Sometimes we meet people who confuse our products with Citrix. Being that we have both have offerings categorized as application virtualization, it is understandable. However, it’s important to note that our technologies actually work together. Moreover, there are distinct differences between the type of application virtualization our products offer.
Application Containers Versus Hosted Published Applications
Some use the term “pixel streaming” when it comes to Citrix. This is because published applications and virtual desktops delivered with Citrix tend to be hosted in private data centers or in the cloud. When a user launches their application or virtual desktop, Citrix presents the application or desktop as if it is running natively on their own client device, when they are really running on a machine hosted in the private data center or cloud and it’s just being presented to the user on their client device via pixel streaming using the Citrix HDX protocol.
With our products, applications are packaged into application containers. These application containers can then be dynamically provisioned to assigned users. When a user of a Cloudpaging application container launches the application, it gets virtualized on-demand, meaning the compressed and encrypted container is delivered to the end user’s desktop and the application is launched on the native client device. The beauty of this is with Cloudpager, Numecent’s application container management platform for Windows desktops, you can deploy and manage our application containers on any Windows desktop, anywhere end users work, including on Citrix virtual desktops and the Citrix VDAs/session hosts used for published applications. When Cloudpaging application containers are used for published applications in Citrix they are virtualized on demand in the user session, using our container technology.
Leveraging Cloudpager and Citrix Together
Numecent technologies are Windows OS agnostic. Once an application is containerized, it can be dynamically provisioned to any physical or virtual Windows desktop. This makes it optimal for streamlining and enhancing application management across Citrix VDI (Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops) and DaaS. Some of the reasons you may consider integrating Cloudpager to Citrix include:
Application Virtualization
Citrix supports some operating systems that we do not today, such as Mac and Linux. Cloudpager currently only provisions applications to endpoints running supported Windows operating systems.
While some users will benefit from having their applications delivered directly to their physical device, other users may be best served by being provided a full virtual desktop, which Citrix can be used for managing and provisioning.
Cloudpager provides an App-V optimization feature that can be run against your existing App-V packages. This eliminates many of the challenges of App-V and future proofs you against a future App-V End of Life.
Desktop and Application Orchestration
Citrix offer more than just applications, they provide solutions for machine provisioning, analytics, security policies, profile management, and more.
Cloudpaging application containers only appear for entitled users even on shared machines which is perfect for multisession operating systems. By managing application container deployments through Cloudpager, you can rapidly roll back any application changes and updates without the need to re-provision a desktop or get users to logout and log back in.
Image Management
Cloudpager can change the way you handle application management in your Citrix environment. You can get a single Golden image if you like by containerizing your applications and delivering them dynamically outside of the image. Discover how one of the largest banks in the world achieved a single golden image for 100K+ Citrix users in this case study here.
Application Lifecycle Automation and Management
Updating applications in a PVSvDisk or MCS snapshot requires a machine state change to provision the application update. This can require a user to log out or close an application and re-launch or worse log out of their desktop session which is disruptive. Cloudpager can deliver application updates in active user sessions in real time without requiring a machine state change.
Cloudpager features AI Packaging, making the packaging of hundreds of consumer-off-the-shelf application as simple as point-and-click.
With our recent release of AI Packaging for MSIs, you can automate the package of many additional enterprise MSI installers on-demand easing the packaging workload and delivering optimized Cloudpaging applications containers as a result.
If you publish applications today in Citrix Storefront or Citrix Workspaces you inevitably encounter some applications that are not good candidates for running on a session host and need to run on the physical client device. Today you may have to look to a different product for delivering those applications in dated package formats that can cause problems. Cloudpager offers a single pane of glass for managing applications for your Citrix environment and for your physical endpoint users.
Cloudpager includes automated license enforcement to ensure you always adhere to your license agreements and it provides automated solutions for proactively, managing the application life cycle.
Enterprise Security
Citrix Customers can leverage advanced security features through Device Trust, Citrix analytics and more. Cloudpaging application containers provide an extra layer of security at the application level by limiting visibility of applications to only entitled employees, by providing DRM capabilities (such as not allowing copying in or out of the container sandbox), end-to-end application encryption, and more.
Conclusion
Cloudpager customers who use Citrix get benefits not available when using only Cloudpager such as macOS and Linux support. Citrix customers who use Cloudpager get the best possible way to manage applications across their Citrix VDAs and physical endpoints. Application deployments and updates can be handled consistently outside of the PVS vDisk or MCS Snapshot so provisioning and machine state changes are not required for application updates and rollbacks are quick and seamless.
Cloudpager provides granular application usage reporting, a path forward for existing App-V packages, an option for MSIX containers and a best-in-class package format that is suited for a modern workspace.