Update: Microsoft’s Azure Virtual Desktop is now available worldwide. Check out our Day 1 Support blog post for details!

As Partner Director for Citrix in Northern Europe, I’ve had a few queries from our partner community about the relationship between Citrix Workspace and Azure Virtual Desktop (formerly Windows Virtual Desktop), so I wanted to take a few moments to share my view. For those who don’t know, the new Microsoft virtualization platform, announced earlier this year and in public preview now, entitles IT to several new OS, Office, and Azure benefits, including a new multi-session Windows 10 experience on Azure. From an admin and user perspective, this offers all the benefits of cloud computing, including agility, scalability, and flexible spending.

Microsoft and Citrix have, of course, been collaborating and partnering for three decades, working together to create the cloud-enabled workforce of the future. Citrix has thousands of customers in Azure today, and the launch of Azure Virtual Desktop extends our relationship by providing a new platform for the Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service. With Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service, you will be able to centrally manage and deliver on-premises and Azure Virtual Desktop workloads.

What Does This Mean for Citrix Partners?

I am delighted to see Microsoft putting so much focus on virtualization. Ultimately it proves to me that this is the future of work — something that we at Citrix have believed to be true for quite some time and to which we are devoting increasing time and resources. Citrix Workspace will bring Azure Virtual Desktop and other enterprise resources together into a streamlined interface for users, and our innovation plans will build on top of this.

At our recent Citrix Synergy event we showcased the next evolution of Citrix Workspace — an “intelligent” workspace that goes beyond organising apps and data to guide and, ultimately, automate work. We see ourselves as a mature player in this space, and our current vision is to enable every professional to work in a unified, secure, and intelligent way that removes roadblocks to creativity and innovation, enhancing individual engagement and personal productivity to drive greater organizational agility and intelligence.

The Citrix Workspace offers three key benefits:

  • Experience: As Citrix Workspace becomes increasingly intelligent, extending beyond the desktop to become an interactive experience, the employee experience is transformed by increasing engagement and productivity.
  • Security: We find that our customers buy into Citrix Workspace because they know it to be a secure product, suitable for the enterprise market.
  • Choice: Citrix Workspace is available on-premises or in the cloud, giving customers complete flexibility.

The Environmental Case for Championing Virtual Working Technology

In my other role as a non-exec for IT sustainability research, I can also see an environmental benefit from our combined support of secure, virtual working. Microsoft’s entrance into the market will help to further popularise BYOD, supporting device choice without boundaries. This is something that Citrix has long been endorsing. By this I mean that employees can truly select their own BYOD model without compromise and perhaps, if they are sustainably minded, they will select an end-user computing device that consumes less electricity than a desktop or an unnecessarily high-spec laptop. Less electricity means less greenhouse gas emissions, which is great for tackling climate change. And of course, increases in flexible working reduce employee commutes and subsequent polluting exhaust emissions. It’s something we all need to support.

The Future of Work

Moving forward, the virtual workspace is unlikely to be a single vendor market, nor would we want it to be. Choice is always a good thing, particularly in a landscape that is dominated by hybrid-cloud and that also is made up of an array of different operating systems and devices. While Microsoft’s offering is optimised for Windows 10 and Office 365 ProPlus, utilising Azure, Citrix Workspace builds on top of this with targeted optimizations, enhanced performance through our HDX protocol, and years of experience providing enterprise-grade management technologies.

Above all, it is important to understand that it doesn’t need to be a ‘one or the other’ scenario. Azure Virtual Desktop will be compatible with our Citrix virtualisation service offerings and you can reference our Citrix and Azure Virtual Desktop Public Preview guide to get started today.

The public preview of Azure Virtual Desktop validates what we have been saying for a long time and will help us to raise awareness of the digital workspace, accepting it as the “normal” way to work. The future of work is a single experience for everything, and whilst this is undoubtedly an exciting time for both Citrix and Microsoft, the ultimate winner will always be the customer.