Citrix Virtual Apps vs VMware Horizon for VDI's in AWS?

windowsman

We are a small company in the financial space. We have 20 desktop machines in our office that we want to convert to VDI machines in AWS.

I'm creating this post to kindly ask for your opinions on which option we should consider.

Our options for creating these VDI's in AWS are A) Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops and VMWare Horizon.

We obviously want to be cost-efficient, but not at the sacrifice of security or other important considerations.

I'd say that 80% or more of the work done on these desktops will be code creation/compiling as they communicate with our Linux machines. These important Linux servers are running in AWS already, so we'd like to put the desktops closer to these devices in the cloud.

The virtual desktops don't need a lot of resources. Outside of text editing and Office 365 (mainly just Outlook for email), there's very little else done on these machines.

Users will be accessing the VDI's from their home laptops, and in some cases, from the physical resources (desktops/laptops/etc) that we'll have onsite. We are considering keeping the physical machines in the office for employees to use to connect to the VDI instances when they come onsite, but we aren't sure on that just yet.

It's likely that we're going to perhaps move some of our few Windows servers into the cloud over time, however moving these desktops to the cloud is top priority.

We are experiencing some moderate growth, so once we're converted to VDI's, we estimate to add a virtual desktop at a rate of maybe one every month or so.

We're in the midst of meetings with reps from both products. We plan on making a decision within the next few weeks.

I TRIED to add as much background info as I can, in the event it helps formulate your opinion. Feel free to ask additional questions if necessary.

Considering our situation, which product would you choose, and why?