Citrix Finds New Use For Virtualization: Avoiding PC Price Hikes Caused By Tariffs

World War Fee Citrix has found a new use for virtualization: Avoiding tariffs.

“In 2025, new US tariffs have pushed IT hardware prices into uncharted territory,” Vice President of Product Philipp Benkler wrote in a Tuesday post that warns “The April 2025 tariffs are already driving cost hikes, and experts suggest further increases could follow as supply chain pressures and upgrade demands mount.”

“So how do you keep your systems modern and secure—especially with the transition to Windows 11 on the horizon, with Windows 10 reaching end-of-life October of this year—without blowing your budget?” he then asked.

Benkler’s answer to rising hardware prices is not buying new kit with tariff-inflated price tags and instead extending the life of existing PCs by replacing their operating system with eLux, a Linux-based OS that allows a PC to boot straight into a hosted virtual desktop. Citrix acquired eLux and its developer Unicon in January 2025. And of course it makes a desktop virtualisation (VDI) platform.

VDI can be a tricky workload to operate, thanks to the “boot storms” that open most working days as users log on to their virtual PCs, and the variable traffic that users generate across a working day. Taming those challenges is a job for a load balancer or application delivery controller, tools that Citrix combines in its NetScaler product.

Benkler pointed out that Citrix offers NetScaler as a virtual appliance that can run on a server you may already own, obviating the need to acquire a tariff-eligible piece of hardware to do the job.

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The post is self-promotion, but perhaps unintentionally pointed in two ways.

One is that Benkler has come right out and said the USA’s new trade policy will increase costs for American businesses. Trump administration officials from the President down have said those policies will cause pain before the benefits become evident. Citrix all-but confirmed it and hopes to profit from the pain.

The other is that Citrix CEO Tom Krause joined Elon Musk’s cost-trimming DOGE team. While DOGE is not involved in trade and tariff policy, Krause is nonetheless enacting administration policy and leading a company that hopes to profit from it.

Two final things to consider, firstly if you like Citrix’s ideas the company has changed its licensing schemes in ways that make them more expensive. Secondly, don’t throw your old NetScaler setup at this problem until you implement all patches, as the product is under constant attack. ®