If you ended up here to read this, two possibilities:

1. You have heard about the Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) announcement yesterday by Microsoft.
2. You work for Citrix.

Great. I love a great audience.

Before we move ahead and discuss the main topic on this post, how I do believe Citrix screwed it one more time, let’s first briefly cover what Microsoft announced yesterday.

My previous post on the subject, was pretty accurate on what was announced. You can read about the whole thing here. In a nutshell, as expected, WVD is indeed RDmi 2.0 and really a cloud service, providing the services that as of now were done by the RDS components we all know about (RDS Broker, Web Access, Gateway). All this done for you on Azure. Your resources (the machines where the user workload will run) connect to the WVD control plane using an agent. Simple.

Just for the record, on top of the announcement, making WVD available to the general public, albeit still in its ‘Technical Preview’ form, Microsoft also announced that FSLogix and its profile container solution will be available to pretty much everyone on earth shortly (what we predicted as well, mentioning that UPD 2.0 would be FSLogix).

With the basis covered, now let’s talk Citrix. And why I believe Citrix did an extremely poor job explaining the value it adds to the whole thing.

First of all, Citrix does NOT extend WVD. No matter what they say, that is NOT the case. It is like someone saying that a Ferrari extends a Volkswagen. It replaces the damn thing. Simple.

As we know WVD is a whole solution, with a Microsoft provided control plane on Azure, controlling several workloads, from Server OSs to Desktop OSs, all hosted on Azure. That now includes the multi-user Windows 10 workload type. Many people still think WVD is Windows 10 multi-user. It is not the case. Again, it is a platform and more than that, with its OWN control plane.

What is Citrix doing then? Simple and I knew you would ask. They are simply supporting under their OWN cloud-based control plane, A.K.A. ‘Citrix Cloud’, the new workload types. This is exactly what the video that Citrix posted shows. You can see it here on YouTube.

It is exactly the SAME thing they have been doing for ANY workload. Simple. That new workload shown on the video, yes the hot-off-the-press Windows 10 multi-user, is running on Azure but it is NOT a WVD workload. Again, WVD means Microsoft control plane, RDP and so on. If you are using the ‘Citrix Cloud’ and HDX, that is NOT WVD. Period.

By saying it extends WVD, IMHO, Citrix is just making the industry, its customers and even shareholders confused. All the sudden, and thanks to the wrong message, people start wondering if they should then put their ‘Citrix Cloud’ projects on hold and wait until WVD goes GA as they will be able to hop on the Citrix bandwagon as Citrix wrote all over the place that it is ‘extending’ WVD.

The correct message here is simple. Citrix and its ‘Citrix Cloud’ is a much more flexible cloud-hosted control plane (note the word ‘hosted’ instead of ‘based’ – big difference) than WVD as of today. It allows you to host your resources anywhere (on-premises, in the cloud – any cloud, and even using physical PCs) and on top of that, brings its class-leading remote protocol, HDX, not to mention additional bells and whistles like WEM, AppLayering and so on to the table. And can add support for new workload types when another major vendor, in this case Microsoft, releases them. As it did for the new Windows 10 multi-user one.

The paragraph above clearly shows that Citrix is embracing the new workload types under its own cloud solution and how it differs from the Microsoft one. No confusion and right to the point, clearly showing its advantages (in case you need them).

You may or may not agree with what I just wrote but I am certain that we do have a lot of people confused by what Citrix announced/wrote. If it were me, the person behind such a confused and again, IMHO, inaccurate message, would be gone by now. But hey that is just me.

To Citrix, please do a better job when hopping on the hot news announced by a major partner like Microsoft. Make it clear and simple for your customers to understand it. Simple as that.

If I want to be confused, leave it with me; I can certainly call Microsoft and ask about RDS Licensing.

CR