White Paper

Citrix Cloud Services:

Total Economic Benefits Assessment Guide
 Citrix Cloud Servcies: Total Economic Benefits Assessment Guide

Contents

1 Executive Summary .......................................................................................................... 2
2 Citrix Cloud – A Brief Overview ........................................................................................ 3
3 Citrix Licensing Options – A Perspective ........................................................................... 5
3.1 Perpetual Licensing Economics ............................................................................................... 5
3.2 Subscription Based SaaS Delivery ............................................................................................ 6
3.3 Comparing Perpetual vs. SaaS ................................................................................................. 6
4 Estimating Cost Avoidances When Using Citrix Cloud Services .......................................... 7
4.1 Hard Cost Avoidances ............................................................................................................. 7
4.1.1 Reduced Maintenance and Support Costs ............................................................................. 7
4.1.2 Automatic software upgrading and patching ......................................................................... 7
4.1.3 Reduced Time-to-Value, Time-to-Production ......................................................................... 8
4.1.4 Automation with Smart Tool Management ............................................................................ 9
4.1.5 Reduced Installation and Management infrastructure ........................................................ 10
4.2 Soft Cost Avoidances ............................................................................................................ 12
4.2.1 Providing Flexible On-Ramp Options for Any Cloud ............................................................. 12
4.2.2 Security and Compliance Advantages ................................................................................... 13
4.2.3 Minimized Downtime Cost ................................................................................................... 14
4.2.4 Shifting Expenses from CapEx to OpEx ................................................................................. 14
4.2.5 Enable Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity options ................................................. 15
5 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 16
 Citrix Cloud Servcies: Total Economic Benefits Assessment Guide

1 Executive Summary
Citrix Cloud services represent the fastest, simplest, and most flexible approach to delivering integrated
digital workspaces available today. Services are provided either as full Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), or
other cases, as hybrid cloud services where Citrix provides cloud-based management, while customers
determine where workloads are located. All services are sold in the form of 1- 2- and 3-year subscriptions
which include service activation, support, and constant SaaS-based updates during the lifetime of the
subscription.
This paper provides guidance to customers wanting to draw economic comparisons between perpetually
licensed Citrix software, and the newer Citrix Cloud service equivalents.
Compared to purchasing, installing, and maintaining traditional perpetually licensed software, the new
SaaS/Subscription approach offers unique technical, financial, and capability benefits. Some of the main
benefits and often cost avoidances that Citrix Cloud services bring to customers in this paper include:

Hard cost avoidances Soft cost avoidances / new capabilities

Reduced maintenance and support Flexible on-ramp to any cloud
o Avoid ongoing maintenance costs o Reduced lock-in risk
o Greater infrastructure choice
Eliminated software upgrades and patching
o Avoid upgrade risk / expense Security and compliance advantages
o Greater infrastructure flexibility
Reduced time-to-production
o Labor & staging savings CapEx vs. OpEx advantages
o Avoid capital cost-of-funds
Automation efficiencies with Smart Tools
o Greater operational predictability
o Labor reduction
o Infrastructure cost reduction Minimized downtime
o Avoid cost/risk of downtime
Reduced installation and management
o Less (or no) hardware Enabling business continuity options
o Little (or none) capacity re-sizing o Infrastructure and management efficiency
o Multi-location management options

Citrix Cloud also brings several intrinsic “soft” benefits to customers beyond cost avoidance; these
benefits should be evaluated holistically as customers consider cloud services versus software
implementation. This paper also provides insights and data intended to help Citrix Cloud services
customers create a framework from which they can quantify their own unique economic and net-new
capability benefits.

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2 Citrix Cloud – A Brief Overview

Citrix Cloud helps deliver an integrated digital workspace by seamlessly uniting all Citrix services and
technologies into a single platform to simplify and eliminate manual integration between them. Citrix
Cloud also provides underlying platform services for operations, service administration, resource
management, upgrading, and user experience monitoring. The entire platform and services are delivered
as Software as a Service (SaaS) via a subscription based pricing model. The main services that Citrix
Cloud delivers as of today are XenApp, XenDesktop, XenMobile, ShareFile and NetScaler.

Figure 1: Citrix Cloud Services Integration

The Citrix Cloud platform can be thought of as a management plane spanning multiple services. The core
cloud services are operated and maintained by Citrix, and contain all management functions that
customers would otherwise have to install and provision themselves. By seamlessly managing the
infrastructure related operational tasks such as software version updates, maintenance and support,
services integration, etc. on behalf of the customer, Citrix Cloud enables its customers to better focus on
their core business rather than on maintaining Citrix infrastructure.

Figure 2: Best Way To Deliver Citrix Services

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One of the critical values that Citrix Cloud services bring to customers is that they are easier and faster to
integrate than traditional software, and are ready to be consumed with minimal effort. In many cases, all
customers need to do is activate, configure, and onboard users to the services. Maintenance and support
tasks such as periodic installation of software version upgrades, patches, etc. is Citrix’s responsibility.
In a few cases (such as with the XenApp and XenDesktop service) management of certain software and
networking components is explicitly placed under customer management, ensuring that customers are in
complete control of proprietary data and workloads. For example, Virtual Delivery Agents** (VDAs) in
Resource Locations are explicitly under customer control/management, while all other XenApp and
XenDesktop components are cloud-based.
**VDA Definition: A VDA enables connections to applications and desktops. The VDA is installed on the
machine that runs the applications or virtual desktops for the user. It enables the machines to register
with Delivery Controllers and manage the High Definition eXperience (HDX) connection to a user device.

Figure 3: Citrix Cloud services portfolio (July 2017)

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3 Citrix Licensing Options – A Perspective

In order for customers to determine which Citrix delivery model works the best for them, it is important to
understand both the traditional perpetual licensing model as well as the subscription based Citrix Cloud
service model. This will allow customers to compare and contrast the two approaches and highlight how
and where Citrix Cloud adds value.

3.1 Perpetual Licensing Economics

In a perpetual licensing model, the customer may use licensed software indefinitely. However, customers
also often choose to pay an optional annual software maintenance and support fee. The fee entitles
access to any subsequent versions of the software, software upgrades, patches and technical support.
From a cost perspective, a hypothetical perpetual licensing cost structure for the first 5 years will look
similar to Figure 4.

Perpetual Product License Cost Support and Maintenance Cost

$120.00

$525.00

$120.00 $120.00 $120.00 $120.00

$- $- $- $-
Y0 Y1 Y2 Y3 Y4

Figure 4: Typical Perpetual License Cost Structure

In the above example, the first year (i.e. Y0) cost includes the license cost (typically recorded as a capital
investment) plus the support and maintenance cost ($525 + $120). For Y1 - Y4, the customer pays just
support and maintenance cost ($120) for the subsequent years until the version of the software reaches
“End of Life” (EOL). Of course, the yearly support and maintenance fee is not mandatory and the
customer could potentially choose to discontinue paying this fee at any point in time. However, without
this fee, the customer will lose access to future upgrades, software support and patch releases. In the
scenario where upgrades and patches become available, it is the responsibility of the customer to install
these updates themselves.
It is also important to realize that in order to successfully deploy a software offering, there are other
significant costs including hardware, labor, datacenter heating and cooling, supporting infrastructure (e.g.
database, load balancer), etc. that need to be considered to establish a complete economic snapshot of
the associated cost structure.

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3.2 Subscription Based SaaS Delivery

In contrast to the perpetual software model, Citrix Cloud utilizes a SaaS delivery and subscription model
where customers select services and then with little-to-no infrastructure (depending on the service)
configure and activate each. Each service, including updates, configuration, integration and support is
encapsulated in a single year-to-year, flat-rate subscription price.
As an example, a hypothetical subscription’s typical cost modal via Citrix Cloud for the first 5 years is
depicted in Figure 5 below:

$300

$250

$200

$150
$240 $240 $240 $240 $240
$100

$50

$-
Y0 Y1 Y2 Y3 Y4

Figure 5: Typical Subscription cost structure (Per User) Pricing

As shown in the above graph, a typical Citrix Cloud service cost structure is constant and predictable,
often with lower (or no) infrastructure costs, and significantly less software and support, labor, and
datacenter-related investments. Most important, updates/patches are automatically tested and applied.
Lastly, as a subscription, accounting rules typically allow treatment of the cost as an operational (not
capital) expense.

3.3 Comparing Perpetual vs. SaaS

Clearly, the up-front capitalized costs for traditional software are greater than for the fixed-cost SaaS
equivalent. Amortized over a longer-term (usually 3-5 years or more) the SaaS alternative will at first
appear more expensive from a pure cash-flow perspective.
However, customers need to take into account
- Eliminating costs such as maintenance and support
- Avoiding the need for staging and implementing regular upgrades
- Sizing, deploying, and refreshing hardware
Therefore, due to hard- and soft-cost avoidances provided by the SaaS model, the subscription approach
will present a lower overall total cost of ownership – and higher overall value – when compared with
software. The remaining sections of this paper will examine these in detail.

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4 Estimating Cost Avoidances When Using Citrix

Cloud Services
4.1 Hard Cost Avoidances
The below section discusses various areas where a Citrix Cloud implementation makes direct impacts on
the cost structure of customer IT environments. We encourage customers to use these areas as
guidance for creating their own economic evaluations.

4.1.1 Reduced Maintenance and Support Costs

Background: Upgrades to the Citrix Cloud management plane, as well as upgrades to individual
services, are automatic (managed by the Citrix Cloud operations team). Customers therefore have
access to the latest Citrix technology as soon as it’s available, and avoid the operational overhead, time,
and testing necessary to perform manual upgrades.
Citrix also manages and supports all services on behalf of the customer. This means customers are free
from most tedious support tasks resulting into significant cost savings in terms of the number of personnel
needed for support related work.
Benefits Framework: Statistics show that the greatest long-term cost component of computer software
often lies with software support: The installation, training, maintenance, upgrades, troubleshooting and
time lost due to system failures and lack of user training.

Savings Estimation: Per Gartner Research, Inc., Software is either the first or second largest cost
in the IT budget; software support/maintenance accounts for between 50% - 60% of that overall
software cost.
In contrast, leveraging Citrix Cloud services helps eliminate most if not all of these typical
maintenance and support costs; besides the service subscription itself, there are no additional
requires maintenance costs.

Further References and Data Points:

1. Gartner Research titled Reduce Your Software Maintenance and Support Costs by Up to 50% by
Deploying These Often-Overlooked but Effective Best Practices
a. https://www.gartner.com/doc/3525658/reduce-software-maintenance-support-costs

4.1.2 Automatic software upgrading and patching

Background: Software upgrading often means time, money and complexity. As a result, upgrades are
often delayed or avoided altogether. Avoidance often prevents short-term headaches but often keeps
users from leveraging the latest and greatest product versions. According to Forrester research, 5% to
10% of enterprise software vendors' customers move to the latest release; 40% to 50% of customers stay
on the release prior to the latest one; and 40% to 50% remain on older releases--including 10% to 20% of
the customer base who stay on releases that are no longer fully supported by the vendor. It is important
to note that Citrix releases 2-4 such updates to XenApp and Xen Desktop each year.
Lack of upgrading software potentially leads to Security vulnerabilities, Loss of productivity, Compatibility
and integration challenges with other technologies, and compromised maintenance and/or support.

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Benefits Framework: Due to the complexity involved, enterprises tend to delay pushing software
upgrades out, sometimes indefinitely, as they want to avoid business disruption and associated
downtime. This effort is postponed until the enterprises hit a road block in the form of security
vulnerability, cyber-attack, software incompliance, or end of support for a software version.
With Citrix Cloud services, Citrix is responsible for the maintenance and support of the management
infrastructure including software version upgrades. This ensures customers are always on the latest
version of the software, and are compliant and protected against security vulnerabilities. (A current
exception is that management and support of XenApp and XenDesktop VDAs in customer-determined
resource locations are intentionally not updated automatically)

Savings Estimation: According to Gartner, enterprise software upgrades can cost up to 30%
of the original software installation price, can take more than a year to complete and require
companies to revamp their technology infrastructures and business practices. Direct upgrade
costs can include
• Installation
• Data migration
• Staging/test
• Roll-out & potential conversion downtime
The Citrix Cloud service delivery model eliminates any future need to patch or upgrade Citrix
technologies.

Further References and Data Points:

1) Enterprise Software Upgrades: Less Pain, More Gain
a. http://www.cio.com/article/2440405/enterprise-resource-planning/enterprise-software-upgrades--
less-pain--more-gain.html
2) The Hidden Cost of Upgrading
a. http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/466064_2
3) Mission Impossible: Judging TCO of Enterprise Software Upgrades
a. http://www.cio.com/article/2417113/enterprise-software/mission-impossible--judging-tco-of-
enterprise-software-upgrades.html

4.1.3 Reduced Time-to-Value, Time-to-Production

Background: Deploying traditional software on-premises requires a number of capital acquisition
activities, including acquiring and provisioning hardware, networking, storage and data center resources.
Deployment begins with installation, configuration and tuning – often within a staged environment – to be
followed by production deployment. These precursors to full production can span weeks or months.
Deploying traditional software into cloud IaaS can avoid the hardware procurement delays, but still
requires all other manual installation, configuration, and staging steps.
Benefits Framework: Using Citrix Cloud services, the speed with which services can be deployed is
increased, chiefly due to the fact that most services are activated rather than installed and configured.
Many services are pure cloud-only services and do not require any additional provisioning.
Citrix Cloud services allow customers to vastly reduce (or eliminate) costs and delays associated with
designing for and preparing POCs, staging, and upgrades - and more quickly serve their internal line-of-
business customers.

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Savings Estimation: A typical 5,000 user XenDesktop traditional deployment may take 3-9 weeks to
1
stage, configure, deploy and move the core components into production including back-end resources and
necessary networking components.
In contrast, using the Citrix Cloud model, the customer is only responsible for the deployment and
maintenance of the VDAs and integration with the local Active Directory (AD). The remaining infrastructure
is deployed, configured and managed by Citrix. This could translate into a significantly shorter
implementation and test time for the customers thereby reducing time to production.

Apps and Desktop Components Citrix Cloud Traditional Software

Implementation Implementation
Delivery Controllers SaaS Manual Config.
StoreFront or Web Interface Servers SaaS Manual Config.
SQL Server data store SaaS Manual Config.
Licensing Server SaaS Manual Config.
NetScaler Gateway SaaS Manual Config.
Studio and Director SaaS Manual Config.
Server VDAs Manual Config. Manual Config.
Desktop VDAs Manual Config. Manual Config.
Active Directory integration Manual Config. Manual Config.
Cloud Connectors SaaS (n/a)

In the case of other Citrix Cloud services (i.e. Secure Browser, ShareFile, XenMobile Services, NetScaler
Gateway Service, NetScaler MAS and others) zero additional software or hardware or software provisioning
is required – services are simply activated and configured.

Further References and Data Points:

1) Stages of Software Deployment
a. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_deployment

4.1.4 Automation with Smart Tool Management

Background: Citrix Smart Tools (formerly Citrix Lifecycle Management) are a set of cloud-based tools to
help customers speed up and simplify the design, deployment, and management of Citrix solutions
across any on-premises or cloud environment. Customers can get the benefits of automation, proactively
check the health of their systems, and keep costs under control with on-demand scaling.
Benefits Framework: One central component of Smart Tools is Smart Scale. Smart Scale enables
proactive scaling and power management of machines (e.g. VDAs) in XenApp and XenDesktop public
cloud deployments.
Using Smart Scale, customers can reduce the costs of running XenApp and XenDesktop VDAs in public
clouds, such as with Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Services (AWS). Smart Scale achieves this by
dynamically scaling-up or scaling-down the number of powered-on virtual machines in a given VDA
Delivery Group. Smart Scale can also estimate the savings based on the per-machine costs and
utilization history.
Smart Scale manages machine power and capacity using the following methods:
- Schedule-based scaling: Powers machines on and off based on a schedule that customers define.
- Load-based scaling: Powers machines on and off based on the level of demand for sessions.

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- Load and schedule-based scaling: Keeps a minimum number of machines powered on at time
periods the customer defines while accommodating the current level of demand for sessions.

Savings Estimation: In a hypothetical example with the Citrix Cloud XenApp and XenDesktop
Service, with VDAs deployed into a public cloud, Citrix Smart Scale can be used to control a
3,000 VM Delivery Group:

Assumptions
Number of VMs 3,000
Total hours/week VMs run 100% capacity 40
Total hours/week VMs run 50% capacity 16
Total hours/week VMs run 10% capacity 112
Hourly cost per VM $0.07

Annual Costs

Cost with “traditional” approach: $1,839,600

Cost using Smart Scale power management $646,464
Potential Savings $1,193,136

Further References and Data Points:

1) Citrix Smart Tools https://manage-docs.citrix.com/hc/en-us

4.1.5 Reduced Installation and Management infrastructure

Background: The Citrix Cloud control plane is provided and maintained by Citrix, and is furnished as an
always-on SaaS-style cloud service. Most associated infrastructure components needed to support Citrix
products are no longer required (exception being VDAs for the XenApp and XenDesktop Service in
customer-managed Resource Locations). Elimination of most Citrix software also eliminates the periodic
need for hardware refresh for an on-premises Citrix environment.
Since Citrix operates the management components of each cloud service, customers often have less
management infrastructure to buy – or if customers choose to deploy services into a cloud, they may
have less IaaS to consume as compared with traditional software.
As shown in Figure 6, with Citrix Cloud, a large fraction of the XenApp/XenDesktop infrastructure will be
managed by Citrix (e.g. Delivery Controllers, StoreFront, Studio, Director, license server and associated
networking)

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Traditional Deployment Citrix Cloud Deployment

Figure 6: XenApp and XenDesktop Infrastructure Reduction with Citrix Cloud Implementation

Benefits Framework: Avoiding provisioning and maintaining hardware to support Citrix management is
the goal. Note
Hardware maintenance costs rise over time, and performance lags behind more current server offerings.
Energy efficiency is not as advanced in older server models, leading to increasing power/cooling costs in
the latter years of the server’s usable life cycle
Applications software and systems software fall behind the current versions available in the marketplace,
and security may require frequent updates. If the application or the system software is declared End-Of-
Life (EOL), security patches may no longer be provided, leaving the system vulnerable to cyber threats.

Savings Estimation: To illustrate the infrastructure reduction provided by Citrix Cloud, assume a
typical 1,000-user XenDesktop on-premises software environment. Per Citrix best-practices, between
4-10 servers may be required to support Delivery Controllers, Databases, Studio, Director, etc.,
(depending on performance, redundancy, etc.). This does not include the workload VDAs.
Where Citrix Cloud is applied, this hardware cost is completely avoided, as all services are provided
via the Citrix Cloud control plane.
Following industry statistics, a physical server’s initial capital cost may represent only 20%-50% of its
total cost of ownership (TCO) over a 3-5 year financial lifetime.
In the case of other Citrix Cloud services (i.e. Secure Browser, ShareFile, XenMobile Services,
NetScaler Gateway Service, NetScaler MAS and others) zero hardware provisioning is required –
services are simply activated and configured.

Further References & Data Points:

(1) Total Cost of Ownership: Factors to consider
a. https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/total-cost-of-ownership-factors-to-consider
(2) Citrix XenApp 7.5 Design Guide: Mobilizing Windows Apps:
a. https://www.citrix.com/content/dam/citrix/en_us/documents/products-solutions/mobilizing-windows-
apps-xenapp-75-design-guide-on-vsphere-55.pdf
(3) Microsoft Azure TCO Calculator:
a. https://www.tco.microsoft.com/Home/Calculator

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(4) XenApp and XenDesktop on Azure Cost Calculator:

a. https://costcalculator.azurewebsites.net/estimate?topologyType=xenApp
(5) Cost of Server Ownership: On-Premise vs. IaaS
a. http://www.sherweb.com/blog/total-cost-of-ownership-of-servers-iaas-vs-on-premise/

4.2 Soft Cost Avoidances

Here we discuss harder-to-quantify net-new benefits that Citrix Cloud services bring to customer
organizations. We focus on improving operational efficiency and adding net-new capabilities to the IT
organization – and helping estimate added value.

4.2.1 Providing Flexible On-Ramp Options for Any Cloud

Background: Citrix Cloud XenApp and XenDesktop services are completely hybrid in nature, allowing
customers to deploy virtual App and Desktop workloads onto any cloud or virtualization platform,
including
- Existing or new On-Premise infrastructure
- Public Clouds like Azure or AWS
- Other Hybrid Clouds
- Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI)
The most important factor to note is that Citrix Cloud allows customers to leverage their existing
infrastructure investments, whether it is their existing on premise environment or their existing public
cloud infrastructure. In this manner, they can make a smooth (and presumably lower-risk) transition to the
cloud infrastructure of their choice.

Benefits Estimation: The true hybrid nature of Citrix Cloud brings the following benefit to its
customers:
a. Lower cloud adoption cost: Thanks to its hybrid characteristics, Citrix Cloud helps lower adoption
cost and transition risk. For VDA workloads, customers have the freedom of leveraging their
existing infrastructure investments and have the flexibility to choose any public cloud they prefer
to deploy into. No “fork-lift” migration is necessary. For existing Citrix perpetual software
customers, promotional transition licensing is available that includes “hybrid rights” allowing them
to simultaneously operate both on-premises and in-the-cloud implementations.
b. Minimize cloud lock-in risk: One of the biggest concerns customers have with migrating to the
public cloud is that it becomes difficult to move workloads elsewhere. Citrix Cloud is completely
cloud-agnostic in nature, and allows for workloads to be moved to another cloud or to any on-
premises environment. In fact, customers can run and manage multiple Citrix workloads in
multiple clouds, simultaneously.

Further References and Data Points:

1) Top 3 Benefits of Hybrid Cloud
a. http://www.hosting.com/hybrid-cloud-top-3-benefits/

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4.2.2 Security and Compliance Advantages

Background: In order to ensure that compute environments are fully secured, Citrix is committed to
managing and deploying regular updates and implementing security patches as necessary to keep ahead
of cyber security breaches, and stay defensible in an evolving world of cyber hacks and attacks.
Also, in the case of XenApp and XenDesktop Services, customers can also be assured that Citrix has no
access to the customer's VDI data, which resides outside of Citrix Cloud and in customer-selected
Resource Locations. Customers are fully responsible for their own data which gives the customers
complete control over the security of their data.
Most important, the ability to control the location of Resource Locations for data, application, and desktop
images, enables customers to adhere to specific regulatory, compliance, and data sovereignty rules.

Figure 7: Manage Multiple XenApp/XenDesktop Resource Locations with Citrix Cloud

Benefits Estimation:
a) Data location flexibility: From a compliance standpoint, Citrix Cloud significantly facilitates security,
compliance and data sovereignty requirements by allowing customers to locate desktops and
sensitive data in the location(s) of their choice, while managing those multiple locations all from a
single management plane. Customers need only deploy VDAs in required locations and manage
the corresponding data as per local or regional compliance needs (as shown in Figure 7).

This approach reduces the amount of regionally-located management infrastructure, corresponding

labor, and overall complexity. Centralizing management helps reduce overall cost, while adhering to
local or distributed security and compliance needs.

Further References and Data Points:

1) Is Data Sovereignty a Barrier to Cloud Adoption?
a. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2017/04/11/is-data-sovereignty-a-barrier-to-
cloud-adoption/#5f8ef2f31c82
2) Data Privacy and Sovereignty: Global Challenges in the Cloud
a. https://www.bc.net/sites/www.bc.net/files/bcnet/NewsEvents/ConferenceArchives/2016Slide
s/Tuesday-Day1/2016-Conference-Data-Privacy-And-Sovereignty-V001.pdf

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4.2.3 Minimized Downtime Cost

Background: According to IDC, on average, infrastructure failure can cost large enterprises $100,000
per hour. Critical application failures exact a far steeper toll, from $500,000 to $1 million per hour. Hence
it is extremely critical to minimize Citrix infrastructure and application downtime.

Benefits Estimation:
a) Fully-managed platform: Citrix Cloud is monitored on a 24x7x365, and services run on a highly-
available and globally-distributed infrastructure. This minimizes the customer’s downtime risk for the
components that Citrix manages, and alleviates much of customer needs to design for availability
(customers are still responsible for the VDAs and their availability).

Further References and Data Points:

1) Citrix Cloud services uptime monitor
• http://status.cloud.com
2) IDC Survey: Downtime Costs Large Company Billions
• http://devopsdigest.com/idc-survey-appdynamics-devops-application-performance

4.2.4 Shifting Expenses from CapEx to OpEx

Background: Typically, capital infrastructure investments are large and often unpredictable, often with a
significant cost-of-capital – literally, the cost of money – as well as with a typical return-on-capital-assets
requirement made by most finance departments.
Many organizations are limited by the markets or private lenders in the amount of capital expenditure they
are able to access. This is why many organizations prefer to lease rather than purchase; they don’t want
to tie up precious capital. This philosophy, within various industries, is causing the shift towards adopting
cloud services.
Large IT expenses like procuring software and infrastructure fall under the umbrella of capital expenses
(CapEx), including capitalizing software. With the advent of cloud computing and the periodic
subscription-style consumption-based purchasing, many organizations are successfully shifting some or
all IT investments to the operational expense ledger (OpEx).

Benefits Estimation:
a) Avoiding cost-of-capital hurdles: By shifting from a CapEx to an OpEx model, customers can potentially
eliminate risk and unpredictability associated with large hardware/software investments. IT SaaS infrastructure
can become a regular, predictable, and often consumption-based operational expense – often preferred by
finance departments. This avoids cost-of-capital expenses as well as return-on-capital requirements.

Further References and Data Points:

1) Understanding CAPEX vs OPEX for technology spending
a. http://blog.au.logicalis.com/understanding-capex-vs-opex/
2) Cloud Economics: Making the Business Case for Cloud
a) https://assets.kpmg.com/content/dam/kpmg/pdf/2015/11/cloud-economics.pdf

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4.2.5 Enable Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity options

Background: According to IDC, Unplanned application downtime costs the Fortune 1000 from $1.25
billion to $2.5 billion every year. This implies that it is critical that enterprises implement business
continuity and a disaster recovery solutions to address unforeseen events that could disrupt operations.

Benefits Estimation:
a) Simplifies recovery location creation/management: Citrix Cloud can easily manage multiple Resource
Locations across data centers or clouds or a hybrid of both – making it easier to establish and
maintain primary and secondary availability locations. This helps avoid the cost of duplicate Citrix
management facilities.
b) Facilitates Disaster Recovery: Citrix Cloud simplifies how Delivery Groups of VDAs are created,
allowing administrators to create duplicate Delivery Groups in recovery locations. In the event of an
unforeseen outage in a primary location, the Citrix Cloud console can be used to activate Delivery
Groups in a recovery location(s) – helping avoid the redundant cost of establishing duplicate Citrix
management facilities.
Further References and Data Points:
1) IDC Survey: Downtime Costs Large Company Billions
a. http://devopsdigest.com/idc-survey-appdynamics-devops-application-performance
2) Disaster Recovery Is Not Business Continuity
b. http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2013/01/04/disaster-recovery-is-not-business-
continuity/
3) Citrix Cloud Business Continuity Advantage (Blog)
c. https://www.citrix.com/blogs/2017/04/05/citrix-cloud-business-continuity-advantage/

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 Citrix Cloud Servcies: Total Economic Benefits Assessment Guide

5 Conclusion
Compared to the traditional purchasing, installing, and maintaining of traditional perpetually licensed
software, Citrix Cloud’s SaaS/Subscription approach offers unique technical, financial, and capability
benefits.
Considering the additional value, convenience, speed and reliability of SaaS-style delivery, Citrix Cloud
services provide a superior economic and strategic option to purchasing and maintaining a traditional
Citrix environment.
Purchasing evaluations based upon sole comparisons of cash outflows for perpetual licensing versus
SaaS-style subscription access may fail to take into account hard- and soft-cost avoidances, as well as
net-new value and capabilities.
When building an economic model for Citrix Cloud services, Citrix recommends customers factoring-in the
value of net-new capabilities, as well as using industry benchmarks to estimate direct and indirect savings
of infrastructure, updating, time, labor, and implementation risk.
To learn more about Citrix Cloud services, please visit https://www.citrix.com/cloud

About Citrix 


Citrix (NASDAQ: CTXS) aims to power a world where people, organizations and things are securely connected and accessible to
make the extraordinary possible. Its technology makes the world’s apps and data secure and easy to access, empowering people to
work anywhere and at any time. Citrix provides a complete and integrated portfolio of secure digital workspace, application delivery,
virtualization, mobility, network delivery and file sharing solutions that enables IT to ensure critical systems are securely available to
users via the cloud or on-premises and across any device or platform. With annual revenue in 2016 of $3.42 billion, Citrix solutions
are in use by more than 400,000 organizations and 100 million users globally. Learn more at www .citrix.com. 

Copyright © 2017 Citrix Systems Inc. All rights reserved. Citrix, Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop, other marks appearing herein are
trademarks of Citrix Systems, Inc. and/or one or more of its subsidiaries, and may be registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark
Office and in other countries. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners. 

Revised July 2017.

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