Citrix Question

Let me start by saying that I am a CCA and absolutely love Citrix. In our environment, it is perfectly suited to our needs.

The reasons a company may not want to use it (as I see it anyway) are:

1) It requires expertise to set up and administer. This skill and training is not extremely common yet.

2) Not every Windows or DOS app is compatible and some require a degree of tweaking to get them to work solidly.

3) Not all hardware is compatible (Printers, etc)

4) The server is doing ALL the work so the
hardware requirements for this computing model is quite high. If you have solid workstations and do not have High end servers, switching to a Citrix model may not be the best short term solution. If, however, your workstationsare getting obsolete and you want to upgrade performance across the board, Citrix may be just what you need.

5) There is a single point of failure (if the servers are not load balanced).

6)The more dependent your users are on the servers, thegreater the outcry if anything does fail. You could have a situation where everyone in the company was unable to logon because of a problem. In a Server Based network, your maintenance and monitoring of the servers has to be meticulous.

7) And of course the one objection that always comes up - cost. Citrix has outstanding products that can make your job as an administrator a breeze much of the time...but they are not cheap. I believe that in this - as in many things - you get what you pay for...but many a CFO will grumble when you request $5000+ for software and another $5000+ for a server to run it on. Add multiple copies and servers for stability and suddenly you see some big numbers.

Hope this helps...I have often answered "Why would I want to use Citrix"...this is probably the first time I've been asked why someone wouldn't.

Good luck!

We were a Citrix user and needed additional user licenses. The cost of the additional licenses covered most of the cost of a new Windows 2000 server the includes terminal services. It was not that we were unhappy with Citrix, for the amount of growth, it was cheaper to switch to Windows 2000 server... which we have been running successfully for almost a year.

We were a Citrix user and needed additional user licenses. The cost of the additional licenses covered most of the cost of a new Windows 2000 server the includes terminal services. It was not that we were unhappy with Citrix, for the amount of growth, it was cheaper to switch to Windows 2000 server... which we have been running successfully for almost a year.

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