Citrix and Google have been working closely together to enable Citrix Machine Creation Services on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Earlier this year, at Citrix Synergy, Google and Citrix had already announced a private preview.

At the Google Cloud Next event in London, we announced the general availability of Machine Creation Services for Google Cloud Platform. Now, you can deploy your workloads on Google Cloud Platform with Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service using Machine Creation Services.

Why Is This Important?

Citrix is laser focused on enabling your organization to run your virtual app and desktop workloads on any platform. If you’ve followed the announcements at Google Cloud Next, you know Google Cloud Platform is growing fast, and the roster of large reference customers is growing, as well. Google Cloud Platform is becoming a popular addition in many large corporate digital workspace strategies.

Now, Citrix is making it easier to integrate GCP-hosted workloads into your digital workspace with its new Machine Creation Services integration with Google Cloud Platform. Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops customers now can move workloads to Google Cloud Platform and manage those workloads side by side with their existing on-premises workloads. Thanks to Google and Citrix, hybrid-cloud management just got easier.

Why Machine Creation Services?

Machine Creation Services is one of the provisioning methods available to Citrix customers that enables central management and rapid delivery of virtual app and desktop workloads from any cloud platform or on-premises hypervisor. With our announcement, Machine Creation Services makes it even easier for administrators to manage catalogs and workloads on Google Cloud Platform alongside their existing on-premises workloads.

Machine Creation Services enables you to rapidly deploy a virtual app or desktop in GCP for a few users — or to hundreds at once. Let’s say you have a new Linux application you need to provision to hundreds of users, for example. Machine Creation Services can provision the necessary GCP VMs and then preserve their pristine state as users log on and log off the app for a high definition user experience.

MCS also adds a great deal of value when it comes to managing GCP uptime. In today’s modern cloud world, time is money. MCS power management with Citrix Autoscale enables time and costs savings by strategically powering up and powering down your virtual app and desktop workloads. This makes it easier to control your GCP costs so your investment in GCP stretches farther!

There are numerous options available for power management of deployed catalogs and workloads, including:

  • Delete
  • Start
  • Restart
  • Force Restart
  • Shut Down
  • Force Shutdown
  • Add to Delivery Group
  • Manage Tags
  • Turn on Maintenance Mode.

Get Started TODAY!

What are you waiting for? You can now deploy your Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops workloads on Google Cloud Platform using Machine Creation Services. A few requirements must be covered in order to get started. With Machine Creation Services on Google Cloud Platform, you’ll need:

  • A Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops services account (register here)
  • A GCP Project
  • A GCP Service account

To learn more about this new solution, check out our documentation on Google Cloud Platform virtualization environments.