“Citrix is just to make the IT department’s life easier” is one of the more interesting criticisms I’ve heard from a user with a poorly performing Citrix deployment.

At Lanware we have always been fascinated by how this technology could be so powerful if deployed correctly yet at the same time spread havoc if configured incorrectly.

We receive many calls from frustrated Financial Services firms asking us to “health check” their Citrix environment. The reason people come to us is that on average within Financial Services industry, only 10% of Desktops are virtualised using technologies like Citrix, yet at Lanware we’ve achieved approximately 60%. So what’s our secret?

Here we have identified the top five areas where people are getting it wrong.

1. Citrix is for everyone

Citrix is not the right solution for every user, for example if your user is on the move with intermittent or poor connectivity, then it’s no surprise your Citrix is performing poorly. Citrix is network connection dependent.

2. Citrix will save me money

Citrix is not a cost saving exercise. Citrix done properly, particular Virtual Desk Infrastructure (VDI) means you need significant computing power and licensing in the Data Centre. This is more expensive than a modern desktop, but the benefits are there if you get it right for your users

3. Citrix doesn’t need experts

Specialist skill-sets are required. Just because your team can support and manage a physical desktop doesn’t mean they can support Citrix.

4. Citrix is the root cause of problems

From experience, Citrix gets the blame for everything. As Citrix is a different delivery model for your applications, we often see Citrix getting all the blame from users when anything goes wrong – It must be Citrix. Company’s even go so far to not use the word Citrix in their service catalogue

5. Citrix is easy to deploy

Updates are often where it goes wrong. One of the benefits of Citrix is it’s a centralised system, this means the update/management of desktop or app can all be done off a “master image” – this is great as it cuts down time to update, but if you get it wrong it can spread problems to everyone! Even small things like changes in daylight savings can cause issues. Within financial service where there are certain applications which everyone uses e.g. Bloomberg, you need to know how to deploy in Citrix

Overall this technology continues to remain incredible powerful, if deployed correctly, for the right use case. With the world moving to Software-as-a-Service, the need for Citrix to “web enable” apps like office is reducing but it’s still set to play a key role to put all your desktop apps in the cloud alongside your application servers.