Citrix Cloud
What is Citrix Cloud?
Citrix Cloud is a management and delivery platform for IT administrators to design, deploy and manage virtual desktops and applications, and other services, such as file sharing, on any device.
IT administrators can use Citrix Cloud -- also known as Citrix cloud services -- to deploy and manage workloads from a public cloud, private cloud, on-premises hardware or a combination of all three. To deliver resources to users, administrators use the Citrix Cloud management console to click on the services they want users to be able to access, and the users receive a link which takes them to Citrix StoreFront, an enterprise app store where users can see all the resources they are allowed to use, including email and third-party apps.
History of Citrix Cloud
Citrix first announced its Citrix Workspace Cloud service in May 2015. It hit the market in August of the same year. Citrix rebranded it as Citrix Cloud in May 2016. Today, Citrix Cloud offers numerous services including DaaS, Citrix Analytics, ITSM Adapter, the Citrix Workspace app, Citrix Endpoint Management, Citrix Analytics for Security and Citrix Secure Private Access.
Citrix Cloud's key features
Citrix Cloud provides centralized management for virtual desktops, software and other services based in Citrix's public cloud. It also uses single sign-on (SSO).
The Citrix Cloud Connector, which ties the platform into Microsoft Active Directory, enables IT admins to configure which users can access which applications and data based on their specific locations.
Citrix Cloud also includes Smart Tools, which aims to help with lifecycle management, automated resource deployment and migration to the latest versions of Citrix DaaS. In addition, Smart Tools monitors an organization's virtual app and desktop deployments for problems, and then resolves them when they arise.
Citrix Cloud pricing
Citrix Cloud uses subscription-based pricing through which organizations pay per user, per year. Though there are many ways to bundle different licenses together, there are four main packages for the DaaS cloud services to choose from: Citrix DaaS Standard, Citrix DaaS Advanced Plus, Citrix DaaS Premium and Citrix DaaS Premium Plus.
The pricing for these plans reflects access to certain end-user virtual desktop aspects of Citrix Cloud and does not reflect the total cost of ownership (TCO). However, the pricing is $10 per user, per month for the standard plan; $13 per user, per month for the advanced plan, $20 per user, per month for premium and $23 per user, per month for premium plus.
Products similar to Citrix Cloud include CloudJumper's Cloud Workspace Management Suite and VMware Workspace One.
