Another year, another Citrix User Group conference in the beautiful Echteld, NL. Returning as a platinum sponsor, ThinScale had the pleasure of speaking with members of the Citrix user community in the Netherlands.

I wanted to summarize the day’s events and talk a bit about the conversations we had with community members at the ThinScale stand.

Stefan Pieters kicked off the conference with his session on collaboration with ShareFile, a collaboration tool allowing files in Citrix environments to be easily synced, accessed, and sent from anywhere at any time.

After, there was a session on end-to-end monitoring and job satisfaction from eG’s Erik van Veenendaal. Followed by a great session from Niek Boevink and Kees Baggerman on using the public cloud and how IT should consider it as one tool in an IT infrastructure rather than the infrastructure in and of itself.

Sasa Petrovic then gave an informative talk on the total cost of ownership for single-session vs. multi-session virtual deployments.

Martijn Hoogesteger also gave an interesting talk on digital footprints and how digital information can be used in different (sometimes frightening) ways!

Following this, Andreas van Wingerden presented on Liquidware and how it stacks up against MDM solutions like Intune for contextual user environment management. We were then treated to a talk on Cloud cost optimization using Citrix Analytics, given by Christian Swendemann.

The conference concluded with a virtual presentation from Sridhar Mullapudi, General Manager of the Citrix Business Unit, who gave a very encouraging talk on the current and future Citrix strategy.

With that brief synopsis of the sessions out of the way, we also wanted to discuss some of the recurring topics and interests in the conversations we’ve had with the community at this event. These are Integrations with other third party solutions, solution replacement, and, as always, cost reduction and increasing ROI.

3rd party integrations

Based on both conversations we had at the event, and the sessions given during the day, it was clear that observability was vital. Luckily there are solutions (mentioned above!) that can provide this. However, the issue is cooperation between these observability apps and all other tools in the IT stack. it is vitally important that these solutions can correctly observe and cooperate with all system components so IT teams can get a complete picture of security posture, user experience, and hardware efficiency. Endpoint solutions should be flexible and cooperative with any third party IT solution or at least support using APIs to transfer data easily.

Solution replacement

Despite the previous statement, we also saw a surprising amount of the community lamenting “Tool Sprawl,” where they had too many solutions, stretching their management staff and budget to perform basic tasks. It is always good practice to review your IT stack and see what can be eliminated or enhanced – why pay for “X” and “Y” when “Z” will provide both functionalities under one product umbrella?

Cost reduction & increasing ROI

This topic was not surprising, as cost reduction will always be a key deciding factor in any business decision. Carrying on from the previous issue of solution replacement, it is all about finding and addressing inefficiencies in your stack. Is it efficient to deploy a Linux-based thin client solution to customer endpoints that are used to Windows? Is spending hours creating Group policy objects efficient when an enterprise solution can perform the same function in a fraction of the time? Questions like this should also be asked when it comes to hardware itself – Are we spending too much on brand new devices? Can we reduce our logistics spend for remote hires?

All in all, the DuCUG conference was both enjoyable and informative. We at ThinScale recommend that anyone working with Citrix environments in the Netherlands attend these events.

We would also recommend anyone working in a Citrix environment that is looking to improve their endpoint security or efficiency get in touch with us using the button below. ThinScale endpoints are compatible with Citrix deployments and completely flexible to meet any requirement.