Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) vs. Citrix Profile Management (discontinued)

Suitable for companies that are looking for performance at a competitive price, flexibility to switch instance type even with RI, flexibility to add-on IOPS, option to lower running cost with the regular introduction of new instance type that comes with higher performance but at a lower cost.

Incentivized

I used Citrix in several ways and for several needs around several companies around the world. Not only tech companies but also flower companies were we migrated from on-premises ERP to cloud ERP. I think, based on my experience that if you have not so powerful computers and hardware it's nice to run Citrix remote desktop perhaps with a cloud app ERP on it but the internet connection has to stay always reliable and stable, better if you have 2 or more internet connections balanced each other with Peplink load balancing solution. A weak point is the internet connection. As for me, I don't like using Citrix solutions just to open a SharePoint folder or even a Jira.. total a waste of time.

Incentivized

• Huge Diverse range of machine shapes are available which cater to our demand.
• Ability to combine the machines and integrate them with any other service in AWS (Ex: RDS, S3)
• Handling performance and scalability using auto-scaling, ELB configuration and high performance machine shapes.

Incentivized

• Easy to manage user access.
• Can watch server usage.
• Can manage end user profiles.

Incentivized

• The choices on AMIs, instance types and additional configuration can be overwhelming for any non-DevOps person.
• The pricing information should be more clear (than only providing the hourly cost) when launching the instance. AWS DynamoDB gives an estimated monthly cost when creating tables, and I would love to see similar cost estimation showing on EC2 instances individually, as not all developers gets access to the actual bills.
• The term for reserving instances are at least 12 months. With instance types changing so fast and better instances coming out every other day, it's really hard to commit to an existing instance type for 1 or more years at a time.

Incentivized

• Since UPM manages Microsoft roaming profiles you still face profile size challenges. You can use the exclude feature but it can be a bit limiting.
• Because of size concerns this may not be the best choice for international deployments if you intend to roam settings across multiple environments.
• Troubleshooting UPM can be a bit difficult at times. There are some built in logging features but those are best reviewed by Citrix.

Incentivized

You an start using EC2 instances immediately, is so easy and intuitive to start using them, EC2 has wizard to create the EC2 instances in the web browser or if you are code savvy you can create them with simple line in the CLI or using an SDK. Once you are comfortable using EC2, you can even automate the process.

Incentivized

AWS's support is good overall. Not outstanding, but better than average. We have had very little reason to engage with AWS support but in our limited experience, the staff has been knowledgeable, timely and helpful. The only negative is actually initiating a service request can be a bit of a pain.

Incentivized

Amazon EC2 is super flexible compared to the PaaS offerings like Heroku Platform and Google App Engine since with Amazon EC2, we have access to the terminal. In terms of pricing, it's basically just the same as Google Compute Engine. The deciding factor is Amazon EC2's native integration with other AWS services since they're all in the same cloud platform.

Well, I really did not select it, but generally, as those products and solutions are very expensive and purchased on a corporative level, I used them as a user or a system IT manager... Citrix has almost no competitors that we can call like that really... it's the de-facto standard nowadays but I feel like that sense of supremacy and overall superiority threw Citrix company into a dark tunnel of blindness and missing opportunities conditions of leveraging the product to the next level and taking the opportunity to innovate and do more with less. Just take into consideration the MB heaviness of the Citrix Profile Management installer... it grows years after years... many MB and... the same solution and option... what a shame!

Incentivized

• It reduced the need for heavy on-premises instances. Also, it completely eliminates maintenance of the machine. Their SLA criteria are also matching business needs. Overall IAAS is the best option when information is not so crucial to post on the cloud.
• It makes both horizontal and vertical scaling really easy. This keeps your infrastructure up and running even while you are increasing the capacity or facing more traffic. This leads to having better customer satisfaction.
• If you do not choose your instance type suitable for your business, it may incur lots of extra costs.

Incentivized

• CPM is a must to manage Citrix user.

Incentivized