What is Changing with Virtual Apps Essentials?

Citrix announced that its Virtual Apps Essentials offering would no longer be sold after October 31, 2023, and that by May 31, 2024, the entire service would be shut down. Virtual Apps Essentials was a service that customers could purchase through the Azure marketplace and allowed them to publish applications and hosted shared desktops from workloads in Azure. It was a simple and efficient solution that when released allowed customers to quickly provision the service and get applications to their users. Since its release the Azure platform has evolved significantly as well as the Citrix DaaS solution. Because of these enhancements, and a desire to streamline its offerings, Citrix will no longer provide the Citrix Apps Essentials service. The go forward solution for customers will be the Citrix DaaS Standard for Azure solution.

Customers currently leveraging this solution will need to come up with a migration plan. While this may seem like a burden, it will also unlock additional value items for customers not currently available with Virtual Apps Essentials.

What is Available to You Now?

Citrix DaaS Standard for Azure will allow customers to continue to provide their resources from Azure just like Virtual Apps Essentials. However, the DaaS platform offers additional value customers can leverage. Some key examples include:

• Ability to provide single session VDI – Virtual Apps Essentials is restricted to Server based multi-session workloads. If applications or user behavior necessitate a single session workload it was not possible, until now. Provision your Windows 10/11 workloads along with your existing multi-session server workloads and have unified management for both.
• Workspace Environment Management– Customers can now leverage the Workspace Environment Management service in DaaS Standard for Azure. This allows administrators to provide a customized and streamlined user experience with improved logon times and management capabilities. Resource management tools allow for improving scalability of workloads which can lead to saved costs for cloud compute.
• VDA upgrade service – reduce the management by allowing Citrix to manage the updates for agents.
• Session Recording– Improve the ability of administrators to troubleshoot user issues by having the ability to record sessions. Admins can review recordings later to get further information about user issues. Session recording also allows organizations to ensure data is being secured properly and provide accountability to regulators.
• Global app configuration service – Customize and secure end users Citrix Workspace app that are connecting. Gone are the days of traditional software delivery and customization. End users install the Citrix Workspace App and admins can apply appropriate settings when users connect to their organizations Citrix cloud tenant.
• Built in Autoscale –Streamline Azure compute consumption costs by intelligently managing load and scheduled based power management capabilities per delivery group. Trend cost savings to assist with proper instance sizing and consumption planning.

How Choice Solutions Can Help You

Choice Solutions knows that any change can be a challenge for customers. Schedules and resources are tight for everyone. We want to make sure this transition is as seamless as possible for customers to allow them to continue focusing on their business. With this in mind, Choice has developed a jump start service tailored to transitioning customers from Virtual Apps Essentials to Citrix DaaS Standard on Azure. Our engineers, with decades of IT and Citrix experience, will plan out the migration of your company’s existing workloads to the new Citrix DaaS on Azure service. We will cover the operational differences between the two Citrix services and develop a plan to take your existing workloads and migrate them to the new service. We will assist you in migrating your Citrix and Microsoft policies, so the user experience remains the same. To make the transition as seamless as possible we will also plan out migrating your organizations’ Workspace URL.

To ensure you take full advantage of your new service, Choice Solutions will provide a workshop to go through the new functionality available. We want to make sure you are informed to fully leverage your newly unlocked capabilities.

If your company currently leverages Virtual Apps Essentials, let us at Choice Solutions help you ensure your ongoing success. Reach out to your sales representative, email sales@choicesolutions.com, utilize the form at the end of this article, or call 800-486-1541 and we will get in touch with you and on your way to new levels of end user productivity.