AVD vs Citrix vs Omnissa Horizon: the per-user cost after the Broadcom repricing

What the Broadcom repricing changed for a desktop team

A team that runs virtual desktops has spent the last two renewal cycles watching two of its three shortlist options move underneath it. Citrix and the VMware estate now owned by Broadcom both changed hands and both changed their commercial terms, which is why the per-user number that was signed three years ago is no longer the number on the table. The decision in front of an IT director this quarter is not whether desktop virtualisation is worth running; it is which of three platforms carries the licence line at 250 and at 1,000 users.

Microsoft's position is the one that can be checked without a call. Azure Virtual Desktop has a published pricing page, and that page is the only one of the three that lets a buyer build a per-user model before speaking to anyone. The other two arrive as quotes, and a quote is only useful if the buyer asks for the same shape of number from each.

The practical consequence is that the comparison splits in two. One half is the licence, where Microsoft publishes and the others do not. The other half is the infrastructure the desktops actually run on, which every option consumes and every option bills separately. A team that compares only the licence line will pick the wrong platform for its estate.

The licence line, and where the numbers stop

Azure Virtual Desktop's pricing page is the anchor for the whole comparison because it is the only published rate among the three. It sets out the cost of the service itself, and it sits alongside the separate Azure charges for the compute, storage and networking each session consumes. That separation matters: the AVD figure a buyer sees is not the total cost of a desktop, it is the platform fee on top of an Azure bill that scales with how many sessions run and how long they stay up.

Citrix publishes no per-user rate on the material available here, and neither does Omnissa for Horizon. That is not a gap to be filled with an estimate. It is a finding, and it changes what the buyer asks for: a licence cost per named user per year at 250 seats and again at 1,000, the minimum commitment attached to that rate, the term it holds for, and the renewal mechanism. Without those four answers the two quote-only options cannot be placed beside AVD at all.

The 250 and 1,000 user points are chosen because they sit either side of the volume where per-user pricing usually bends. A 250-seat estate is small enough that a vendor may price per user with little discount; a 1,000-seat estate is large enough that the same vendor may restructure the deal entirely. Asking for both numbers in the same request is what makes the quotes comparable, and it is the only way to see whether the repricing hits a small estate harder than a large one.

Where the infrastructure bill lands

Every one of the three options needs somewhere for the desktop to run, and that is where the per-user comparison usually breaks. Azure Virtual Desktop runs on Azure, so the compute, storage and networking appear as Azure consumption on the same bill as the service. The pricing page lists those services separately, which means the total for a 250-user estate is the AVD fee plus whatever the sessions consume, and the second figure moves with session count, session length and the size of the virtual machine behind each user.

Citrix and Omnissa Horizon are sold as platforms that sit on infrastructure the buyer already owns or rents. The licence is one line; the hosts, the storage and the network are another, and they are the buyer's to size and pay for. That is not a disadvantage in itself, because an estate with spare capacity in its own datacentre is paying for that capacity already. It becomes a disadvantage when the estate has no spare capacity and the desktop project turns into a hardware refresh as well as a licence purchase.

The honest way to compare the three at 250 and at 1,000 users is to put the infrastructure on one side and the licence on the other, then ask each vendor to fill in only the licence side. Microsoft's published rate lets the buyer do the first half alone. For Citrix and Omnissa, the infrastructure estimate is the buyer's own work and the licence is the vendor's, and the two must be added before any per-user figure means anything.

The user profile that fits each platform

The estate's user profile decides more of this than the price list does. A workforce that is already on Microsoft 365 and already consuming Azure has the shortest path to Azure Virtual Desktop, because the identity, the subscription and the billing relationship exist before the project starts. The published rate applies, the consumption lands on a bill finance already reconciles, and there is no new infrastructure to stand up.

A workforce with a substantial on-premises estate and a datacentre it is not leaving has a different calculation. Citrix and Omnissa Horizon both run on infrastructure the buyer controls, which suits an organisation that has already paid for the hosts and wants the desktop platform to sit on top rather than move to a cloud consumption model. The quote-only licence is the cost of keeping that arrangement, and the buyer should treat the absence of a published rate as a reason to negotiate rather than a reason to walk away.

The 1,000-user estate is where the two profiles diverge most sharply. At that size the Azure consumption behind AVD is a material monthly figure that the buyer can forecast from the published rates but not fix, because it follows usage. A fixed per-user licence on owned infrastructure gives the opposite trade: a number that holds for the term, on capacity the buyer has already bought. Which one a team wants depends on whether it would rather carry usage risk or capacity risk.

What to put in front of each vendor

The request for quotation should be identical across the three, or the answers will not compare. Ask for the licence cost per named user per year at 250 seats and at 1,000 seats, the minimum commitment and term attached to each, the renewal mechanism, and a written statement of what the licence does not include. For Azure Virtual Desktop, the published page answers the first question and the buyer supplies the consumption estimate; for Citrix and Omnissa, all four answers come from the vendor.

Ask specifically what changed at the last renewal. A vendor that has repriced its product should be able to say what the new rate is and when it took effect, and a buyer who asks that question in the first call learns more about the next renewal than any feature comparison will show. The same question at 250 and at 1,000 users exposes whether the repricing is a flat percentage or a restructure that favours one estate size.

Finally, ask for the exit terms. A desktop platform is a multi-year commitment for most estates, and the cost of leaving is part of the cost of buying. None of the three pages states an exit cost, so it is a question rather than a finding, and it belongs in the same written response as the per-user rate.

The decision rule

Choose Azure Virtual Desktop if the estate already runs on Microsoft 365 and Azure and the team is willing to carry usage-based consumption in exchange for a licence rate it can read off a published page before the first call. Choose Citrix or Omnissa Horizon if the organisation owns datacentre capacity it intends to keep using and would rather fix the licence for a term than forecast a monthly consumption bill, with the caveat that both rates are quote-only and the comparison cannot be finished until both quotes arrive in the same shape. Wait on the decision if the 1,000-user consumption estimate for AVD has not been modelled and the Citrix and Omnissa quotes have not been requested at both seat counts, because at that point the three options have not been priced on the same basis and any choice made is a choice between three different questions.