Omnissa simplifies migration from Citrix to Horizon

If you are rethinking your Citrix investment, Omnissa can help ease and accelerate your migration to market-leading Omnissa Horizon^®. We are the digital work platform leader, trusted by over 26,000 customers as the former VMware End-User Computing business unit, with decades of experience delivering solutions for the digital workplace. 

We have been migrating Citrix customers to Horizon for years. Based on that experience, we now offer expert assistance to speed and de-risk your move to the predictable Horizon solution. We shorten your learning curve and ease deployment so you can migrate to Horizon before your next Citrix renewal and enjoy a lower total cost of ownership.   

Expert assistance to ease your move from Citrix to Horizon 

In the months leading up to your Citrix renewal, Omnissa can help you get Horizon deployed in a production or test environment, on-premises or in the cloud, to validate your apps and use cases, including: 

• Production pilots: For qualified customers, Omnissa can set up a Horizon pilot in production to enable you to validate virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and published apps use cases. Just bring your on-premises or cloud infrastructure. We provide the licensing, software, and deployment experts to help stand up a VDI or Remote Desktop Service Host (RDSH) environment (certain limitations may apply). Once it is deployed, we give you time to validate your use cases, apps, and peripherals.  
• Proof of Concept: If a Proof of Concept (POC) in a non-production environment is better suited to your needs, Omnissa and its partners can help stand up a POC to enable use case validation across VDI or RDSH deployments. (Certain limitations may apply.) 
• No-cost training: At the end of your pilot or POC, when you purchase Horizon ask your seller about attending a live Horizon instructor-led class or a self-directed on-demand course at no cost.  

Horizon managed services also support Citrix migration  

We realize VDI and published app expertise is in short supply, so our Omnissa Horizon Accelerator managed services offering can now be used to migrate you from Citrix to Horizon. Upon purchase of Horizon licensing and Horizon Accelerator managed services, our expert staff will perform the migration from Citrix to Horizon and then run the environment for you. It doesn’t get much easier to migrate your VDI. 

Plus, the combined cost of the Horizon licensing and Horizon Accelerator service can often be less than your Citrix renewal.  

Five reasons to choose Omnissa Horizon  

If you have always worked on Citrix, you may not be familiar with the full depth and breadth of the Horizon solution. Here are the top five reasons to consider migrating: 

1. Omnissa Horizon is a recognized market leader 

There are tens of thousands of Horizon customers, including many of the world’s largest banks, retailers, healthcare providers, and governments. Most recently Omnissa Horizon was named a Leader in the 2024 Gartner Magic quadrant for Desktop-as-a-Service, as well as the 2024 IDC MarketScape for Virtual Client Computing and the 2024 IDC MarketScape for Desktop as a Service. 

2. Horizon supports many deployment options and capabilities 

• On-premises, in the cloud, or hybrid and multi-cloud deployments.  
• Persistent, non-persistent, and multi-session desktops and published apps. 
• Broadcom/VMware, Azure, and AWS native platform support.   
• Blast protocol optimizes user experience, even under suboptimal network conditions.  
• Optimization for collaborative applications like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and more. 
• Optional combined offerings with Broadcom that include VMware vSphere Foundation for VDI (VVF for VDI). 
• Industry-specific use case, application, and peripheral support, including healthcare information systems (HIS) and peripherals, NIAP/CC, virtual POS, and more.  
• GPU support, including Nvidia. 

3. Predictable, value-based pricing 

In looking back, it is apparent that Horizon subscription pricing and packaging has remained remarkably stable, apart from minor annual adjustments. As a result, Horizon pricing is competitive with Citrix Hybrid Multi-Cloud list prices.  

Horizon is available in both Named or Concurrent User licensing and in 1- through 5-year terms. Our customers have flexibility to choose the Horizon suite and deployment type (on-premises/cloud/hybrid) that best fits their use cases. Customers are never forced into suites with technology they don’t need or multi-year commitments they don’t want. 

4. Omnissa Horizon does apps better 

Of course, Horizon supports published apps with RDSH. However, our secret sauce to minimizing the traditional infrastructure and admin time and cost associated with large RDSH deployments is App Volumes.  

With App Volumes, the application is separated from the OS so admins can manage a single copy of an app and keep the RDSH host image (or the VDI image) clean. The app is managed and updated on the App Volumes server only, reducing admin time managing multiple images but also allowing fast response to app vulnerabilities and updates without all the work of updating host images. 

With Apps on Demand, apps are attached to the VDI or RDSH session only when a user accesses an app, eliminating bloated VDI images and overbuilt RDSH farms/silos, helping reduce infrastructure costs and admin time. 

5. The Omnissa Platform extends Horizon capabilities 

Horizon is part of the Omnissa Platform, the first AI-driven digital work platform that enables smart, seamless, and secure work experiences from anywhere.

The Omnissa Platform offers a market-leading VDI/DaaS and published apps solution, as well as the ability to manage physical and virtual devices and the corresponding user experiences from a single integrated platform. The Omnissa Platform leverages a common set of platform services, notably ML and AI services. These services analyze a common data set to identify issues and automate responses to keep users productive, help ensure optimal security, and minimize IT time and cost.   

For example, market-leading Omnissa Workspace ONE^® UEM extends its management capabilities to Horizon persistent desktops, enabling routine Day 2 IT tasks without reimaging. These include managing golden images or individual desktops, OS and app patches, driver updates, configurations, and policies using a cloud-native and unified solution.  

In addition, the Omnissa Workspace ONE Digital Employee Experience (DEX) solution for Horizon reduces user downtime and helpdesk costs by accurately pinpointing and remediating virtual desktop experience issues. These include monitoring long log-on times, slow app performance, and suboptimal configurations. You can learn more from our recent on-demand webinar, “Break Free from VDI and App Limitations.”

Get started on your journey to Omnissa Horizon 

If you are interested in a Horizon production pilot or POC, contact your Omnissa sales or customer success contact. If you have a preferred partner that resells or services Horizon, they can support you as well. Or, click here to have someone contact you to schedule a pilot or POC. 

For more technical information to help you better understand how Horizon lines up with Citrix, we’ve published this Introduction to Horizon for Citrix Practitioners.  

Omnissa is standing by to help you de-risk your migration to Horizon, a modern and lower-cost VDI solution.