As more organizations look to move desktops to the cloud, many don’t want to give up the platforms they already rely on. For teams running Citrix, Amazon WorkSpaces Core offers a simple way to extend into AWS without starting over.
This shift is important because, historically, Azure was effectively the only practical option for running Windows 10/11 multi-session desktops, especially for organizations aligned with Microsoft 365. In many cases, that meant customers were forced into Azure for VDI, even if their broader cloud strategy or preference was elsewhere. WorkSpaces Core changes that, giving organizations a real alternative, and the flexibility to run Citrix workloads in AWS without being locked into a single cloud.
WorkSpaces Core allows organizations to run Windows desktops in AWS while still using Citrix for delivery and management, giving customers more flexibility in how and where they deploy VDI.
At a high level:
- WorkSpaces Core: Desktop infrastructure (compute, storage, networking)
- Citrix: Delivery, HDX protocol, policies, and management
This model makes it easy to adopt a hybrid approach. You can run workloads on-prem or in AWS and scale as needed, without major changes to how your environment operates.
Some key benefits include:
- More cloud choice beyond Azure
- Leverage existing Citrix investment
- Reduce infrastructure management overhead
- Maintain a consistent user experience
- Scale quickly without new hardware
There are still a few things to plan for, like networking, identity integration, and cost management, but these are familiar areas for most Citrix environments.
In the end, this is about extending Citrix, not replacing it. WorkSpaces Core provides a flexible, low-risk way to bring your VDI environment into the cloud while keeping what already works.