Desktops as a Service (DaaS) is experiencing rapid growth as companies recognize the benefits of centralization and standardization of VDI. Many organizations are attracted to the simplicity of having a provider perform basic management on their behalf. DaaS offers many advantages to any business by simplifying operations and delivering Windows desktops and apps securely to its workforce. We recently published an e-book — Technology is complex, Desktops as a Service is not — that covers the benefits of DaaS today.

There are many vendors to choose from in today’s DaaS market, and that poses a challenge. Which solution will simplify your management of apps and desktops, yet be flexible and robust enough to meet the ever-changing needs of the business? Citrix Managed Desktops is a robust DaaS offering that not only simplifies the deployment of apps and desktops to your workforce, but also provides valuable features not found in other DaaS solutions.

With Citrix Managed Desktops, we’ve focused our attention on three key areas — simplicity, flexibility, and experience — so we can deliver the best solution for your workforce. Let’s take a closer look at how Citrix Managed Desktops excels in these areas versus the competition.

Built with Simplicity in Mind

Like any DaaS solution, simplicity is key to a great experience. Citrix Managed Desktops is easy to deploy for anyone with any level of IT experience. The turnkey, web-based console provides simple to use functionality that enables the admin to choose machine type, deployment region, and the number of machines so they can create their first catalog in minutes. Citrix Managed Desktops gives admins straightforward controls to manage both apps (Windows and SaaS) and desktops (Windows 10, Windows 7) from a single unified solution. Gone are the days of managing separate solutions to deliver Windows apps and desktops. With Citrix Managed Desktops, you get a single pane of glass to manage both.

Citrix offers both domain-joined and non-domain-joined apps and desktops, making it easy to assign them to any user. For users who aren’t part of your domain — like a contractor or seasonal worker — the admin can rapidly provision a desktop to an external user and invite them on the fly, ensuring they access sensitive resources from a secured desktop. Prefer to integrate Citrix Managed Desktops with your on-prem Active Directory implementation? Citrix has an easy AD integration tool. In only a few clicks you can integrate Azure-hosted virtual desktops with your on-prem Active Directory.

Citrix also incorporates built-in monitoring and management at any scale, making it easy to deploy large volumes of desktops and apps and manage them from the same console. IT no longer needs to incorporate third-party monitoring and management solutions or write their own code to get metrics or manage deployments. It’s all in the box, ready to use.

A Solution that Grows with Your Business

You need your DaaS solution to be robust enough to grow with your business. Many DaaS solutions today enable you to deploy small-to-medium sized deployments without any issues. But as your needs scale up, there become limits on what type of desktop can be deployed along with a significant per user cost increase.

Citrix Managed Desktops can grow with your business. It’s flexible enough to deliver the desktop you need for any situation. Choose from Windows Server 2016, 2019, and 2012 R2 (for legacy solution needs), Windows RDS and Windows Virtual Desktop (Windows 10 single-session/multi-session and Windows 7 ESU).

The new, multi-session Windows 10 technology continues to drive down total cost of ownership (TCO) to give you the Windows experience you need from Azure. In fact, if you have interest in leveraging Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD), Citrix Managed Desktops is authorized by Microsoft to deliver benefits to WVD and is considered one of the simplest, fastest ways to deploy and manage WVD workloads.

All this gives you the flexibility to deliver the customized desktop or application your users need when you need it, helping your IT team to take on any task and help meet the ever-changing business landscape.

A Great Experience Equals Happy Employees

Let’s face it, a poor desktop experience will lead to an unhappy and less productive workforce. Employees (especially millennials and remote workers) expect seamless access to their work and applications from anywhere on any device. While some DaaS vendors offer a basic, “good enough” experience, at Citrix we know that if the employee has a lagging desktop or sluggish application experience, productivity will suffer. Citrix is recognized throughout the industry for our HDX (high definition experience) technology, which enables a crisp, clean experience each time your workers log in while enabling employees to get their job done on any device (including laptops, tablets, thin clients, or Chromebooks).

Our partnership with Microsoft enables Citrix solutions to incorporate key productivity tools like Office, Teams, and Skype for Business to be virtualized and delivered with optimum performance. Pair that with the availability and expansive reach of Microsoft Azure and you can deploy apps and desktops globally to workers on the device they prefer to use.

Citrix Managed Desktops is the desktops as a service technology that is both simple to manage and provides the flexibility to meet the needs of your business now and in the future. It gives your workforce the high-performance experience they need to get their work done and to stay productive from anywhere, on any device.

Explore Citrix Managed Desktops and see what it can do for your business. Sign up for an evaluation today or learn more about Citrix Managed Desktops.