I spend a lot of time thinking about and discussing Citrix, VMware, RDS, and other end-user computing topics with people from across the world.\u00a0 It\u2019s one of the things that gets me all warm and fuzzy, because there are a thousand different ways to do it and they range from strange to outright genius.\u00a0 Inevitably, one thing that I see pop up in Citrix IRC conversations or other online forums is \u201cHow can I have a successful Citrix deployment?\u201d\u00a0 The intent of this question is good, but the approach, in my humble opinion, could use some tuning.\u00a0 At the end of the day, your job isn\u2019t to give Citrix money (though I\u2019m pretty sure they won\u2019t turn you down) but rather help your business run \u2013 the customers to get what they need, the engine that drives your business to move forward.\u00a0 Delivering an excellent service ultimately is what will make your deployment of \u201cCitrix\u201d or \u201cVDI\u201d successful.\u00a0 So what can you look for?<\/p>\n
There are any number of ways to judge success, and I encourage you and your business to come up with the list that matters to you. Financials<\/em><\/strong> are always going to come into play, whether you\u2019re a non-profit, education, or Fortune-500 \u2013 again, you\u2019re not looking to give the vendors money for nothing \u2013 but I caution you from centering exclusively on that.\u00a0 Think of ways to measure success that might not be as directly tangible, because having been a user on dozens of environments, I can tell you that one thing is key to productivity within your services:\u00a0 user satisfaction. Time and again I\u2019ve seen environments where users become distrustful of IT and a culture of distrust has been bred over years at a time.\u00a0 Users are reluctant to report problems to the service desk, or they had a bad experience or a delay so they just no longer bother.\u00a0 These types of cultural problems are extremely difficult to overcome!\u00a0 Users are a fickle bunch \u2013 they may say nothing for the 1,000 days it runs perfectly but the day that they can\u2019t run their report in the time they expect it, quite literally in the context of their world, may be the worst day of the their life.\u00a0 As a system admin it is easy to fall into a routine and look at a grand scope across an entire environment and disregard \u201ctrivial\u201d concerns.\u00a0 You are setting yourself up for failure if you make a habit out of that.<\/p>\n What are some ways you can focus on user satisfaction?\u00a0 It is important to be proactive, and more than just in the abstract.\u00a0 Here are some ideas to help move towards greater user satisfaction and ultimately have a successful deployment.<\/p>\n If possible, set some time up with some of your (least?) favorite employees in the company and just watch how they work.\u00a0 Look at where they click, observe their behavior and get a read for where their frustrations are.\u00a0 If you\u2019re able to eliminate just one or two daily frustrations, you can make a tremendous impact in their perception.<\/p>\n Citrix Director may leave something to be desired, but it is certainly improving.\u00a0 If nothing else, the logon durations reported are a decent baseline indicator about how things are going.\u00a0 Investigate<\/a> aberrations in the baseline.\u00a0 If necessary, use tools<\/a> that can help identify the root cause and eliminate it.\u00a0 Don\u2019t be afraid to dive deep<\/a>. Collect relevant logs<\/a>, analyze<\/a> and optimize!\u00a0 Your users may not report an issue \u2013 if you wait until they complain you may already be too late!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Marketing is a wonderful thing.\u00a0 However nary has a user ever said, \u201cI sure do thank IT for forcing me to use this new system, it is so much better in my day to day life that I just accept this change unconditionally!\u201d\u00a0 Rather than attempting to force the winds of change on your users, as often as possible present them an enticing offer<\/em><\/strong> that makes them want to change.\u00a0 No remote access VPN?\u00a0 Well, dear user, let me introduce you to this shiny virtual desktop (or app) that is secure through NetScaler.\u00a0 Need your PC but company policy prevents you from using VPN from your own machine or taking your laptop with you?\u00a0 RemotePC has you covered.\u00a0 Need an app installed but you don\u2019t have admin privileges?\u00a0 Why let me publish that to you! (This one is absolutely key \u2013 if you can publish the requested app do it *ASAP*.\u00a0 It is huge for winning back some credibility for IT responsiveness).\u00a0 If you can create an environment where users are asking you<\/em> how they can get on this new shiny environment, you\u2019’ll be in a much better position.<\/p>\n UCS is cool.\u00a0 Citrix is sweet.\u00a0 NetScaler can do amazing things.\u00a0 We work with\u00a0 such fantastic technology sometimes its easy to remember where users come from.\u00a0 Make sure their basic needs are being met:\u00a0 Can you do your job?\u00a0 What do you want\/need to do it better?\u00a0 Do you have all the apps necessary?\u00a0 Ask them!\u00a0 Server-based computing relies on so many things going correctly that if something falls down, it has a long way to go.\u00a0 Make sure they have what they need \u2013 from compute, I\/O, memory, all the way through the application (and even political) layers.\u00a0 Giving users the fastest system in the world doesn\u2019t matter if you reset their profile twice a week (if you do this, by the way, please go to join.citrixirc.com and get help \u2013 I\u2019m a firm believer that profile resets need to just go away.\u00a0 Something else is afoot!).\u00a0 If you don\u2019t give them adequate I\/O or oversubscribe memory or CPU \u2013 or maybe try to stuff 50 users through a VPX 10 with the high definition user experience policy running, you are going to have a bad time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I spend a lot of time thinking about and discussing Citrix, VMware, RDS, and other end-user computing topics with people from across the world.\u00a0 It\u2019s one of the things that gets me all warm and fuzzy, because there are a thousand different ways to do it and they range from strange to outright genius.\u00a0 Inevitably, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10,48,1,64],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/avtempwp.azurewebsites.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3811"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/avtempwp.azurewebsites.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/avtempwp.azurewebsites.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avtempwp.azurewebsites.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avtempwp.azurewebsites.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/avtempwp.azurewebsites.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3811\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/avtempwp.azurewebsites.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avtempwp.azurewebsites.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avtempwp.azurewebsites.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Set time aside to periodically review your environment and take yourself through \u201ca day in the life of a user\u201d.<\/h4>\n
Establish a baseline, and test against it<\/h4>\n
Don\u2019t Control the Message, Own the Message<\/h4>\n
Don\u2019t Forget the Basics<\/h4>\n