Bring your existing on-premises, Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp traditional deployments into the new Citrix Workspace experience.
Citrix’s goal with the new Citrix Workspace is to give users the ability to access everything they need to do work with seamless, unified access. That means giving them the ability to access virtual apps, desktops, SaaS, data, and web apps from a single point of access. You may be thinking that it would be a challenge if you’ve already fully implemented an on-prem XenApp and XenDesktop environment, but we’ve come up with a solution that integrates other Citrix Cloud services as seamlessly as possible.
Meet Site Aggregation
Site aggregation is a feature within the new Workspace experience that provides a simplified admin workflow that enables existing, on-premises XenApp & XenDesktop deployments (inclusive of versions XenApp 6.5 and XenDesktop 7.X) to be aggregated into the new Workspace end-user experience. Once the workflow is completed, all apps and desktops associated with your traditional on-prem deployments will populate in the end-user’s workspace. All Citrix Workspace supported apps will live side-by-side traditional on-premises apps and desktops. End-users won’t be able to tell the difference between how the apps and desktops are hosted.
How can you get Site Aggregation?
The real question here is, “How do I get the new Citrix Workspace experience?” Site aggregation is a feature within Citrix Workspace and will only be enabled for those who have access to it. You can access the workflow by navigating to the “Sites” tab within the “Workspace Configuration” menu option.
What is the Value of Site Aggregation?
For customers maintaining hybrid environments, site aggregation helps deliver a single workspace with a modern end-user experience for traditional on-premises apps and desktops. End-users will have access to all their apps, services, and data via a single pane of glass, no matter how they’re hosted. By using the feature, these customers can also remove their dependency from on-premises StoreFront and use Citrix Workspace as their primary delivery mechanism, which is evergreen and highly-available.
For existing Citrix customers who want to try Workspace, site aggregation provides a low-risk approach to start using Citrix Workspace and cloud. And trying Workspace with traditional on-premises apps and desktops requires little additional effort or investment. These customers can continue maintaining StoreFront on-prem while they test out a subset of users in Citrix Workspace. This means that a customers’ on-premises StoreFront can run in parallel with Workspace since no updates or changes are needed to StoreFront.
For existing Citrix customers planning to migrate to Citrix Cloud services, site aggregation provides an initial step toward the migration process. Once aggregated, and the dependency on StoreFront is removed, end-users can continue to be productive by using Citrix Workspace, while admins plan and execute against their migration plan. They can begin redirecting and registering their VDAs to the cloud connectors instead of the on-premises brokers to move another part of their infrastructure to Citrix Cloud.
Here is a brief video that describes site aggregation in more detail:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=i9qL3clzPzQ
This is an exciting time here at Citrix, and we’ve got a lot more announcements coming across the next few weeks. So, stay tuned for more resources and communications from us on the new Citrix Workspace user experience.
