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950
Analysts
13,000
Client
Organizations
200,000+
Client
Interactions
Vertical
Coverage
in Nine
Industries
5,500
Benchmarks
10,200
Media
Inquiries
World's
Largest
Community
of CIOs
70+
Conferences
75% of
Global 500
2,100
Consulting
Engagements
Clients in
85 Countries
72% of
Fortune 1000
500
Consultants
Gartner at a Glance
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any form without Gartner's prior written permission. If you are authorized to access this publication, your use of it is subject to the Usage Guidelines for Gartner Services posted on
gartner.com. The information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. Gartner di sclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness
or adequacy of such information and shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies in such information. This publication consists of the opinions of Gartner's research
organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice. Although Gartner research may include a
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on the independence and integrity of Gartner research, see "Guiding Principles on Independence and Objectivity."
Gunnar Berger
@gunnarwb
VDI Punch-out
Comparing Citrix, Microsoft and VMware solutions
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
GUNNAR BERGERS
2014 Gartner
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2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
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GUNNAR
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RESEARCH DIRECTOR
END USER COMPUTING
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Agenda
Overview of the GTP process for comparing VDI
solutions
Quick look at the full evaluation criteria
Drill down to the top 10 differentiating features
between vendors
Overview
#VDIpunchout
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
The Process
Criteria Selection via a team of
experts
Criteria categorized into
Required, Preferred, Optional
Single Yes/No answers to
Criteria
Strengths:
- Vendor neutral
- Extremely in-depth
Weaknesses:
- Does not analyze the strength of
the technology, it merely exists or
does not exist. (Thats where the
analyst comes in)
#VDIpunchout
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
The Criteria
User Experience (40)
Management (46)
Business Continuity (10)
Infrastructure (25)
Security (20)
Vendor Licensing & Support (16)
#VDIpunchout
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Citrix XenDesktop Microsoft VDI Suite
VMware Horizon View
Citrix Profile

From:
San Jose, CA
Age:
19
Market cap:
11B
Microsoft Profile

From:
Redmond, wa
Age:
28
Market cap:
303B
VMware Profile

From:
Palo Alto, CA
Age:
16
Market cap:
42B
VS. VS.
Push start!
Rakesh Narasimhan
Brad Anderson
Sumit Dhawan
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
ROUND
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Protocol
10
Citrix Microsoft VMware
Low bandwidth scenarios
Loss
Latency
High end multi-media
Multimedia redirection
(DirectX, OpenGL, Flash,
H.264)
Supports WAN Optimization
#VDIpunchout
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Protocol
11
Citrix Microsoft VMware
Low bandwidth scenarios
Loss
Latency
High end multi-media
Multimedia redirection
(DirectX, OpenGL, Flash,
H.264)
Supports WAN Optimization
#VDIpunchout
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
ROUND
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
GPU
13
Citrix Microsoft VMware
If you look closely at GPU
what you see is really
direct mapping of a GPU
but with a NVIDIA
resource scheduler in the
middle. This allows for an
excellent experience and
better use of the GPU.
The biggest drawback is
that it only works on
XenServer.
Microsoft offers no GPU
technologies in their VDI
stack. Even on the SBC
side of the house they
required bare metal installs
of RDS to support sharing
a GPU with RemoteFX.
Hyper-V lacks basic PCIe
pass-through.
VMware supports both
virtual shared graphics
adapters (vSGA) and
virtual direct graphics
adapters (vDGA). A direct
1:1 mapping of a GPU
gives outstanding results
but lacks scalability. The
Shared GPU approach
has the benefit of not
being tied to a specific
vendor but leaves a lot to
be desired.
#VDIpunchout
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
GPU
14
Citrix Microsoft VMware
If you look closely at GPU
what you see is really
direct mapping of a GPU
but with a NVIDIA
resource scheduler in the
middle. This allows for an
excellent experience and
better use of the GPU.
The biggest drawback is
that it only works on
XenServer.
Microsoft offers no GPU
technologies in their VDI
stack. Even on the SBC
side of the house they
required bare metal installs
of RDS to support sharing
a GPU with RemoteFX.
Hyper-V lacks basic PCIe
pass-through.
VMware supports both
virtual shared graphics
adapters (vSGA) and
virtual direct graphics
adapters (vDGA). A direct
1:1 mapping of a GPU
gives outstanding results
but lacks scalability. The
Shared GPU approach
has the benefit of not
being tied to a specific
vendor but leaves a lot to
be desired.
#VDIpunchout
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
ROUND
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Physical and Virtual Image Management
16
Citrix Microsoft VMware
While Citrix does have a
powerful product in
Provisioning Server that
and PXE boot physical
boxes and VMs, it lacks
the functionality needed
for true single image
management between
physical and virtual. As
the driver stack will vary
greatly between these two
platforms.
The Microsoft stack
doesnt attack the image
management issue at the
image level instead they
leverage SCCM as the
single image solution
between virtual and
physical. This has merit in
a fully persistent desktop
world.
The Mirage product offers
the only single image
management concept of
the three platforms.
Concept because
Gartner has yet to talk to a
client using this at scale,
and we have concerns of
how its architecture would
hold up at larger scales.
#VDIpunchout
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Physical and Virtual Image Management
17
Citrix Microsoft VMware
While Citrix does have a
powerful product in
Provisioning Server that
and PXE boot physical
boxes and VMs, it lacks
the functionality needed
for true single image
management between
physical and virtual. As
the driver stack will vary
greatly between these two
platforms.
The Microsoft stack
doesnt attack the image
management issue at the
image level instead they
leverage SCCM as the
single image solution
between virtual and
physical. This has merit in
a fully persistent desktop
world.
The Mirage product offers
the only single image
management concept of
the three platforms.
Concept because
Gartner has yet to talk to a
client using this at scale,
and we have concerns of
how its architecture would
hold up at larger scales.
#VDIpunchout
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
ROUND
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
OS, Application, User Layering
19
Citrix Microsoft VMware
In 2011 Citrix acquired
Ringcube which offered to
separate user content into
a separate layer. This
technology turned into
Personal vDisk and allows
for applications and
persona to be captured in
this layer. This technology
also supports a
departmental installed
apps layer. However the
OS is managed at a
different area via
PVS/MCS.
RDS supports a User
Profile Disks which do very
basic profile redirection to
a VHDX file. No
application or OS layering
is supported.
Mirage supports OS,
application and user
layering all from the same
interface. It also supports
an unlimited number of
layers.
#VDIpunchout
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
OS, Application, User Layering
20
Citrix Microsoft VMware
In 2011 Citrix acquired
Ringcube which offered to
separate user content into
a separate layer. This
technology turned into
Personal vDisk and allows
for applications and
persona to be captured in
this layer. This technology
also supports a
departmental installed
apps layer. However the
OS is managed at a
different area via
PVS/MCS.
RDS supports a User
Profile Disks which do very
basic profile redirection to
a VHDX file. No
application or OS layering
is supported.
Mirage supports OS,
application and user
layering all from the same
interface. It also supports
an unlimited number of
layers.
#VDIpunchout
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
ROUND
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
What did you think of using the
VDI solution on a tablet?
22
The first response
was that it looks
horrible
after the
novelty
wears off
your ready to
move back
the user
experience is
counter-
intuitive
not very
usable
right
click is a
big
problem
while its cool it
oftentimes fails in
genuine
usefulness
its distinctly more
difficult to do a lot
of the work you
would traditionally
do on a PC or Mac
Using Windows on a Tablet
#VDIpunchout
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Using Windows on a Tablet
23
Citrix Microsoft VMware
Citrix HDX Mobile
modifies the Windows
desktop UI to make things
easier to click. However,
because its remoting
Windows it means the
response time is limited to
the session response.
Considering tablets are on
Wi-Fi and there is a lot of
bad Wi-Fi out there, this
can lead to a bad UX.
They bought iTap assets,
at least it works on a tablet
now, however nothing has
been done to make the
Windows UI better.
Microsofts solution to this
is Windows 8 of course but
this doesnt help with
legacy applications.
Unity touch gives a native
UI that responds like any
other native UI app and
allows users to more
easily navigate the
desktop.
#VDIpunchout
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Using Windows on a Tablet
24
Citrix Microsoft VMware
Citrix HDX Mobile
modifies the Windows
desktop UI to make things
easier to click. However,
because its remoting
Windows it means the
response time is limited to
the session response.
Considering tablets are on
Wi-Fi and there is a lot of
bad Wi-Fi out there, this
can lead to a bad UX.
They bought iTap assets,
at least it works on a tablet
now, however nothing has
been done to make the
Windows UI better.
Microsofts solution to this
is Windows 8 of course but
this doesnt help with
legacy applications.
Unity touch gives a native
UI that responds like any
other native UI app and
allows users to more
easily navigate the
desktop.
#VDIpunchout
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
ROUND
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Management and Configuration
26
Citrix Microsoft VMware
If this research was about
more than just VDI Citrix
would win this category,
the Management interface
tells a much bigger story
than just VDI. However, if
the business is focused
primarily on VDI (which is
how my research is
focused) then the Citrix
management is more
challenging that
competing products.
The fundamental failure of
Microsoft VDI is the lack of
focus on it as a product

If Microsoft put some
serious focus on the
management interface of
this product I think theyd
have something a bit more
compelling.
Horizon View wins deals
because it can be setup in
a day and is easy to
manage. We here this
over and over at Gartner.
The hypervisor gets
VMware in the door, the
simplicity of management
is what closes the deal.
#VDIpunchout
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Management and Configuration
27
Citrix Microsoft VMware
If this research was about
more than just VDI Citrix
would win this category,
the Management interface
tells a much bigger story
than just VDI. However, if
the business is focused
primarily on VDI (which is
how my research is
focused) then the Citrix
management is more
challenging that
competing products.
The fundamental failure of
Microsoft VDI is the lack of
focus on it as a product

If Microsoft put some
serious focus on the
management interface of
this product I think theyd
have something a bit more
compelling.
Horizon View wins deals
because it can be setup in
a day and is easy to
manage. We here this
over and over at Gartner.
The hypervisor gets
VMware in the door, the
simplicity of management
is what closes the deal.
#VDIpunchout
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
ROUND
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
HTML5
29
Citrix Microsoft VMware
The Citrix HTML5 receiver
allows for ICA/HDX to be
terminated at the end
point within the web
browser. It was difficult
placing a first/second
scoring on this category,
terminating ICA has its
advantages as it doesnt
change any networking
components. However it
just wasnt as innovative
of an approach as
VMware.
The Blast protocol is
unlike any VDI protocol
weve seen to date. This
protocol has been built
from the ground up as a
browser based protocol.
Its not perfect by any
means but its innovative
and works surprisingly
well.
#VDIpunchout
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
HTML5
30
Citrix Microsoft VMware
The Citrix HTML5 receiver
allows for ICA/HDX to be
terminated at the end
point within the web
browser. It was difficult
placing a first/second
scoring on this category,
terminating ICA has its
advantages as it doesnt
change any networking
components. However it
just wasnt as innovative
of an approach as
VMware.
The Blast protocol is
unlike any VDI protocol
weve seen to date. This
protocol has been built
from the ground up as a
browser based protocol.
Its not perfect by any
means but its innovative
and works surprisingly
well.
#VDIpunchout
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
ROUND
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Branch & DaaS
32
Citrix Microsoft VMware
Citrixs VDI-in-a-box is
one of the better platforms
out there in simplicity and
one designed for branch
office solutions. The issue
is that its a completely
different solution for
branch than running
XenDesktop at the main
site. Id prefer to see a
convergence between
these platforms. I prefer
the way ViiB scales (grid
scale).
Currently the only way to run
a View deployment on a
branch is to use a lesser
known component called
View Direct Connect. This
allows VMs to sit at the
branch and be used locally
instead of crossing the WAN.
Its just okay. However, the
Desktone broker is better
designed for branch, offers
multi-tenancy and has a scale
out architecture). Only time
will tell how VMware
integrates this.
http://blogs.gartner.com/gunnar-berger/the-daas-floodgates-are-open-thanks-to-amazon-workspaces/
#VDIpunchout
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Branch Solution
33
Citrix Microsoft VMware
Citrixs VDI-in-a-box is
one of the better platforms
out there in simplicity and
one designed for branch
office solutions. The issue
is that its a completely
different solution for
branch than running
XenDesktop at the main
site. Id prefer to see a
convergence between
these platforms. I prefer
the way ViiB scales (grid
scale).
Currently the only way to run
a View deployment on a
branch is to use a lesser
known component called
View Direct Connect. This
allows VMs to sit at the
branch and be used locally
instead of crossing the WAN.
Its just okay. However, the
Desktone broker is better
designed for branch, offers
multi-tenancy and has a scale
out architecture). Only time
will tell how VMware
integrates this.
http://blogs.gartner.com/gunnar-berger/the-daas-floodgates-are-open-thanks-to-amazon-workspaces/
#VDIpunchout
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
ROUND
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Storage
35
Citrix Microsoft VMware
Intellicache offers
benefits but it requires
XenServer.
PVS also has benefits
but it also increases
the complexity.


Hyper-V 2012 R2 offers
some massive
improvements on storage
but the biggest issue is
seeing this applied in the
real world. Regardless the
technology is there, its just
a matter of seeing more
reference architectures
that simplify deployments
on this platform.
CBRC (View
Accelerator) offers
reduced read IO hits on
the backend storage.
vFlash: R/W
VSAN

While right now a lot of the
storage improvements are
in tech preview/beta the
product roadmap here
looks strong.

#VDIpunchout
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Storage
36
Citrix Microsoft VMware
Intellicache offers
benefits but it requires
XenServer.
PVS also has benefits
but it also increases
the complexity.


Hyper-V 2012 R2 offers
some massive
improvements with
Storage Spaces but the
biggest issue is seeing this
applied in the real world.
Regardless the technology
is there, its just a matter of
seeing more reference
architectures that simplify
deployments on this
platform.
CBRC (View
Accelerator) offers
reduced read IO hits on
the backend storage.
vFlash: R/W
VSAN

While right now a lot of the
storage improvements are
in tech preview/beta the
product roadmap here
looks strong.

#VDIpunchout
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
ROUND
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
SBC Integration
38
Citrix Microsoft VMware
XenApp need I say
more. This product is
extremely mature, often
bundled directly into their
SHVD/VDI solution. It
scales to the hundreds of
thousands. Massive third
party support, trusted by
ISVs. Its XenApp.
Microsofts RemoteApp is
getting close to that very
important point of good
enough. RemoteApp
lacks the feature set of
XenApp but less complex
deployments may find this
as a suitable replacement.
The main issue with the
product is its management
console which doesnt
scale and requires admins
to use PowerShell.
Where oh where could be
SBC be, Citrix has owned
this for all eternity
#VDIpunchout
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
SBC Integration
39
Citrix Microsoft VMware
XenApp need I say
more. This product is
extremely mature, often
bundled directly into their
SHVD/VDI solution. It
scales to the hundreds of
thousands. Massive third
party support, trusted by
ISVs. Its XenApp.
Microsofts RemoteApp is
getting close to that very
important point of good
enough. RemoteApp
lacks the feature set of
XenApp but less complex
deployments may find this
as a suitable replacement.
The main issue with the
product is its management
console which doesnt
scale and requires admins
to use PowerShell.
Where oh where could my
SBC be, Citrix has owned
this for all eternity
#VDIpunchout
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Runner Up Differentiators
Printing: Citrix has a robust printing solution,
VMware in second with the OEMd ThinPrint.
Microsoft in third with EZ Print.
Application Virtualization: The VDI Suite with
MDOP includes App-V which is a leader in
application virtualization, VMware Horizon View
includes ThinApp also a leader in application
virtualization, Citrix dropped their app virt due to
the inclusion of App-V with the RDS CAL
(however this does not apply to VDI)
40
#VDIpunchout
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Next are the Gartner final results
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Overview
42
#VDIpunchout
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. 2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.



43
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Recommended Gartner Research
Citrix XenDesktop 7: In-Depth Assessment
Gunnar Berger (G00255425)
In-Depth Assessment of Microsoft VDI Suite With
MDOP
Gunnar Berger (G00257626)
VMware Horizon View: In-Depth Assessment
Gunnar Berger (Coming Soon)
Evaluation Criteria for Server-Hosted Virtual
Desktops
Gunnar Berger (G00255430)
Virtual Desktop and Application Delivery
Gunnar Berger (G00255430)
#VDIpunchout
2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. 2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Questions?
45
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