Hello everybody!
Yes, I know there was a lots of discussions like this, but here I would like to review this from Enterprise perspective. What it means? Well, from the perspective of the large enterprise organization with more than 50,000 employees. I know RDS very well, and I know it works amazingly well for the mid-size company like 1,000 people because in average you are looking for 50-60 people login via RDS which means you can have literally one good server with 32GB memory and you are done. But what about when you have thousands of "Active" remote users?
I would like to start with one example. APP provisioning. Yes, it is easy to do. If the APP is actually installed you can use fancy GUI (and honestly I like new GUI from 2012 R2) to add (publish) an APP to users, or (if the APP is not actually installed - e.g. shortcut to external .EXE file, or just a WEB APP URL) you can use PowerShell instead. It is quick an easy on one server, but what if you have 20 or even 50 servers and you need to do this 50 times? Is that something can be automated?
Another thing. Yes, yes, I'm talking about Citrix Receiver. And Yes, I'm well aware that Microsoft bought iTap as basis for remote desktop apps so they came up to Android and Apple market with the client right away. And client not bad, I tried and I like it. Most important that client provides "APP streaming" feature when you actually don't have to get remote desktop - something that many administrators trying to avoid these days. Use APP publishing and streaming instead.
Just wanted to mention Chrome OS. Yeas this is special animal by itself. This is not Android, and it does not have a "free, vendor-provided" RDP client. But Citrix does have client for Chrome OS - it was launched last year, Google and Citrix did it together. What is the impact? Well, one of the possible options that is being considered is to use Chrome OS devices as Thin Client for Remote Access. Chrome Books are nice inexpensive replacement for expensive Windows Laptops, and Chrome Box is good replacement for more expensive Desktop computers. But missing RDP client makes this "mission impossible".
On the other hand I have a feeling that I might know why Microsoft won't really want to make a client for Chrome OS. Because if they do, guess what can happen? Large organizations like mine will buy a lot and Chrome devices (Books and Boxes) which defeat the main purpose - dominate the world of personal computing. So this is the big dilemma - release (and lose market to Google Chrome Things) or not to release (and lose market to Citrix because if company wants to use Chrome Things the only way is to have Citrix on the back).
So the bottom line question is: CAN RDS REALLY REPLACE CITRIX TODAY?
Any suggestions, thoughts or comments are welcome!