With more and more organizations transitioning to hybrid cloud for scale and business agility, Citrix innovations continue to focus on improving the experience for both the remote worker and the IT admin — no matter which path you’re on in your cloud journey. Today, we are excited to introduce more new technologies and partnerships to help accelerate your cloud transitions, maximize employee productivity, and empower organizations with the ultimate cloud flexibility and choice.

Accelerating Cloud Transitions at Scale

Maintaining hybrid-cloud environments is a cost-effective strategy used worldwide by IT to support new flexible work initiatives. But as deployment sizes grow, IT teams can get bogged down in image lifecycle maintenance, software updates, and other tasks while also keeping the business running smoothly. To help IT streamline complex deployments Citrix is introducing game-changing automation technologies, as well as strategic solution partnerships, for accelerated customer cloud migrations.

Bringing Citrix’s Innovative Technology to Public Clouds

A technology known and loved for years by Citrix admins, Citrix Provisioning Service (PVS) is a software streaming technology that enables desktops and apps to be provisioned and re-provisioned in real time, from a single shared golden image. Today we’re bringing this advanced, networking-based image provisioning technology to Azure and Google Cloud. This technology enables public cloud-hosted VMs to be rapidly provisioned on the fly and streamed over the network backbone on-demand. Just like a traditional PVS deployment, Citrix PVS for public clouds gives IT the ability to stream hundreds (or thousands) of cloud-hosted virtual machines in minutes.

PVS for Azure is currently in preview and coming soon (targeted for 2022) for Google Cloud. Sign up here to be notified about the PVS for Google Cloud Preview, and to learn more about Citrix PVS for public clouds, check out the video below.

Streamlining Image Management Across Hybrid-Cloud Deployments

IT admins have enough tasks to worry about — creating and managing on-premises-only or cloud-only images no longer needs to be one of those. With Citrix’s new Image Portability Service, you only need to create an image one time — for your on-premises environment, for example — and the service automatically transforms the image for Azure or for Google Cloud. IT only needs to manage a single base image for all public cloud regions and on-premises datacenter locations, then simply select the locations to which they want to deploy it. This on-demand capability is a game-changer for IT, whether it’s implementing a company-wide disaster recovery strategy or simply provisioning images for new employees on a regular basis.

Image Portability Service for Azure and Google Cloud is currently in public preview. Try it out today, and to learn more about this technology, check out the video below and our product documentation.

Making the Move to Azure with Citrix

Citrix and Microsoft continue to work closely to provide joint customers with the most flexible and enhanced remote work solutions available. If you’re new to Azure, or just starting down your cloud journey, the Forrester Total Economic Impact study highlights the cost benefits of a Citrix and Azure solution with up to 153 percent ROI. Once you’re ready to make the move, the Citrix Cloud with Azure Virtual Desktop Migration Guide will help you plan your rollout and define a successful strategy to modernize your deployment. If you’re one of our many existing Citrix + Azure success stories, check out these updates and enhancements:

  • Day 1 support for new operating systems – Windows Server 2022 and Windows 11 — In addition to our recently announced Day 1 support for Windows Server 2022, Citrix is committed to having Day 1 support for the upcoming Windows 11 release. Customers interested in providing the latest and greatest Microsoft OS to end users will roll this out shortly.
  • Citrix products available now in Azure Marketplace for purchase — A wide range of Citrix offerings are now available inside Azure Marketplace, including Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops and Workspace Premium Plus. Organizations can leverage their Azure consumption commitment (MACC/CtC) for Citrix purchases on Azure marketplace today.
  • Azure Active Directory Group Based Support (Preview) — Azure Active Directory Group Based Support now enables IT managers to manage access to Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service based off AAD group membership, with no separate management needed in Citrix Cloud. This simplifies IT admin management and keeps a high level of security, especially with groups with active rotations such as help desk and technical support.
  • Azure Stack HCI 20H2 is now Citrix Ready validated — Azure Stack HCI 20H2 is a Citrix Ready validated solution on Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service that delivers an enterprise-scale, affordable hybrid HCI solution. It provides the latest security, performance, and feature updates through an Azure subscription, enabling IT admins to stay up to date on technologies when merged with Citrix Cloud services. Learn more here.
  • AMD-powered NVv4 instances in Azure is now validated as Citrix Ready — Microsoft Azure NVv4 instances, which deliver security-focused and affordable GPU-partitioning in Azure, are now fully supported by Azure Virtual Desktop and Citrix Cloud services. This flexibility helps to mitigate the challenges of moving from a private data center to Microsoft Azure by enabling Citrix customers to work with familiar, preferred solutions and tools. Learn more here.
  • Siemens NX is also now validated as Citrix Ready — Through Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service and AMD-NVv4 instances in Azure, Siemens NX provides design, engineering, and manufacturing customers with an integrated toolset that coordinates disciplines, preserves data integrity and design intent, and streamlines the entire process. Learn more here.
  • Windows 365 and the Cloud PC era — Citrix and Microsoft have a long history of working together and developing value in the VDI and DaaS space for customers of all sizes, and we’re excited to play a part in Microsoft’s new category, Cloud PC. At Citrix Launchpad: Cloud, we announced that we are working with Microsoft to create complementary solutions with Windows 365. We are currently finalizing our product plan and look forward to sharing the details of those plans when ready.

Automating Citrix Virtual Delivery Agent (VDA) Upgrades

Another way we’re simplifying VDI management is with our new Citrix VDA Upgrade feature. Today Citrix admins often develop custom scripts to facilitate the installation of the Virtual Delivery Agent (VDA) to persistent machines, and they may require frequent updates or different scripts altogether to accommodate fresh intalls or version changes in the VDA installer. To simplify this process, Citrix has developed a new service to automate VDA updates, removing the complexity and time investment required to keep Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktop service up to date on persistent machines. IT admins will have the ability to quickly update VDAs for individual machines or for entire machine catalogs, all within Web Studio for unified management.

This VDA Upgrade feature is coming soon to private preview and will be generally available in early 2022. If you’re interested in the public preview coming later this year, you can sign up here.

Maximizing Employee Productivity and Experience

From an employee perspective, few things are more frustrating than when you urgently need to get work done but the tools at your disposal are letting you down. Citrix has spent years developing innovations that provide remote workers with the space to succeed, even when internet service isn’t working perfectly. From fewer session interruptions to new self-service helpdesk capabilities, Citrix is empowering our customers with the most seamless remote work experience available today.

Improving Uptime and Performance for Mission-Critical Work

Despite air-tight SLAs and heavy infrastructure investments, the reality is that sometimes connectivity gaps to the cloud get in the way. Fortunately, for Citrix customers, productive work no longer needs to come to a halt when they do. Citrix’s new service continuity technology protects workers against identity provider service outages or internet service provider outages with on-prem deployments, so users can stay up and running with Citrix, even when they can’t connect to our cloud service. As long as there is a network connection to the workload location, everything will continue to run.

Service continuity is generally available now for all editions of Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service and Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops Standard for Azure, when using the Citrix Workspace experience. Browser extensions that support service continuity are currently in preview. Learn more about how service continuity works with the demo video below, our product documentation, and this tech brief.

Enhancing Performance in High-Latency Networks

Another way Citrix is helping to keep users productive — despite unpredictable networks — is with our HDX Adaptive Transport technology. HDX Adaptive Transport helps maintain high user experience in long-haul connections, and it is now available at no cost for our Citrix Gateway service customers. With this support, all Citrix Workspace customers using Gateway service for HDX Proxy will be able to use Enlightened Data Transport (EDT) for a superior end-user experience. Learn more about HDX Adaptive Transport for Citrix Gateway service.

Enabling Self-Service Troubleshooting and Resolution

Not only are help desk support tickets draining on IT resources, they can also bring employee productivity to a halt until admins can address them. And while some support requests require proper IT investigation and troubleshooting, user issues can often be resolved with a simple session reset. Today, Citrix is excited to share two ways we’re making it easier and faster than ever for users to resolve their own support requests.

First, Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service is now integrated with ServiceNow Virtual Agent, enabling end users with self-service abilities to resolve common session reset issues, without the need to manually log incidents or create time-consuming service tickets. Users can launch Virtual Agent and request an automated resolution to reset their secure Citrix session, without needing to log a support ticket and then wait for IT to respond. This integration is now available to entitled ServiceNow and Citrix customers, including those with Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops Premium service and Citrix Workspace Premium Plus. You can watch a demo and learn more about this new integration here. For more technical details, check out our tech brief and reference architecture.

Already made the switch to Citrix Workspace? Another way we’re helping to enable user self-service resolution is with our new out-of-the-box Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service microapps. With this integration, Citrix Workspace users can check the status of their associated machines and perform operations such as restart, disconnect, and log off — all from your Citrix Workspace app interface. IT admins can even leverage these microapps to look up machines, view details, put machines into maintenance mode, and restart the machines. Check out how you can maximize your users’ productivity with these new microapps.

Empowering Hybrid-Cloud Flexibility and Choice

Whether you’re planning a full cloud migration, expanding your private cloud environment, or executing on a multi-cloud strategy, Citrix is continuing to develop strategic technology partnerships to support customers through every type of cloud journey.

Simplifying Hybrid Multi-Cloud Management with Citrix and Nutanix

For customers who are running Citrix workloads on Nutanix’s high-performance hyperconverged infrastructure, Citrix has developed a strategic partnership with the global solution provider to provide best-in-class, secure, on-demand access to apps, desktops, and data from any device, at any scale, through Nutanix HCI and hybrid multi-cloud deployments of Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service. Announced last week, Nutanix has chosen Citrix as their preferred end-user computing solution on their cloud platform, and Citrix has named Nutanix as a preferred choice for HCI and hybrid multi-cloud solutions for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service. As result, joint customers can look forward to deepened product alignment, with ensured validation and interoperability of new product features, as well as faster issue resolution times. Read our blog post for more information.

Migrating to Public Clouds with Citrix and VMware

Citrix is all about enabling customer choice and the seamless deployment of workloads in their preferred hybrid-cloud architecture — and now there are more ways than ever to enable cloud migrations. Last year we announced official support of VMwareCloud on AWS. Today VMware customers can now leverage Citrix’s official support for Azure VMware Solution, enabling VMware management of Azure-hosted machines. Official support for Google Cloud VMware Engine, which is currently a Citrix Ready verified solution, is expected by year-end. Additionally, Citrix Ready has verified support for Oracle Cloud VMware Solution and VMware Cloud on Dell EMC.

Learn more about Citrix’s support for Azure VMware Solution with this solution brief.

Partnering for Migration Success

Citrix works with a wide range of global system integrators (GSIs), to harness their solutions and help customers accelerate their IT modernization. One global partner that has developed a great blueprint for enterprise customer desktop migrations to the cloud is Wipro Limited. Wipro’s Virtuadesk solution combined with Citrix DaaS provides customers with a simplified, integrated architecture for cloud-hosted desktops that optimizes cost and enables rapid cloud transformation. GSIs like Wipro can help customers navigate complex regulatory and compliance requirements and provide tens of thousands of employees with a secure, compliant, cloud-hosted solution. Learn more about how Wipro enables enterprises with strong cloud strategies for a competitive advantage.

In addition to GSIs, partners like Rimo3 Cloud, are also providing value-added customer solutions to help customers along their app and desktop migration journey. Rimo3 Cloud, a Citrix Ready validated solution, helps customers determine application suitability for target cloud platforms by verifying the compatibility of any app in any Citrix type of deployment — on-prem and in the cloud. These tests are quick and easy, and when failures occur, a plethora of information is provided for fault analysis, including detailed logs, multiple screenshots, and a recorded video of the test. Learn more about how Rimo3 Cloud can help you assess your migration.

Earlier this year, Citrix announced the Cloud Services program for channel partners to help customers to enhance and accelerate their migration decision and to provide the confidence, trust, choice and support they need. We are happy to announce Envision IT as the first partner to validate their solution offerings with Citrix Cloud services running with AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. Citrix Service Providers like Envision IT can help our customers to deliver a secure cloud migration journey with an excellent end-user experience. Learn more about how Envision IT can provide a proactive approach to maintaining a healthy and optimal Citrix environment including your migration planning and options.

Learn More

If you missed the Citrix Launchpad: Cloud event on LinkedIn Live, you can watch the recordings here to learn more about all of the latest cloud innovations and integrations we announced, including our new ground-breaking Citrix App Delivery and Security Service.

If you’d like to learn more about what’s new with Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, be sure to register for our upcoming webinar on October 21.

The Citrix Launchpad series continues on October 5 with our security session, which will cover zero trust-based solutions that provide intelligent contextual security for all access types and scenarios. Don’t forget to join us for Citrix Launchpad: Work event on October 12, where we unveil the latest innovations in Citrix Workspace and Wrike that fuel employee productivity.

For Citrix Investors

This release contains forward-looking statements which are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The forward-looking statements in this release do not constitute guarantees of future performance. Those statements involve a number of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, including risks associated with the impact of the global economy and uncertainty in the IT spending environment, revenue growth and recognition of revenue, products and services, their development and distribution, product demand and pipeline, economic and competitive factors, the Company’s key strategic relationships, acquisition and related integration risks as well as other risks detailed in the Company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Citrix assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking information contained in this press release or with respect to the announcements described herein. The development, release and timing of any features or functionality described for our products remains at our sole discretion and is subject to change without notice or consultation. The information provided is for informational purposes only and is not a commitment, promise or legal obligation to deliver any material, code or functionality and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions or incorporated into any contract.