“We selected Citrix Enterprise & Goliath instead of Citrix Platinum because Goliath gives us far superior Citrix monitoring and management capabilities than the utilities included with Platinum. Goliath and Citrix Enterprise together were much more affordable than Citrix Platinum, and after we evaluated the Citrix performance monitoring of Goliath, the decision was a no-brainer.”
– Tom Westbrook, Manager IT Operations & Networking, SLMPD

 

 

The Business Challenge: 

The Saint Louis Police Department was deciding whether to purchase Citrix Platinum or Enterprise. Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop are used to support remote police officers by delivering applications and desktops. Due to the nature of the environment, having an effective and comprehensive Citrix XenApp monitoring solution for their delivery infrastructure is critical. The need for Citrix XenApp monitoring was the major consideration when trying to decide between purchasing XenDesktop Enterprise or XenDesktop Platinum. They were told that the Platinum edition included additional capabilities for Citrix XenApp monitoring with Director and Insight, “all the enterprise monitoring you will need is free if you purchase Citrix Platinum”.

 
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Citrix Platinum Tools are Not Useful for Citrix Monitoring & Troubleshooting  

The biggest challenge in the decision-making process was the cost vs. the benefit of purchasing Citrix XenApp/XenDesktop Platinum. The features and functionality of the Enterprise edition satisfied all of the technical requirements necessary to delivering applications and desktops to end users, except for providing the Citrix monitoring capabilities needed to ensure a high-quality user experience. While the Platinum edition claims to provide comprehensive Citrix monitoring capabilities with the free utilities included in the Citrix Platinum License, the evaluation proved that the functionality of Director and Insight did not meet the minimum requirements for Citrix monitoring. The Citrix monitoring tools may indicate that something is wrong, but the depth of visibility did not exist to tell them “what was wrong” or root cause. So, why purchase Platinum and then have to also buy additional Citrix monitoring for the supporting infrastructure and end user experience? What was truly needed was a monitoring solution that worked with Citrix Enterprise Edition. See the selection criteria they developed here:

Feature Goliath Citrix Desktop Director with Insight for Platinum Edition
Enterprise Architecture Yes No
VMware Integration Yes No
vCenter, XenServer, and Hyper-V Integration Yes Limited
One Product to Monitor VDI, Hypervisors, and Physical Infrastructure Yes No
3rd Party Tools Integration Yes No
Alerting Controls and Scheduling Yes No
Automated Remediation Yes No
Alert Resolution Feature Yes No
Physical Server Monitoring Yes No
ICA/HDX Monitoring Yes Limited
Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop Performance Dashboard Yes Limited
Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop Failure Monitoring Yes Limited
Application Failure Monitoring Yes No
Citrix App Availability Testing Yes No
175+ Pre-Configured Failure Point Monitors Yes No
Logon failure and duration threshold-based alerting Yes Limited
Session analysis per user session for VDI, Hosted Shared Desktop and Hosted Shared Application Yes Limited
Logon Duration Analysis Yes Limited
ICA Channel Drilldown Yes Yes
ICA Latency and RTT Yes Yes
Detailed Historical Reporting Yes No
Client Connection Speed Yes No
Client Network Latency Through ICA Yes No
Application Availability testing all components of logon in concert Yes No
Print Monitoring Yes No
Profile Monitoring Yes No
Provisioning Services Monitoring Yes No
Microsoft SQL Monitoring Yes No
Active Directory Yes No
66 Out-of-The-Box Reports Yes No

The Solution: “Goliath and Citrix Enterprise Were a No Brainer”

Part of the decision-making process for the Saint Louis Police Department was to evaluate alternative solutions that would give them better functionality as Director and Insight for Platinum Edition. They wanted something that would help them anticipate, troubleshoot, resolve and prevent Citrix end user experience issues. Goliath offered an end-to-end solution, providing deep visibility into Citrix sessions, end user experience and underlying infrastructure–often the root cause of Citrix performance issues.

The powerful out of the box capabilities above, combined with the competitive price point of Goliath Performance Monitor and Goliath Application Availability Monitor, gave the Citrix support staff the ability to be truly proactive without purchasing Citrix Platinum.  This allowed them to anticipate, troubleshoot, resolve, and prevent issues in a way that Director with Platinum edition simply could not, while also saving money.

The Summary

After the evaluation concluded, it was readily apparent that Goliath Technologies and Citrix Enterprise Edition offered a complete and comprehensive solution that was more capable than the tools included with XenApp/XenDesktop Platinum Edition. And, given the upcharge for going to Citrix Platinum, a truly proactive Citrix Desktop environment could be achieved at a far lower price point.

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