Amazon WorkSpaces vs. Remote Desktop Services vs. Omnissa Horizon

For our use case, we found Amazon WorkSpaces well suited to remote work and other "work from home" and "work on the road" situations where the end user did not need to consume HD media (notably 4K) and did not need to produce any multimedia (audio, video, etc), but rather needed to perform more typical tasks such as web-browsing our corporate intranet and internal online apps, accessing files and using them through office productivity suites (Office - both online and desktop, and LibreOffice are under testing), etc.

Incentivized

Remote Desktop Services provides access to work environments from any device. This allows us to ensure business continuity in case of disaster. It provides admins more control over access and security. Remote Desktop Services simplifies software updates and compliance management by reducing the need to act on end users devices.

Horizon View is well suited in larger organizations where there are needs to securely access applications and data from outside the internal network. It allows users a complete desktop experience remotely with access to all resources that are available on the local internal private network. It is fast and robust as data does not need to traverse the connection like a VPN connection and stays within the local internal network increasing data security. Cost for hardware and software is a high initial investment so smaller organizations will find it hard to justify the financial costs. In a diverse user environment, there are many uses for Horizon View. When faced with a need for a solution for users to access information or applications outside the internal network, having Horizon View is one of the best go to's to have available. Use your imagination and creativity to solve many business needs

Incentivized

• It gives us a virtual desktop machine which is completely configurable.
• We can launch and terminate those machines as per our requirements
• It eliminates software conflicts as we get clean system every time on launch

Incentivized

• Remote Desktop Services does an excellent job in providing a way for our staff to be working outside the office as if they're actually sitting inside the office. As long as the staff has an internet connection and a computer, he can use Remote Desktop Services to access files on our network.
• Remote Desktop Services also eliminates a need to have a very fast internet connection to access files on the company network. Once a Remote Desktop Service session is established, the only bandwidth it takes up is the transfer of images you see on the display. It's like surfing on the web because you are using the company server as the resource to run the applications.
• Remote Desktop Services provides a way for users to transfer files back & forth to/from staff's offsite laptop to/from the company network . There would be times when staff forget to copy a particular file onto the laptop for a presentation. So the way to retrieve the data from the network is to establish a Remote Desktop Session and then using Windows standar copy & paste feature to transfer the file from the network onto their laptop for use.

Incentivized

• Ability to set up new desktops quickly.
• Faster boot times for PCs.
• Virtual machines can grow in space and other resources as long as the ESXi Hosts have the resources.
• Ability to create different types of desktop groups called pools and organize the different departments.

Incentivized

• Restarting workspaces takes lot of time
• MFA can be done only via email. Text or dedicated app would be a great choice.

Incentivized

• No centralized management: unlike other products on the market, Remote Desktop Services in 2008r2 provides no single management console. Users are managed through a console on the connection broker, web apps are managed on a per server basis (even when those servers belong to a farm).
• Image Management: because no use of an agent like PNTools is made, bringing up servers and adding them to the farm is inconvenient. Static IPs are a must and round-robin load balancing is really your only option with the connection broker. Updating a farm of 5+ servers becomes a chore, but still easier than updating 2000+ machines.
• Still a very green product: while Microsoft offers a lot of the same features as the big guys, it's obvious that Remote Desktop Services is still in it's infancy and has a lot of room for growth. I have discovered and requested fixes for a number of bugs in the mobile app alone - something about the QA process for these apps seems to be lacking.

Incentivized

• VSAN -- This experience is from a pre-Horizon 7 deployment. While we have had redundancy issues in our deployment, the concerns we experience are said to be resolved in the latest VSAN release.
• Persona Management can be troublesome, leading to mismatches in user data against the server. This requires manual interaction to resolve if a network or user error led to the two falling out of sync. The risk in this is user data loss. Again, new developments in user management is said to resolve these concerns in Horizon 7.
• Security Servers and off-site access to VMware Horizon View has been difficult due to the problematic deployment scenario (a server inside the network with several external hooks). This is said to be resolved with the advent of EUC in Horizon 7. I'm excited to begin testing on this solution as feedback elsewhere has been positive.

Incentivized

We are committed to VMware Horizon and we plan to stick with it for the future unless something drastically changes.

Incentivized

For its Primary purpose in our organization, providing developers and testers a clean, isolated and configurable environments which saves hours. The usability is nearly perfect. Usability is only suffering when user is into more intensive task like any kind of graphic works. At that time user is not experiencing the smoothness like a local machine

Incentivized

The initial setup for Remote Desktop Services is complex, and licensing is costly. Each user connects to their virtual desktop hosted by a single server or group of servers, so a change or issue with servers quickly impacts every single user at the same time. Aside from that, users appreciate seeing their same personal desktop from any device or geographical location.

Incentivized

Because it delivers what it promises, I am giving this rating. While there is scope for improvement, it does the job and meets our requirements reasonab;y well. It helps our remote resources connect to our environment securely and improves their productivity. We also get to access our client environment from remote locations and complete the tasks assigned to us.

Incentivized

There are some third party tools available that allow you to manage multiple connections.

Incentivized

There are a lot of things that went into my rating from the ease of use compared to other systems to the limited amount of issues I have had with this one. Any issue with this system has been identified and resolved in a much quicker manner than I have seen with like systems.

Incentivized

AWS support in general is pretty good, and WorkSpaces is no exception. We haven't had too much need for support but on the occasion we have, they've been quick to respond and helpful. Our issues have been resolved rapidly.

Incentivized

As with any Microsoft Server product, support for Remote Desktop Services requires a paid support package. These are license-based and very costly, on top of the already costly product licensing. Microsoft's licensing is complicated to begin with, so setting up licensing alone essentially requires a licensing expert's counsel. There is community documentation and support available on Microsoft websites, as well as community websites.

Incentivized

It is surely way better than Citrix, but it could improve a bit. Usually, they send us the solution without saying what was the root cause so we can avoid breaking something in the future. Besides that, VMWare support answers in an OK time-frame and even speaks our language (Portuguese).

Incentivized

WorkSpaces (VDI) is a much more robust solution that competitor offerings when considering scalability and security. Amazon WorkSpaces has a substantial free tier to explore if this is the right solution for your project without purchasing other solutions. Considering this, AWS is a great solution to explore Virtual Desktop experiences and workstations for any growing remote business.

Incentivized

Overall, remote desktop is so much easier to use if you are OK with the limited tools that it offers. If you're just looking to simply connect to another computer and make some quick changes, it is the way to go and the fastest way to do it. It is very simple and no frills!

Incentivized

VMware Horizon seems to be more powerful and adaptable to multiple operating systems than the Citrix products I have used. VMware has been simpler to use and has a lot more customization than other of the other similar products I have used. It has solved a lot of the issues I have encountered with the systems put out by Citrix.

Incentivized

• Having a linux VM seems positive due to the security of the OS
• The Linux OS version sometimes is basic and requires extra apps to be installed

Incentivized

• Overall RDS has helped us provide services and programs to our users with relative ease.
• The only "negative" impact is that users can have a bit of difficulty understanding how RDS works and what it means to access a remote desktop, but that isn't any fault of the program, it just takes a little extra training for users.

Incentivized

• ROI is good, but from calculations it takes time, you won't see benefits in a first year or two
• It will allow us to provide access to software on personal machines where it was not possible before
• It is hard hunting applications that are allowed to be virtualized

Incentivized