Citrix Workspace (discontinued) vs. VMware Horizon

Citrix Workspace is no doubt one of the best solutions if you are looking for seamless access to multiple daily used applications at a single place in a company secured connection. It has centralized updates and a patching mechanism which makes it operate hassle-free. If you are using AWS cloud in your company and big fan of it, you can also go for Amazon Workspaces for a uniform ecosystem.

VMware is well suited to a business where there will be many remote users needing to connect to the companies desktop. The installation on a remote computer is simple and is easy to use remotely but can be complicated to set up on the back end on the office system. It may not be worth the effort for a company that has few people who need remote access.

Incentivized

• It provides secure environment for the access of client's database.
• If we have verified account or having the login id password (credentials) we have the access of Workspace as long as we want.
• Connectivity is so simple that first time user also understand all the features.

• It provides a robust, secure, rich desktop environment that is able to access all internal network resources.
• Addresses security and compliance concerns as all data resides within the internal network. All data accessed stays within the internal network and does not need to traverse a VPN to the local desktop where it may be cached, etc.
• The connection is thin client that does not require large amount of bandwidth.
• Client application is available for all common devices and O/S’s.
• No need to install, configure and maintain applications on local desktop.

Incentivized

• I find it particularly difficult to easily save to anything other than my file database, such as my regular desktop files. The series of folder paths is very confusing in my opinion.
• I cannot save pdfs to my remote system and must save them locally.
• No printing to work place destination capability.

Incentivized

• Move away from Adobe Flash version in UI, currently on the path but they need to hurry up
• Speed up the boot process of the environment when servers need maintenance
• Provide clear steps on what should be upgrade path in terms of components, the order
• price! A bit too much

Incentivized

We find Citrix Workspace an easy to use, reliable and secure remote access tool. We never have issues accessing either environments (workstations, servers and virtual machines) not using deployed applications.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

Access to the workspace is simple and quick, using username and password and a second factor authentication. Once logged in, you can see all the environments (servers, virtual machines, etc) and applications that are available based on the permission granted to your user. With a couple of clicks you can easily access to your remote desktop or to one of the applications.

Incentivized

VMware Horizon is very easy to use. It is very easy and quick to log in remotely. It is very easy to install remotely. It is usable easily on many different operating systems. It is easy to set up which tools are available to each remote user so that each user has just what they need to perform their work without any extra tools cluttering up their space or bogging down the system.

Incentivized

Performance is excellent of you provide the needed hardware to support the sessions/connections. Pages load very quickly at the client end as the thin client application does a very good job and requires very little bandwidth. All applications function well, as they are running on a session on an internal server that is accessing data directly on the network

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

Citrix does great at allowing us to access work from remote locations. Our IT provider is very familiar with the product and is able to troubleshoot this product much better than the competitors.

Incentivized

Although I really prefer Microsoft Remote Desktop for accessing Windows servers (from Windows machines especially), and this can be done from off-site with a VPN, this entails much more effort, namely getting everyone's Active Directory in the correct group to have access. VMWare Horizon is a much simpler solution in terms of granting access. Chrome Remote Desktop and TeamViewer are really not viable solutions for remotely accessing servers in business settings, although they work alright for home servers and such, especially from off-site.

Incentivized

• During the pandemic, Citrix Workspace was vital in allowing me to continue operations by working from home. Without Citrix Workspace, I think that our company would have had a lot of trouble with all of the WFH operations.

Incentivized

• Saved money on PC purchases.
• Save a lot of man hours by not having to image new PCs. We just create one Template VM and clone the others from that.
• Bit of a learning curve to get the deployment right for the environment.
• Ability to make sure VMs always turn back on once they are shutdown. This speeds up load times for users.
• Less management for our PCs. If one gets a virus or something corrupts we just refresh it and within 5 minutes the user is back to work.

Incentivized