Gartner: VMware vs Citrix? Parse

Good day friends!

White or black, buy or not, Citrix or VMware (workstation virtualization solutions, as everyone knows, Citrix and VMware occupy 90% in this market)? There are always a lot of similar dilemmas, and as practice and experience show, vendors themselves stamp analytical reports in which they are “ahead of the rest.”

Here is an example from VMware: they focus on GigaOm research and the resource whychooseview.com , which is owned by VMware. So, either this is a marketing move or a special idea, in its analytical reports (the links above are clickable) VMware always “shows a finger” with a deep description:

Example:
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“Citrix does not offer this same breadth of support. DaaS offerings, and it doesn’t offer a full hybrid cloud deployment option. ”

Something like this…. (One “NOT ...”) This is similar to the pretense of a superpower about a different world. Nothing like?
- Citrix was not built from scratch to support VMware SDDC
- Citrix does not offer the same breadth of support.
- Image management in Citrix can be difficult to scale
- ……
Citrix, in turn, is a supporter of table comparison:

Yes - informative, yes - clearly, but is it really the ultimate truth ??? Where is the truth, and who to choose? On February 19, 2016, Gartner released the analytical report “How to Choose Between Citrix and VMware for Desktop Virtualization Deployment”. It took a lot of time, and his assessment did not follow, and from both Citrix and VMware.

In my opinion, this analytical report, which, as time shows, does not lean towards any product or vendor and was not seen in bias (this is not a two-faced WADA ).
Let's look in detail at the main points of this review to identify criteria for choosing the optimal solution.

So let's get started

As an analysis of the disposition, Gartner does not doubt Citrix's leading position in the VDI market, although VMware is catching up. (This is the position of MS and VMware in the report of Magic Quadrant for x86 Server Virtualization Infrastructure 2016, Microsoft in the role of catch-up). Although I will say more - according to VMware analytics, they consider themselves to be the leader).


Next, the report goes through the cornerstones of both solutions with a description of the advantages or disadvantages, which we will consider in relation to each candidate for the title “the most, the most”.

I will analyze the article on the positive and negative points of both products reviewed by Gartner specialists (but not all points, but the most interesting ones).

Challenger 1 - Citrix:

Citrix's strength is its architecture for in-house or cloud deployments and integration with Citrix NetScaler for managing application delivery. Who better than Citrix knows the ICA protocol, and VMware, by the way, uses F5 for this purpose (By the way, F5 is a third-party solution and a direct competitor to NetScaler).

PS Since NetScaler occupies a leading position among application delivery controllers and acts as a balancing component of a number of components + is a security gateway, even some Horizon users choose it.

+ Technology publishing applications from Citrix XenApp / XenDesktop is a mature solution that is present on the market for a long time (By the way, this is exactly what VMware argues for its hypervisor regarding MS).

+ To improve performance in graphics systems, there is support for Nvidia Grid vGPU graphics technology. Citrix is ​​the first mover here.

Citrix XenDesktop can be implemented on various hypervisors (XenServer, Hyper-V, Acropolis, vSphere, and even in various out-of-the-box clouds).

“Citrix is ​​thought to be more difficult to implement and manage. (well, there certainly is an “amateur”)

- Does not have own cloud, VDI

- The advantage of Citrix in conjunction with Nvidia vGPU is based on the implementation of the solution on the XenServer hypervisor, which is less common than VMware and Hyper-V.

Here I can disagree, because From version 6 of the VMware hypervisor, the Nvidia Grid functionality can also be used in the XenDesktop bundle.

Read the document: “GPU virtualization with Citrix XenDesktop, using NVIDIA GRID graphics board on VMware vSphere 6”

Moreover, for those users who need 3D graphics support, but do not need high graphics performance, you can use Intel's graphics virtualization technology (GVT-g) in conjunction with the XenServer hypervisor.

Challenger 2 - VMware:

+ The presence of VDI in the cloud provides its own product Horizon Air
+ Adding RDSH in 2014 to compete with XenApp
+ Gartner believes that according to customers, working with the VMware team is easier than with the Citrix team.
Strange, but then I think what was the survey, so received and the answer.
+ The strong position of AirWatch, and VMware uses this tool as a comprehensive platform for managing corporate mobile environments, providing convenient access to corporate applications.

- VMware uses F5 partner as a provider of secure remote access solutions, while NetScaler is the same provider, Citrix.
- Requires vSphere hypervisor. In short, it sounds like this - you can only work on our equipment, with our software and our engineers. It resembles Microsoft with its default IE browser and blocked settings of other browsers.
- Integrated RDSH functionality only came to the expense, and then mostly to compete with XenApp
Next, Gartner experts look at the VDI market and come to the conclusion that the DaaS market will gradually more and more “devour” the market for VDI solutions.
And afterwards, in an analytical article, a nod to the general problems of both applicants, suppliers of desktop virtualization systems, was made.
As above, I’ll highlight the main problems of both vendors:
“The hardware still requires a large investment, more than expected, and significantly higher than the cost required in a distributed PC model.
- Microsoft licensing is still difficult and expensive
- Difficult migration to new product versions
- Citrix and VMware have acquired several companies, and integration takes time. VMware may have more problems here when it moves from a position of simplicity and ease of deployment to a more complex set of tools.
- Hardware investments should be updated approximately every four years.
- As with any product, technicians and administrators need time to properly build the infrastructure.

The conclusion Gartner makes is:

“At this point, we’re looking at what you’re looking for. however, organizations should use it. ”

Read between the lines - Citrix desktop virtualization solution along with similar solutions (XenApp, XenDesktop, XenMobile, ShareFile, and NetScaler) outperforms the competitive offers on the desktop virtualization market and shouldn’t worry about a possible decrease in the share of Citrix due to the purchase of a controlling package of VMware by DELL .

Why did I describe and write all this ?! - use independent sources of information and analytics for decision making, since all vendors “pull the blanket over themselves.” Learn more about analysts to form your INDEPENDENT opinion on trends in the information technology market.

And as they say, the most valuable information is independent information.

Thanks for attention! I hope this analytical report from Gartner will act as a justice of the peace when deciding on the choice of partner for the deployment of VDI infrastructure and / or confirms the correctness of the chosen course.

PS I have long ago formed my opinion and confirmed it many times in theory and in practice. But to broaden my horizons, I still want to know your opinion. Please vote:

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