Goodbye, Citrix! Domestic cloud desktop players reshuffle, who can eat more cake?

Recently, another foreign giant announced that it will withdraw from the Chinese market. Following LinkedIn and Teradate, the protagonist this time is virtualization giant Citrix.

Citrix said it would stop all business transactions (including services) in the Chinese market (including Hong Kong and Macau) due to cost reasons, and this decision took effect on December 3. Citrix's old customers and partners will receive a farewell email from the original manufacturer.

As an iconic VDI ​​vendor, Citrix accounted for almost half of the global desktop virtualization market at its peak, and its desktop transmission protocol ICA was also the best in the industry. At its peak, Citrix could even compete with VMware. Why did such a well-established technology vendor with a deep foundation exit in China? How can its legacy customers find alternative solutions that can match the benchmark?

In this story of failure, we can see not only the helpless farewell of a technology giant in China, but also the reshaping of the Chinese cloud desktop market in the process of local replacement.

Abandoning the Chinese market, cost may not be the root cause

Citrix's official reason for withdrawing from China was the rising cost of doing business in the Chinese market. However, a closer look reveals that the cost issue may be just the result of Citrix's "retreat" rather than the root cause.

As the saying goes, it is easier to get a foreign monk to chant sutras. However, in the Chinese cloud desktop market, Citrix's development does not conform to this norm. According to the "Virtual Client Computing Software Market 2021 Tracking Report" released by IDC, Citrix ranks third. In terms of data, Citrix is ​​in a position of "having a place, but not dominating".

From the perspective of global layout, Citrix's main market has never been in China. For Citrix, the Chinese market is large, but it is only a marginal market. This also means that Citrix will not make a big bet on it. Moreover, the user needs and preferences in the Chinese market may be quite different from those in other regions. When Citrix's investment cannot adapt to and meet such rapidly changing needs, the "incompatibility" of its technology products will inevitably intensify. The result of trying to eliminate this gap and struggling to maintain it is the continuous rise of operating costs.

Ultimately, the mismatch between products and demand is the fundamental reason. Coupled with the strong rise of a number of local competitors, Citrix is ​​even more powerless in the Chinese market. Especially in the VDI market, Huawei, H3C, and Ruijie Network are all good players, each with its own advantages in product innovation, market expansion, and price wars.

In addition, the acceleration of the replacement process has also squeezed Citrix's market space, and the decision to "abandon the Chinese market" does not seem to be surprising. The question is: after Citrix leaves, how should its original users choose among the various local cloud desktop products?

Searching for an alternative journey: Who can alleviate the anxiety of Chinese users?

Although Citrix 's official announcement of its withdrawal from China included a commitment to fulfill the contractual agreement to provide maintenance and support to all customers in the region, which means that existing customers will have a certain grace period, in the long run, product replacement is imminent and it is only by putting it on the agenda as early as possible that we can be prepared.

Fortunately, with the increasing popularity of cloud desktop products in China, the cloud desktop market is thriving. In view of the large differences in business systems and usage requirements in different industries , major cloud desktop manufacturers have launched cloud desktop solutions with their own characteristics, which can be described as a hundred flowers blooming. Users have a lot of room for choice, but product replacement involving IT architecture is never a one-time thing.

For users, the first thing they worry about is whether the overall capabilities of the alternative solutions can match the original solutions. Take Ruijie as an example. The overall solution architecture of its cloud desktop adopts a layered and modular design.

In terms of terminal architecture, three types of technical architectures are provided: VDI, IDV, and TCI. In addition to the traditional VDI architecture, the introduction of IDV and TCI architectures can more flexibly adapt to the needs of enterprise terminal reuse and terminal management, and meet high-reliability scenarios such as offline terminal availability.

In terms of transmission protocol, the self-developed EST desktop connection protocol is adopted. The EST protocol can detect the dynamic network in real time and adjust the bit rate output adaptively to ensure the smoothness of the picture; it uses block cache technology to remove redundant parts, reduce the amount of desktop image information transmitted in a single time, and reduce the bandwidth required for transmission . More importantly, the EST protocol is compatible with the access and use of multiple heterogeneous desktops, and realizes unified access to desktops across platforms and multiple manufacturers. This solves the compatibility and adaptation problem of "dual-track operation" that is common in the process of replacing the old with the new.

In the back-end design, "hyper-convergence architecture + distributed storage" is adopted. Hyper-convergence architecture has significant advantages in reliability and scalability. When the management node fails, the container will be pulled up on other healthy nodes and access the same database content. At the same time, multi-copy storage technology can help users achieve a better balance between data security and cost. It is particularly worth mentioning that in terms of data storage, Ruijie supports snapshots , which can quickly restore the virtual machine environment , and can also connect to third-party NAS storage to achieve redundant backup of desktop data . This is something that Citrix products themselves do not have.

It can be seen that local cloud desktop vendors like Ruijie not only have the overall ability to undertake and replace Citrix products, but also demonstrate a pursuit of detailed innovation in the overall architectural design of the solution based on the personalized demands of Chinese corporate users.

Passing three levels: Gaining a cloud desktop solution that is more suitable for Chinese enterprises

In recent years, the trend of localization has become obvious. In the context of popular language, Jianbing Guozi has become a Mexican chicken roll that is more suitable for the physique of Chinese babies; Jiangxiang Latte has become a morning C and evening A that is more suitable for the physique of Chinese babies. Returning to the essence, products, services and even brands that are more suitable for Chinese people's concepts, habits, culture and aesthetics are more favored by the market.

The same is true in the ICT field. When seeking local technology products and services, many companies are not only concerned with whether they can be used, but are more concerned with whether they are easy to use.

Focusing on the cloud desktop market, we can find that the focus of industry competition is no longer dominated by technology, but more by industry capabilities. For users, manufacturers must understand technology, but more importantly, they must understand the industry. The ability to solve corporate pain points in specific scenarios is the core point of choice.

So how can we create a cloud desktop product that is more suitable for Chinese enterprises? We must overcome three hurdles.

The first level: whether the scenario-based demands can meet expectations.

If we examine cloud desktop products from the perspective of scenarios, from ordinary office to remote office, from general branch scenarios to design, R&D, production lines, etc., we will find that the service logic of current cloud desktops is gradually being subdivided.

Take ordinary office scenes as an example. In the past, most employees only needed light office applications such as Office. Now, design software, video editing software and even programming software have begun to become an essential toolkit for employees. How can we make this heavy office demand scene have a smoother experience? Ruijie and AMD jointly launched the AMD GPU cloud servers with high cost performance make GPU a standard feature of office VDI desktops. GPU cloud desktop solution, Ruijie's pioneering AMD "G PU cloud desktop solution " not only eliminates the cost burden of GPU licensing, but also significantly reduces users' total cost of ownership while improving performance.

The second level: How to ensure data security.

Cloud desktops involve the remote transmission and storage of user data and applications. The legitimacy of remote access terminals, the security of remote access terminals themselves, the security of transmitted data, and virtualization security risks are all challenges they may face.

In order to prevent data from being lost or taken away, Ruijie has built a full-process end-to-end security protection based on the idea of ​​"who can use, how to use, and how to manage" enterprise data assets. The first step is to ensure terminal access security through various terminal authentication methods; the second step is to protect the terminal desktop environment security through multiple protections of virtual machines/desktops; the third step is to ensure that core assets can be centrally managed through network transmission encryption and data not being lost; the fourth step is to prevent data from being taken away through methods such as peripheral copy control, anti-screenshot, and clear/hidden watermarks.

The third level: whether management and operation are efficient.

In fact, one of the major advantages of cloud desktops is that they solve the operation and maintenance management problems encountered in traditional PC environments. How to make the advantages better and the strengths longer is also a key link that cloud desktop vendors can focus on. Ruijie not only provides a rich desktop operation and maintenance management analysis interface and operation and maintenance reports for administrators to use, but also provides a rich and flexible deployment mode for daily desktop management.

Cloud desktops usually have two deployment modes: personalized desktop and restored desktop. For a long time, in order to ensure the smooth use of cloud desktop terminals, operation and maintenance personnel often set up the "desktop restore" function to ensure the purity of the system as much as possible. However, for users, restoring the desktop can easily lead to the loss of personalized data, and reconfiguration is required every time the computer is turned on. In order to resolve the contradiction between restoring the desktop and personalized desktop, Ruijie decouples the desktop from personal data, and stores the user's personalized data locally or in the cloud in the form of "pool desktop + UPM (user profile management)", allowing operation and maintenance personnel to update the desktop through templates without affecting user configuration and data.

Replacement in progress: Jade and porcelain stone, diamond test

Scenario-based, security, and operation and maintenance are the three basic dimensions to measure whether cloud desktop products are usable and easy to use. Whether they can truly fill the market gap left by Citrix and gain user recognition still needs to be tested in practice.

BOE is a typical example of Ruijie's implementation. As its business grew, BOE built a new factory in Qingdao. The group conducted a six-month investigation and evaluation on the desktop solution and finally chose Ruijie Cloud Desktop, which is fully applied in production lines, high-performance offices, and GPU graphic design scenarios.

The "pool desktop + UPM" technology mentioned above has been highly recognized by BOE. The combination of pool desktop + UPM separates user personal data from the Win operating system image, creates the number of desktops based on the number of concurrent users, and greatly reduces the number of desktops. Users can not only randomly obtain restored desktops, but also get personalized data, which provides a better experience. According to BOE's feedback, compared with the previous brand of pool desktop, Ruijie's boot speed and software opening speed are faster, from 180 seconds to 20 seconds, and the user experience is better.

The stone of jade and porcelain can be tested by diamond.

Ruijie has been working in the field of cloud desktops for ten years since the release of its self-developed cloud desktop platform and self-developed EST protocol in 2013. Currently, there are two major R&D bases in China, with more than 400 R&D personnel. In the past two years, more than 50,000 cloud desktops have been delivered. According to IDC statistics, Ruijie has led the Chinese enterprise-level terminal VDI market for six consecutive years from 2015 to 2020.

It is no accident that Ruijie stands out in the fiercely competitive domestic cloud desktop market. First of all, Ruijie has always been based on scenarios, converting customer needs into product needs, and then converting them into product design, development and demand management; secondly, after laying a solid and inclusive foundation, Ruijie will change with the times, and the inclusion of personalized demands and the pursuit of excellence in details have also become its secret weapons in the development process; finally, the links related to IT infrastructure upgrades, IT architecture changes, and replacements are often not "one-shot" deals, but require continuous response and iteration to complete. Beyond the technical scope, detailed supporting tools, all-round resource support, and thorough service guidance are the secrets of successful replacement.

Spring ploughs, summer weeds, autumn harvests, winter stores. Citrix's withdrawal has indirectly led to a reshuffle of the Chinese cloud desktop market , and also provided domestic cloud desktop vendors like Ruijie with an opportunity to fight monsters and upgrade to a higher level in more tests and trials.