If you’re reading this, you’re likely hyper-aware of two massive acquisitions that are fundamentally changing the face of the end-user computing industry. Citrix has been acquired by a private equity firm, which has led to major organizational changes and substantial layoffs (if you were impacted by those layoffs, there are some great resources available to former Citrix employees here. And please feel free to connect with the Cameyo executive team on LinkedIn – we are Andrew Miller, Eyal Dotan, Shane Harris and Robb Henshaw – we’d love to help if we can). And just last month, Broadcom announced that it will acquire VMware.
If your organization utilizes Citrix and/or VMware products and services, you’re likely concerned about the future of those organizations and what this will mean for their ongoing support and development of the digital workspace technologies you rely on. And there’s little doubt that both Citrix and VMware will continue to undergo significant organizational changes as their respective acquisitions shake out.
For example – for a very raw and unflinching insider evaluation of the what the Broadcom acquisition means for VMware, take a look at this missive by former VMware employee and EUC industry veteran Brian Madden:
Brian Madden’s brutal and unfiltered thoughts on the Broadcom / VMware deal
TLDR: Brian says:
- “Broadcom will shred VMware.”
- Speaking of VMware’s technology, he says: “The innovation engine died years ago, and today they just buy other companies without truly integrating them.”
- He estimates that, like Citrix, VMware will go through “massive layoffs” (he estimates up to 25,000 layoffs).
Granted, that is one person’s evaluation of the VMware acquisition. But if you review the press & analyst reports on the acquisition, there is not much optimism in terms of what this deal will mean for existing VMware customers.
What most seem to agree on is that the EUC industry is undergoing a tectonic shift and that the face of the digital workspace will be forever changed as a result. So what does this mean for you?
In times like these, organizations are presented with a significant opportunity to evaluate their existing strategies and contracts. And the good news is, if you’re looking to make a change due to the current market uncertainty, you have opportunities to significantly reduce costs, all while improving your users’ experience and increasing your organization’s overall security posture.
Reducing Cost, Without Compromise
Both Citrix and VMware’s VDI/DaaS solutions are rooted in decades-old technology, resulting in products that can be extremely complex to deploy and manage, not to mention costly. Migrating to a cloud-native Cloud Desktop solution can help you reduce the cost of your digital workspace by up to 85% compared to Citrix or VMware (or any traditional VDI/DaaS product). For example, here’s what some Cameyo customers report regarding the cost savings they achieved with our Cloud Desktop solution, powered by our Virtual App Delivery (VAD) platform:
- “Just looking at month-to-month cost compared to our previous remote desktop solution, with Cameyo we are paying only 15% of what we used to pay. But then on top of that 85% savings, we also no longer need windows clients, so we save even more money there. In addition, we have far fewer support issues, so we save even more,” said Adam Nerell, Head of IT for Klarahill. [Full case study here]
- “Right off the bat, Cameyo doesn’t require any complex infrastructure and you don’t need to hire a third-party engineer to set it up – so that’s a huge cost savings rights there. Also, since Cameyo is able to support dozens of users per instance instead of an architecture that requires one server for every user, that provides dramatic savings as well,” said Emir Saffar, CIO at Ur&Penn. [See the full case study and video here]
- “Cameyo brings dramatic cost savings compared to virtual desktop products based on the amount of time it saved us in deployment, time saved in ongoing management, and the fact that everything is included – we don’t need to tack on additional third-party tools,” said Christian Ahlin, Group Head of IT at Nordward. [Full case study here]
When it comes to overall ROI, a recent survey of Cameyo customers revealed that 19% of customers received an “immediate” ROI based on the amount they saved compared to their previous virtual desktop solution. 61% saw ROI within 3 months, and 91% saw ROI in less than a year.
And the best part is, these cost savings come without compromising the end user experience. In fact, Cloud Desktop solutions like Cameyo improve your people’s experience, helping make them more productive while reducing support headaches on your end.
A Better User Experience
Your people need seamless access to all of their apps & data on any device so that they can be productive from anywhere. Cameyo’s Virtual App Delivery (VAD) platform gives your people a streamlined Cloud Desktop so they can access ALL of their apps – Windows, SaaS, and internal apps – from a single, ultra-secure location, accessible through any HTML5 browser. And with Cameyo PWAs, you can publish and push any Windows app to your users as a PWA with a few clicks.
The end result is that your people have access to all of their applications without anything needing to be installed or managed locally on their device. There’s no alteration to the user experience, nothing new to learn – they get a seamless experience that enables them to work just as they always have.
Here’s what Cameyo customers say about the user experience we enable:
- “Unlike Nutanix Xi Frame and Citrix XenApp where our employees either couldn’t access their applications at all or were frequently experiencing performance issues and being logged out, Cameyo provides a native application experience with no performance lags, through the browser. From a user experience perspective, they use the same desktop version of the applications they’re used to – but those applications simply run in a browser tab instead of needing to be deployed and managed locally. There’s nothing new to learn on the user’s side,” said Emir Saffar, CIO at Ur&Penn.
- “With Cameyo, our employees get to access the same desktop version of the software that they’re used to with absolutely nothing new to learn, so it’s a seamless user experience. And ChromeOS Flex has enabled us to deliver persistent Chrome meetings in between various geographical locations and remote workers to help build a better workplace culture,” said Christian Ahlin, Group Head of IT at Nordward
- “Our students get to use the full desktop version of the software that they’re already used to, without having to learn anything new. It simply opens up in a browser tab instead of being locally installed on the device. And the application performance with Cameyo is nearly the same as if it were installed locally – it’s a fantastic user experience for our students,” said John Cerio, Network Administrator at Baldwinsville Central School District.
Zero Trust Security for your Digital Workspace
Another key benefit of migrating to a truly cloud-native Virtual App Delivery (VAD) solution is increased security. Cameyo was built from the ground up with Zero Trust security at its core (read more about our Zero Trust architecture here), eliminating the security vulnerabilities that plague many legacy virtual desktop solutions, which have led to a massive spike in ransomware over the past 2 years.
Here’s what Cameyo customers have to say about the security benefits they’ve seen:
- “With Cameyo you get this very powerful solution, with very low complexity and cost, all while getting greater security than you’ll find in other solutions. Complexity is the antithesis of security. The more complexity a solution has, like the many components of virtual desktop solutions, the more potential security issues you will have. Cameyo is built on a zero trust security model, and it also strips away all of the complexity that could result in security issues down the line,” said Adam Nerell, Head of IT for Klarahill.
- “One of the biggest draws of migrating to Chrome Enterprise was its security, so we had to find a Virtual App Delivery platform that would preserve our security posture. The fact that Cameyo has a zero-trust security model baked in at its core just adds additional layers of security so that we can confidently enable our employees to work from anywhere, on any device, with the utmost security,” said Mario Zúñiga, IT Director, Digital Workplace at Fortune 500 manufacturing giant Sanmina.
- “I can’t tell you how refreshing it is that Cameyo has multiple layers of security truly baked in at the foundation, as opposed to it being something extra we have to pay for. And the Cameyo Port Shield technology is amazing. It gives me peace of mind to know that all of our RDP ports are constantly protected in the background,” said John Cerio, Network Administrator at Baldwinsville Central School District.
The acquisitions of Citrix and VMware have clearly marked a major shift in the EUC and digital workspace industries. And it’s logical for Citrix and VMware customers to be concerned about how the turbulence of these acquisitions will affect them. But there is opportunity in this uncertainty. Just as these acquisitions mark a changing of the guard from legacy VDI/DaaS to Cloud Desktops/Virtual App Delivery (VAD), it also marks an opportunity for your organization to migrate and adopt cloud-native solutions that can significantly reduce your costs, deliver a better user experience, and increase your organization’s overall security.
We have dozens of case studies (here) where you can read more about the experience of companies who have already made the shift from VDI/DaaS to Cameyo’s Virtual App Delivery (VAD). And we’re happy to put you in touch with customer references so you can hear more about their experiences.
We understand your uncertainty and would be happy to discuss your options – even if it turns out that another solution may be a better fit. Schedule a personalized demo to discuss, and on we can also get you set up with your own demo environment to test within minutes. Or you can get started with your own free trial here.