Last year, popular enterprise service provider Citrix pledged full support for Windows 10. The company caters to the needs of over 300,000 companies worldwide, delivering desktop virtualization, networking, SaaS and cloud computing solutions. Now, Microsoft has announced that it is ditching its Azure RemoteApp in favor of Citrix's XenApp "express".

The company states that it will be "gradually winding down" upon its remote app publishing service, but will no longer provide service after August 31, 2017 - which is still over a year away. According to Microsoft, customers have been demanding extensive end-to-end cloud-based solutions for Windows apps, and it believes that Citrix's XenApp "express" - which is still in development - is the way to go. The company states that:

XenApp “express” combines the simplicity of application remoting and the scalability of Azure with the security, management, and performance benefits of XenApp, to deliver Windows applications to any employee on any device. We will have much more to share on this offering through the coming months.

Microsoft states that it will be individually reaching out to customers to aid them in a smooth transition to a solution hosted by its partners or Remote Desktop Services deployed on Azure IaaS. The company has cautioned that it will continue to provide support to existing Azure RemoteApp customers till August 31, 2017, while new purchases for the product will end on October 1, 2016. Meanwhile, Citrix has promised a beta of its product in Q4 2016, with general availability slated for "early 2017".

Source: Microsoft via The Register