Citrix Remote Desktop is a platform that hosts and administers Citrix services. It connects to your resources through connectors on any cloud or infrastructure you choose (on-premises, public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud). It allows you to create, manage, and deploy workspaces with apps and data to your end-users from a single console. Citrix Cloud is comprised of several components, as shown in the diagram below. You can choose to use (or not use) any of them based on your business requirements.

Citrix Cloud can be leveraged in different ways depending on the solution that best fits your business requirements.

Reasons you may want to use it

We all know the word “Cloud” is a very popular term in IT right now. But when management asks you why you should consider implementing Citrix Cloud, what do you tell them? Here are some of the benefits.

Speed – Citrix services can be rapidly deployed in production in a matter of hours.

Upgrades – Upgrades are managed by Citrix, so you’ll always be on the latest version and have access to the newest services.

Scalability – Quickly and easily increase (or reduce) capacity as your business requirements change.

POCs – Citrix Cloud is a perfect way to deploy a POC for customers looking to potentially adopt Citrix. In addition, the POC can easily be converted to a production environment if successful.

Adaptability – You can choose to deploy on any cloud or virtual infrastructure, or a hybrid of both.

Security – Citrix uses industry standard TLS 1.2 encryption with the strongest cypher suites. Customers cannot control the TLS certificate in use, as it is hosted on the Citrix-owned cloud.com domain.

Reasons you may not want to use it

As with any new technology, Citrix Cloud is not a one size fits all solution. There are also reasons that it may not be a good fit for your company. Here are some of those potential reasons.

Existing Datacenter Hardware – Most companies out there right now have a significant investment in their on-premise infrastructure. Simply throwing that out in favor of a cloud-based solution doesn’t always make sense.

Cost – If someone tells you that moving to Citrix Cloud is going to save you a ton of money, don’t believe it. Nothing comes free when you move to this solution. Every service, feature, resource, VM, and storage location comes with a price tag.

NetScaler Gateway – Functionality for Netscaler Gateway is quite limited compared to an on-premise implementation. This includes limitations related to multi-factor authentication and Storefront load balancing.

Minimum License Requirements – The Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktop service comes with a minimum requirement of 25 users. This can be an issue for smaller companies.

Evergreen – Citrix Cloud components are constantly changing and evolving, and subscribers do not have control over that. The updates applied by Citrix have the potential to affect the user experience, which is not ideal for all organizations.