Citrix XenApp Product Editions and Licensing

Product Editions:-

• Fundamentals – Aimed at the small & medium business looking for secure, remote access.
• Advanced – A “solid foundation” for on-demand application delivery
• Enterprise – “Enterprise Class” on-demand application delivery optimized for larger environments
• Platinum – The “most robust, secure & scalable” for delivery applications on-demand.

Licensing Models:-

User Licensing – Provides access to named users:

• One User
• One Device
• Unlimited connections to virtual applications

Concurrent Licensing – Licenses are assigned to each connection from a central pool

  

Licensing Microsoft within a Citrix environment:-

The first thing to note is:

“All users/devices accessing the Citrix server need to be covered with a Remote Desktop Services (RDS) CAL”

To ensure you purchase the requisite number of CALs to go along with your Citrix use.

Next :

“Each machine accessing an application on the Citrix server must have an equivalent copy installed on the local machine.”

For example, if you have Office Pro 2010 on you Citrix server, devices licensed with:

• Office Std 2010
• Office Pro 2007

may NOT access that central server.

Another key point that can make a big difference to software purchase choices, particularly for smaller organizations is this:

“Only Volume License copies of applications may be used in a Citrix (or RDS) environment”,

so no:

• OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer)
• FPP (Fully Packaged Product)

or even

• Office 365

If Office is to be used in a Citrix/RDS environment, it must be purchased via:

• Open
• Open Value
• Select
• Select Plus
• Enterprise Agreement (EA).

Citrix & RDS environments add an extra layer of complexity to Microsoft licensing and the management of such assets, so it’s important to understand the rules and what you can do to keep control of your software licensing. A key point is this:

“Any device capable of accessing the Citrix/RDS server must be appropriately licensed for the application/s on that server.”

Microsoft’s application licensing is done on a “per-device” basis so things such as Group Policy are not sufficient for restricting access to applications, as they apply at a user – rather than a device – level. So if you “publish” the apps to 10 people via Group Policy, those 10 people could access it from any one of your 300 machines…meaning you’d need 300 device licenses to be compliant.

Click here for details about citrix products licensing.