Join us at Microsoft Ignite in Chicago November 19-21, and meet with experts to understand how we are working towards solving your IT challenges and creating better solutions for your ever-changing workforce.
Citrix and Microsoft have been transforming how people work for over three decades and driving the future of modern work. Earlier this year, Citrix and Microsoft signed an eight-year strategic agreement to deepen our collaboration and support the development of new cloud and AI solutions with an integrated product roadmap. As Citrix strengthens our solutions, we put our customers at the center of our efforts to make sure our innovations deliver on your priorities.
Enabling modern work with virtualization
Citrix is committed to helping customers deliver the applications and data employees need, with the security and flexibility technology that IT requires. As priorities have changed, our solutions have evolved to better support you. We’ve seen a resurgence in interest in technologies supporting modern work, with a corresponding rise in user locations, endpoints, and networks. This has led to sprawling IT complexity, increased costs, and more operational overhead.
Citrix enables customers to extend the power of Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365. We help customers effectively migrate to and manage the Microsoft Azure cloud, Azure Virtual Desktop, and Windows 365 deployments. With the Citrix platform, you can strengthen your security with zero-trust network access (ZTNA) capabilities, elevate user experiences with industry-leading protocols, and boost IT efficiency with unified management and tooling.
To learn more about our latest announcements, please join us at Booth #413, and be sure to join us for our 12-minute live theater session.
If you aren’t heading to Ignite in person, take advantage of Microsoft’s free virtual option. Here are some key announcements from Citrix at Ignite 2024:
Ignite 2024 Announcements
New Entitlement for Citrix customers using Windows 365
We are introducing a new entitlement for current Citrix customers which enables them to integrate Citrix with an unlimited number of Windows 365 Cloud PCs at no additional cost, provided that they already have the requisite eligible licenses from Microsoft. This enables a broad set of Citrix capabilities, including HDX technologies, Workspace Environment Manager, uberAgent, Secure Private Access, and more on Windows 365.
This new entitlement replaces the Citrix HDX Plus for Windows 365 standalone license previously available in market.
Support for Windows 365 Frontline
Speaking of 24/7 workloads, we’re excited to announce that Citrix now supports Windows 365 Frontline. Windows 365 Frontline is designed to help you save costs with licenses optimized for employees working in shifts, teams spread across different time zones, and contract workers. Citrix now enhances the Windows 365 Frontline Cloud PC experience and all of its generally available features by delivering HDX user experience technologies, additional security, and optimized collaboration tools.
Support for GPU-enabled Cloud PCs
Windows 365 offers GPU-enabled Cloud PCs with optimized performance for graphically heavy workloads.
With advanced graphical capabilities from Citrix such as HDX 3D Pro, you can now benefit from enhanced delivery for high frames-per-second (FPS) sessions and reduced graphics CPU consumption. This enables you to deliver high-quality graphics to employees, even while optimizing CPU resources. HDX 3D Pro provides an optimized user experience over any bandwidth, ensuring that even users connecting over challenging networks can continue to get their work done.
Windows Server 2025 Support
We are excited to announce Day-0 support for Windows Server 2025. Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 2407 and following will support Windows Server 2025 as an operating system for both infrastructure and Virtual Delivery Agent (VDA) components. We know keeping up to date with the latest operating systems is essential to get the latest features, security patches, and bug fixes to keep your environments running smoothly.
In particular, this support is critical for customers who run native Microsoft 365 applications. Support for Microsoft 365 applications on Windows Server 2022 ends in 2026, and migrating to Windows Server 2025 will extend that support to 2029. With this Day-0 support, joint customers will continue to be supported running multi-session Office workloads on-premises or in Azure.
Support for New Microsoft Teams VDI optimizations
In July 2024, Microsoft announced the public preview of a new optimization solution for Microsoft Teams in virtual desktops. With improved performance via the new SlimCore media engine, and a new architecture designed for seamless updates, the new optimization offers many benefits for customers, including newer codecs and a broader feature set.
We are excited to announce that Citrix fully supports the new SlimCore-based optimization (currently on Windows endpoints only) once it is GA later this year. Citrix HDX Teams optimization still helps extend optimization to non-Windows-based endpoints, meaning your employees can stay connected on any device with a high-definition multimedia experience with Microsoft Teams.
Azure Cost Optimization Reports
When you’re running a cloud-based environment, you need to know where your costs are coming from. Citrix is here to give you that visibility with new cost optimization reports in Citrix Monitor. With insights on cost-savings benefits from different capabilities such as Citrix Autoscale, MCS IO, and end-user actions – you can show leadership how your innovation is delivering under budget.
The analysis doesn’t stop there. With deep insights into the cost of workloads, broken down by allocation, delivery group, and even virtual machine (VM) series – you can easily identify what’s driving costs in your environment. We don’t just show you this information, we translate it into actionable insights with cost modeling – with prescriptive recommendations on reserved instances to help you maximize savings.
![Image shows a graph charting the cost of a one-year reserved instance plan versus a 3-year plan. The graph shows the optimal reservations for both plans.]](https://www.citrix.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/image4-1.png)
Keep up to date with Citrix news on Microsoft
We have been hard at work supporting and expanding on the latest and greatest that Microsoft has to offer. We have too many things to share to include here, so be sure to check out our other blogs on how to use MSIX to automate your app packaging and to deploy Teams in your environment. If you’re looking to see what other administrators are doing, be sure to check out the Citrix Community for discussion posts, articles, and community webinars! We are here to support our customers with their Citrix and Microsoft deployments – for detailed, technical articles check out Citrix Tech Zone! Whether you are an architect, consultant, engineer, or technical IT manager, you will learn from experts and gain insights into Citrix technologies and integrations for successful deployments of your Citrix environment through articles, tech best practices, videos, and much more.
Make sure you’re getting the most out of your Citrix licenses and entitlements. If you miss our session at Ignite 2024, you can watch it on demand here. For additional resources and to learn more about our partnership, visit our Citrix and Microsoft partnership page.
Disclaimer: This publication may include references to the planned testing, release and/or availability of Cloud Software Group, Inc. products and services. The information provided in this publication is for informational purposes only, its contents are subject to change without notice, and it should not be relied on in making a purchasing decision. The information is not a commitment, promise or legal obligation to deliver any material, code, or functionality. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for products remains at the sole discretion of Cloud Software Group, Inc.
