Citrix to Azure Virtual Desktop — remote workforce rebuild
Multi-office business, 80 staff · Financial & professional services
Remote staff struggled with Citrix performance and VPN instability. Citrix renewal quote forced a decision — migrate to AVD or pay premium prices for another three years of pain.
The problem
Daily desktop issues, slow logons, and helpdesk tickets eating IT capacity. Citrix licensing renewal was 40% higher than expected. No documented DR for virtual desktop environment.
Constraints
- — Users in Brisbane, Sydney, and remote — latency sensitive
- — Compliance requirements for session logging and access control
- — Must complete before Citrix renewal deadline
Approach
Step 1
Pilot
Built AVD host pool in Azure, migrated 15-user pilot group, benchmarked performance vs Citrix baseline.
Step 2
Identity & security
Entra ID conditional access, MFA enforcement, M365 security baseline, session policies aligned to compliance needs.
Step 3
Wave migration
Department-by-department cutover over six weeks. Parallel run for two weeks per wave, then Citrix decommission.
Deliverables
- Azure Virtual Desktop environment — production
- M365 security hardening
- User migration and training materials
- Runbooks for provisioning and troubleshooting
Results
- Logon time
- Reduced average session start by ~60%
- Helpdesk tickets
- Desktop-related tickets dropped sharply post-cutover
- Licensing
- Predictable Azure consumption vs Citrix renewal shock
- DR
- Tested failover — documented recovery procedure
“Our team stopped complaining about remote desktop on day one of the AVD cutover.”
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