Item: Azure Virtual Desktop
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Azure Virtual Desktop

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Citrix Desktop license become costly and not reliable in our infrastructure. Primary used this to solve the secure remote access and terminal desktops for external users.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Security, The Azure Desktop and applications run on Azure DC so data and network doesn't leave the could env.
Big one for us is scalability and cost control, while we have some heavy users in seasonal pattern so we can turn off and on VMs as it progress
Management overall is user friendly and easy to manage.
It's on cloud so local outage doesn't impact users.

Cons

Troubleshooting bit limited as it's running on MS cloud. You don't have that level of access to get the logs data.
App or ISO update management also complex compare to user management. It also hard to predict cost when you have inflex of usage. not really straightforward to tell which group/users are using most of the resources.
as I mention earlier, troubleshooting is limited. When you have peak hour usage, user may see some performance issues.

Return on Investment

Generally, Positive so far. From business objectives, we covered security, scalability and efficiency but implementing AVD.
User are able to work securely from anywhere and support hybrid model as well.
however, ongoing attention require to make sure you are not over sizing the host pools and cost remain in expected budget.

Usability

Overall, it's good product. Some performance issue when you have peak hours, Management GUI experience isn't that simple you need to hop multiple pages to get some configuration done.

Alternatives Considered

Citrix Gateway and Citrix Secure Private Access

As I've mentioned before, The license cost for Citrix is higher atm. Plus, hosting and infrastructure also added up in up front cost. With AVD Plus enterprise licensing, we are just paying what we are using withing Azure network. It's not complete solution but it's best if you are users are limited and can control/monitor your usage.

Key Insights

Do you think Azure Virtual Desktop delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Azure Virtual Desktop's feature set?

Yes

Did Azure Virtual Desktop live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Azure Virtual Desktop go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Azure Virtual Desktop again?

Yes

Likelihood to Recommend

Remote/terminal Desktop access which is core function/usage we wanted. We don't want to install app on users devices and wanted to sperate the data/network from public to private. Which AVD provide that solution for Remote access and remote application for external users or VPN users.

Comments

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Powerful and Flexible Virtual Desktop Platform with Some Usability Complexity