Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) isn’t cheap. Between licensing, endpoint refreshes, hypervisor fees, monitoring tools, and load-balancing appliances, it’s easy to spend more on management than on servers themselves.
But what if we told you that with a few smart moves - using only tools you’ve already paid for - you could cut your VDI total cost of ownership by up to 40%? That’s right: when you fully leverage your Citrix licensing entitlements, you can transform VDI from a money pit into a lean, mean, productivity machine.
Unicon Thin Clients: Zero-dollar Device Refresh
Most organizations replace PCs on a 3-5 year cycle. Citrix licenses include unlimited seats for Unicon thin clients which reduce licensing and maintenance costs, extend the life of PCs to 5-7 years, and can be installed on a device that costs a few hundred dollars.
- Long-life hardware: 5–7 year refresh cycle
- Lower support overhead: streamlined management and updates
- Instant provisioning: PXE boot or local flash image
Savings spotlight: Switching 200 seats from PCs ($800 each) to Unicon thin clients ($300 each) saves ~$100K right off the bat—before you even log into the hypervisor.
XenServer: The Included Hypervisor That Scales
Did you know your Citrix license covers Citrix XenServer at no additional cost? Say goodbye to per-socket fees with outrageous minimum core counts from other vendors:
- Unlimited hosts & VMs: Scale out your cluster without surprise invoices
- Built-in HA & live migration: Protect and maintain uptime for all sessions
- Integrated GPU support: Deliver 3D-accelerated workloads via NVIDIA GRID
Pro tip: Convert existing ESXi or Hyper-V hosts to Citrix Hypervisor to consolidate management and eliminate your hypervisor license line item.
UberAgent: Visibility You Already Own
Monitoring, alerting, diagnostics—these used to require separate APM or endpoint-management tools. With Citrix Workspace entitlements, you get the ability to deploy uberAgent across your whole environment.
- Session-level metrics: CPU, memory, I/O per user in real time
- Auto-discover hotspots: Quickly pinpoint overloaded hosts or apps
- Historical trends: Drive capacity planning and justify hardware purchases
- Pinpoint application performance issues and stop guessing what technology is at fault
- Shut down redundant monitoring licenses and reduce helpdesk MTTR by up to 50%.
Unlimited NetScaler
Traditional ADC appliances will nickel-and-dime you per-instance. Your Citrix licensing includes unlimited NetScaler VPX instances with 1Tb of throughput. 1Tb of licensed throughput means you’ll never have to by more capacity again – you simply add instances to scale.
- Global Server Load Balancing: Zero-cost DR and geo-load distribution
- SSL VPN & MFA: Secure remote access without extra appliances
- Single Sign-On: Seamless authentication into SaaS and web apps
Consolidate your F5, Palo Alto, and VPN appliances into a single pane of glass—and cut licensing fees in half.
Putting It All Together: A 4-Step Action Plan
- Audit your Citrix entitlements. Identify unused rights for thin clients, hypervisor, uberAgent, and NetScaler.
- Redeploy endpoints. Pilot Unicon thin clients in one department, measure support calls, then scale.
- Migrate hypervisor. Stand up a Citrix Hypervisor cluster and start testing workloads alongside your other hypervisors.
- Switch monitoring & ADC. Decommission legacy APM and Application Delivery Controller appliances after netting identical functionality with Citrix tools.
Result: Real-world customers are seeing 25–40% reductions in both CAPEX and OPEX within the first year.
Ready to stop overpaying for VDI?
Contact us to schedule a no-obligation assessment of your Citrix footprint—and start turning your entitlements into hard-savings today.
Tags: Citrix , Technology