Since its launch last year, Citrix Managed Desktops is rapidly gaining recognition as the simplest, fastest way to deliver desktops from the cloud to any device, anywhere. Citrix Managed Desktops is designed and built on Microsoft Azure to deliver Windows and Linux apps and desktops to enable businesses to quickly scale up large numbers of desktops or applications and deliver them to their workers on any device.
We make it easy to set up and deliver Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows Server, or Linux apps and desktops in minutes, not in hours or days. And we offer options for both monthly “no commit” and term subscriptions to pay as you go. Set-up and access to your workspace is simple, and with the delivery of desktops from the cloud, your users can access their work from any device, anywhere. Users quickly connect over the web and launch our Citrix Workspace app client to get access to all their resources.
Learn how easy it is to get started with Citrix Managed Desktops.
Why Citrix Managed Desktops?
Why choose Citrix Managed Desktops over other DaaS services? Citrix not only offers fast management of apps and desktops, we also offer an incredible user experience. With our high-definition HDX technology, your workers get a great experience for conferencing, multimedia, and productivity apps each time they log in. We support key applications and peripherals like Microsoft Teams, Skype for Business, and devices through USB support, printer redirection, and multi-monitor displays.
For IT, the solution is flexible to support both domain-joined and non-domain-joined workloads in Citrix Managed Desktops Azure deployments. If you are already an Azure customer, you can bring your own Azure subscription for hosting workloads, which provides additional benefits such as Azure region selection, VM flexibility, and Azure reserve instance pricing for VMs.
Citrix is committed to providing the best DaaS solution for your needs, and Citrix Managed Desktops is regularly updated with new features and customer requests — no IT involvement required. Here’s an update on some of the key features and services we’ve just rolled out:
What’s New with Citrix Managed Desktops
- Citrix SD-WAN integration — Citrix SD-WAN integration enables customers to easily connect their cloud-hosted desktops to on-premises resources such as Active Directory, file shares, and more. You can also leverage SD-WAN to provide HDX optimizations for users connecting from corporate endpoints. You can learn more about this exciting integration here.
- Linux VDA support (Tech Preview) — Now easily provision catalogs containing Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Ubuntu machines that use the bring-your-own Azure subscription deployment model. Now you can deliver both Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) workloads side by side with Linux virtual apps and desktops to your end users.
- Monitoring and licensing enhancements — The monitoring dashboard has been enhanced with machine-level monitoring, along with session reporting and shadowing capabilities. We also now provide dashboards to easily track license usage. This enables the admin to clearly monitor compute usage of services and help troubleshoot any issues that might arise.
- User-defined routes — The Azure VNET peering feature now allows you to add multiple user defined routes. This makes it easy to route VDA traffic to customer-owned network virtual appliances and more, enabling IT to route traffic through their network virtual appliances for web filtering and security audits.
- Prepared images with 1912 VDA — We have updated Citrix prepared images to our most recent release (Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 1912) to leverage the latest user personalization layers for Windows 10 single-session VDAs, as well as Microsoft Teams optimizations. You can easily customize one of these images for a rapid deployment or import your own master image and leverage your unique custom setup.
- Office 365 ProPlus Image Ready — A Citrix-managed master image is now available for Windows 10 Enterprise Virtual Desktop (multi-session) with Office 365 ProPlus. Bring your Microsoft license and leverage all that Windows 10 multi-session has today.
- Vertical Load balancing — Now Citrix provides you an option to specify the connection load balancing scheme for your multi-session hosts. Previously, load balancing was horizontal in nature, where new sessions were assigned to the least-loaded machine. Now customers have the choice to leverage a vertical load-balancing scheme where the session is assigned to the most loaded machine and pack it. Vertical load balancing helps customers optimize costs in cloud environments.
- Graphical Workloads using AMD-based GPU instances — We are very excited about the availability of the new AMD-based GPU instances in Azure. Customers can now leverage these instances to deliver graphically intensive applications to their end-users in conjunction with HDX 3D Pro technologies.
- Bundle with Citrix Workspace — For even more functionality, you can bundle Citrix Managed Desktops with our Citrix Workspace Standard offering that includes Citrix Files and storage connectors, and leverage workspace intelligence, micro apps, and virtual assistance.
At Citrix, we’re committed to helping organizations of all sizes enable a flexible and dynamic workspace infrastructure that empowers employees to work safely and remotely in a secure way and keep business moving forward. For organizations that lack the IT capacity or resources to deploy and manage virtual desktops on their own, Citrix Managed Desktops can be a great turnkey solution to deploy desktops and apps quickly as a month-to-month solution and pay as you go.
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