One successful example is a support call-center with 2000 users. The specific role used about 30 apps and they were all packaged and maintained by my team. Using a ci/cd fashion to build os image and apps we could roll out updates to base image and sandboxed applications completely seamless to these users.
(Side note: We built an automation that synced the two latest versions of all applications to a locally attached SSD drive on all hosts - app startup was near instant for all users which was fantastic at this point in time)
Running the clients inside the datacenter brought the latency to a minimum which greatly improved the performance of specific business critical apps.
Managing all parts pertaining to logon properly had the users ready to take calls in 10-15 seconds - a great improvement compared to the previous distributed client/server setup.
- Reducing latency between application and backend was a major win. Greatly appreciated by users as we saw massive reduction in latency for specific operations (crappy apps).
- Being able to integrate with the ip-telephony call-center software required a windows workstation environment hence the choice of “VDI”
- No noticeable os and app updates EVER was greatly appreciated by the users. Even when moving from XP to 7 at one point.
- Our ability to roll out massive OS and app updates at will to pilot groups who can roll back with a logoff/login was greatly appreciated by the team
Granted, this was 10 years ago and my opinion was always that these business applications should be rewritten - BUT I have yet to see a better managed and performing windows client & app delivery.
Citix provisioning services (PVS) coupled with app-v/app streaming was an incredibly progressive way of delivering windows workspaces.
During my time at citrix I often raised the fact that PVS for linux coupled with docker was an amazing setup - never got any traction on this though… everyone was way too focused on windows delivery.