Beer234

10 Reasons For Citrix Presentation Server

1: Publish Controlled Documents To Users: We have alot of Excel documents that users share but we don't want them saved locally. Often these are version controlled so the published app in Citrix becomes the trusted version of the document.
2: Publish Web Sites To Users. We have alot of website that employees go to for payroll, benefits, administration, sales tools etc. With so many we get alot of requests for the various URL's. By publishing an instance of IE that goes direct to the url we help users get to the websites they need and can forget what the urls really are. We also have a central place to look up the URL's should we need them.
3: Remote Access Solution. Using Citrix Secure Gateway we created a great remote access solution. Now users who insist on working on home PC's can access their corporate apps using SSL. This also allows those who aren't using Windows to gain access to corporate applications at home or at untrusted locations.
4: Deploy Apps With Poor Architectures. We have a few applications that actually run directly from a UNC share. Because of this users over slow WAN links could never run the applications. Publishing them in Citrix allows us to run applications that have poor architecture to all employees regardless of their location.
5: Control Access To Dangerous Environments. If you have employees with a legitimate need to visit websites that would likley harm the system they operate on or the network they work on publishing Remote Desktop and having the user remote control their system is a great solution for remote access to these risky environments.
6: Publish Admin Tools. Most administrators have various admin tools they use to perform day today IT tasks. Remembering where these are or having to reinstall them is a huge pain. By publishing them in Citrix you can ensure all IT staff are using the correct version of the tool. This also gives them access to the tools from any location.
7: Deploy Commonly Patched Or Customized Applications. We have a few applications that are customized and patched monthly. Because of this we had users with workstations falling out of synch when they forgot to patch their local application. Publishing this application in Citrix allowed us to centrally patch and be sure everyone was on the same version of the application.
8: Provide Users With Isolated Environments. When troubleshooting you can easily isolate a user to a specific server to ensure you can reproduce their problem. Sometimes this takes the randomness out of supporting flaky applications. You can then easily isolate the user on another server to test fixes etc.
9: Provide High Powered Environments To Power Users. I have an executive that uses Excel and wants to have the benefit of dual proccessors. Running Excel on Citrix lets him process queries with a dual core and dual processor server from anywhere. He can disconnect his session and go home and resume his work on the highest powered environment possible.
10: Provide Backup For Business Critical Applications. Sometimes a key application on a workstation will misbehave. When IT is busy we can't always go to the desk and fix the application. Telling the person to run the application in Citrix has been a good way to keep them working until we can get time to get to the desk and find out what went wrong.

posted by beer234 @ 4:36 PM