandwidth during configuration and implementation can have a significant negative impact on Citrix performance. And, because Citrix environments are so complex, troubleshooting performance issues can take hours—while users wait.
Compatibility
Ensuring Citrix compatibility with a variety of applications and systems can be challenging due to Citrix complexity. Integrating Citrix with existing infrastructure and applications can require significant effort and expertise in Citrix solutions, which many IT teams lack.
Licensing
Like its architecture, Citrix licensing is highly complex. Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops is composed of numerous components, and each component has multiple editions and license models. And, after purchasing a license for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, you still need to worry about licenses for Citrix ADC™, remote access, load balancing, SQL licenses, and high availability. Selecting the wrong license(s) can underpower an implementation, or it can be expensive overkill.
In another example of licensing complexity, Citrix NetScaler® has capabilities far beyond enabling remote access, including load balancing and high availability, content switching, application offloading, application firewalling, and cloud connectivity, depending on licensing. Select the wrong license and you may get NetScaler capabilities that duplicate what you’re already paying for from your cloud provider, so you end up paying twice for the same capability, with users possibly experiencing downtime due to configuration issues. (For some configurations, Citrix requires NetScaler functionality rather than your cloud providers, forcing you duplicate certain services in order to run Citrix.)
Security
Because there are so many components in a Citrix environment, there are simply more security vulnerabilities to exploit, like security patches for numerous components not applied in a timely manner and misconfigurations in Citrix complex infrastructure.
End User Experience - Printing
In addition to the latency and performance issues mentioned above, Citrix environments also suffer from downtime because of printing issues. An example is default printers. A user can select a default printer in Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, but their selection is not retained for their next session—or, a printer not selected by the user can be added to his profile during a session and appear in the next session. In both examples, the user can’t print—and calls the helpdesk to fix the issue.
Support
Once Citrix is implemented, many issues require a long and complicated troubleshooting process. For instance, if a user encounters something as simple as a Citrix Receiver™ login problem, admins have to investigate several internal and external servers and services like the Application Delivery Controller, XML Broker, ADC, StoreFront, Session Host/VDI, and Microsoft® Active Directory.
Citrix support requires highly-trained admins that can be hard to find and retain. The alternative is to hire third-party Citrix services, which can significantly impact IT budgets.
Eliminating Citrix DaaS Issues
While there are alternative VDI and DaaS solutions from Microsoft, VMware®, and others, the fact is that the VDI or DaaS solutions available are all highly complex and present challenges for end user IT admins and users.
But what if you’re a Windows® ISV using Citrix to deliver your application to customers? Do you need Citrix complexity to do the job?
No. You don’t.
Windows ISVs should consider GO-Global® to deliver their application to customers located anywhere.
With GO-Global, Windows applications run on a server, which can be installed in any public, private, or hybrid cloud. GO-Global fully replaces Microsoft RDS functionality, including multi-session kernel, Remote Desktop clients, display driver, protocol, internet gateway and management tools, eliminating the need for Microsoft user licenses and reducing complexity.
Applications published using GO-Global require less IT implementation and management effort, scale more economically, and provide users with a web-native experience. Additionally, GO-Global leverages a cloud services’ existing infrastructure and security and scalability features to deliver advanced functionality with less complexity and lower cost.
Despite its low cost, GO-Global delivers enterprise-level scalability but is easy to install, configure, and use, with considerably less technology overhead required for implementation, and provides a great customer experience, including fast logins and minimal latency, even over low-bandwidth connections. And GO-Global’s Universal Print Driver eliminates printing issues, so customers can print documents without resorting to inconvenient workarounds.
To learn more, request a demo here or download a free 30-day trial.
