What can be more stressful than looking for ways to ensure productivity when the workforce is working in different countries? 2020 was a big wake up call to get ready for the future as businesses faced various challenges with remote work models. Companies that went fully remote in a couple of days in the first COVID wave can surely relate! Have you ever thought of a way to provide resources to the employees to perform their tasks from anywhere? How will you keep up with dynamic business needs while keeping everything in place? Having a cloud-based virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) managed by a service provider for your employees is a great way to solve many of these issues. Cloud VDI is a technology delivering cloud-based workspace to your employees, giving them access to all business applications from any device. With cloud VDI deployment, your employees can be productive, no matter where they’re working from. This solution is ideal for firms where employees work in a hybrid mode. Cloud-based deployment models have seen a significant hike after the pandemic, but one must understand that not all cloud VDI models are the same. There are various companies that offer reliable, secure VDI models. Citrix Virtual Desktops and Amazon WorkSpaces are two virtual desktop solutions ruling the market today. Let us take a look at Citrix-managed Desktops and AWS WorkSpaces to find the fit that’s best for you.
Amazon WorkSpaces Vs. Citrix: Know Which One Suits your Business Needs
1. Pricing
Citrix Virtual Desktop Pricing Scenario: With the Citrix Virtual Desktops and Applications, you have a yearly contract in which you pay only for the resources you use. The one-year plan costs you USD 31.88 per user, which includes various essential features such as SSO and multifactor authentication for all apps and intelligent capabilities like micro-apps and personalized feeds. This plan comes with unlimited file storage powered by Citrix Content Collaboration Standard service. Thus, the cost associated with Citrix is about 40% lower than that of Amazon WorkSpaces. Moreover, going for a managed service provider who runs virtual desktops on the Citrix platform will be more cost-friendly for you as the service provider manages every aspect of the service and charges you on a subscription basis.Bringing The Best of Citrix: Managed Virtual desktops Services
Amazon WorkSpaces Pricing Scenario:
Amazon VDI WorkSpaces is billed on a monthly or hourly basis, which means that you can have a fixed monthly rate per desktop per user for the bundle used. Thus, it doesn’t require an upfront investment to deploy AWS. Monthly billing plan: This kind of plan gives unlimited usage and is suited for workers looking to use AWS VDI as their primary desktop. Pricing depends on the country. For instance, in the US East, a standard 2vCPU with 4GB RAM per instance will cost you 33.00 USD for monthly billing. Hourly billing plan: This type of plan is ideal for firms with contract employees, freelancers, or short-term workers. This pricing in US East with configurations as mentioned above will cost you 55.25 USD For both monthly and hourly billing plans, additional storage per user is charged at 0.10 USD /GB, and an application bundle including Microsoft Office Professional Plus, Trend Micro security, and other utilities is charged at an additional 15 USD per month.We’re making it easier to create your ideal digital WorkSpaces with an ACE-managed virtual desktop on Citrix platform. See how!!
2. Scalability
Citrix VDI: In terms of scalability, both are scalable and reliable. However, IT leaders in reviews state, ‘We have really leveraged Smart Tools to be able to scale up and down. They let us see what the cost looks like because that is always a consideration. An organization always wants to be able to build the right amount of resources to serve your needs, but not more than what is actually needed, because that will just cost an organization more money. The Analytics, Smart Tools, and Machine Creation Services are allowed to do all of these things in a transparent way as well as scale up and down very quickly.’ With Citrix VDI, you can give your team the desired resources in a hassle-free way. Citrix model is designed to adapt to dynamic business modes. Its licensing options start at 25 users and can go up to the enterprise level. Moreover, if you have 2500+ users, you can leverage discounted volume pricing with a wide array of virtual hardware and software. Amazon VDI WorkSpaces: Next up, the scalability in AWS, where you don’t have to bother about storage and computing, is also considerable. However, you may face latency issues if they scale up and down quickly.3. Performance and Reliability
Citrix Virtual Desktop: Finally, coming to performance and reliability, both Citrix and Amazon offer good performance. Citrix virtual apps and desktops enable you to have the flexibility to access organizational resources on any device they work on, be it an iPhone, Mac, or Android, and the user experience is the same. The analytics in Citrix help them to identify the pain points and mitigate them on the go. Being an industry leader, Citrix is platform agnostic. AWS Virtual Desktop: However, with AWS, you might face latency issues in the round-trip time (RTT). Plus, there is a little bit of graphic and video conferencing issues on various platforms such as WebEx, Teams, or Skype.4. Deployment
Citrix Virtual Desktops and Applications: The initial process of Citrix setup is an entirely straightforward process. As you are hosting apps in Citrix Cloud, they manage them and offer you connectivity. And there is no associated maintenance and updations. As Citrix Cloud supports every OS, you can deploy it on a thin client running on endpoints; that’s it. Citrix makes sure that infrastructure is up and running. For the deployment, you will not require an IT team. Only some inputs were rather specific to the organization, such as the kind of environment you need, service accounts, and more. Citrix ensures to create a footprint within your organization’s infrastructure by simplifying it to another level. READ MORE: How Safe is Your Data with ACE Virtual Desktop Infrastructure? AWS WorkSpaces: Conversely, Amazon VDI lets you provision on Windows, Apple iPad, Amazon Fire Tablet, Android Tablet, and more. With AWS WorkSpaces, you have the power to provision clusters of desktops with centralized hardware and software bundles. This allows you to personalize your team members by offering them everything they need to perform optimally.Experience Secure and Flexible Virtual WorkSpaces with ACE Managed Cloud
Now that you have evaluated the pricing, performance, and deployment features of both offerings, what will you choose? Well, managed virtual desktops are a great option when it comes to having secure, flexible remote WorkSpaces for your employees. However, these solutions lack in terms of manageability, and to get fully managed virtual desktops and applications, it is always advisable to go for a reputed cloud service provider like Ace Cloud Hosting. With 14+ years of experience in the industry and being a strategic partner of Citrix, ACE delivers secure end-to-end desktops on the Citrix platform, thus giving an enhanced experience with all the Citrix benefits. This includes integration, peripheral management, security, compliance, BCDR, and management of the cloud desktop environment. Plus, it brings over substantial cost savings by eliminating highly complex in-house resources and licensing problems, thereby leading to reduced TCO. Deploy Citrix-powered virtual desktops within minutes.
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