Despite the fact that in recent years my professional activity is directly related to the topic of Citrix, I, like my colleagues, cannot fail to notice the lack of special prospects for the development of technology for accessing Apps through terminal sessions (especially on-Premise).
Before asking a couple of questions, I would like to emphasize that directly comparing both the technologies underlying Kubernetes and Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (MS RDS, VMware Horizon, Parallels RAS) and the products themselves is not entirely correct. But if we consider the ultimate goal, for which ultimately there is IT, namely for the end user, whose task is to carry out the tasks assigned to him with maximum efficiency and convenience.
The meaning and purpose of using a virtual application
If we go back to the distant late 90s - early 2000s, at the time when Citrix began to gain its popularity, all programs were monoliths in one way or another. The main difference was only in whether the program was installed completely on a terminal server, or on the server there was only a frontend (for example, SAPGUI).
As 20 years ago, and now the use of terminal servers was more than an effective tool and made it possible to solve the following tasks: efficient use of resources, speed of deployment and installation of updates, as well as switching between versions, security (there are both pros and cons), simplicity control access to applications, etc.
Why are the clouds gathering?
Colleagues explain their position as follows. More and more software products continue to exist as web applications, many are simply “born in the cloud”. Thus, the share of software installed on servers for Windows will constantly decrease, turning a published application into an unnecessary anachronism.
Your comments are welcome! Thank you!