there are some similarities technically. Both are late load technology (think logon happens, disk mounts, etc) though with AppVol you can bind to a machine and that fixes SOME issues. Not all.
Late load may or MAY NOT have anything to do with your technical difficulties you are talking about.
if you have apps that dont work because they wont work if loaded in running windows machines, a simple move to LWL wont change that. Or if your issues are around cross layer comparability (When App Layer A and B are assigned together only one works... or neither work, but both work by themselves just fine) you may see a slight difference.
The thing about LWL is you can get a package with their profile tools and the app layering tool. So you can bind apps based on login, and using their user personalization stuff with it.
But from a straight layering perspective they are somewhat similar.
I have tried them all at various times... PVD from Citrix. Unidesk, LWL, CloudVolumes/AppVolumes. and am just now trying to get AppDisk from CTXS.
My take is that it depends what your "tech problems" have been.
My opinions (and only opinions having touched almost all of them)
AppVolumes - Not bad. touchy with .net apps and layer conflicts. Also has limited numbers of layers available to assign to any given desktop. Interface and workflow for updating app stacks and assigning them seems ok at first but cludgy as you go to update lots of packages, no concept of version control, etc.
LWL- Now I havent tried their very latest version but the previous was a layering tech. And that is about all I can say about it. Simple testing and apps worked. But as I got into Office add-ins that a lot of my users use I had issues. I also had issue with some apps that had to be packaged together to get to work and that was going to be hard to manage. I know they have updated their stuff, but my biggest thing in favor of them was that they had a profile tool combined with the application tool. The draw back for me was that the app tool was not up to snuff for my apps.
Citrix PVD - no apps, just a personalization disk. Sucks. We tried this in a XenDT environment. works really well at first then updates start taking forever. (I MEAN FOREVER). and if something goes wrong with the PVD for a user there is no built in way to back up and restore to some known good point. You basically trash the disk and have the user start over...
Citrix AppDisk - (is it even a real product yet?) Based on Citrix PVD layering. I have NOT run this yet, but had two briefings and demos with Citrix. You cannot have a writable volume for the user and AppDisks. You get one or the other. So this is a pain. I think this is how they are getting around the scanning issues that caused PVD updates to take forever. They will scan the image once for changes and then deploy out. Of course cross layer conflict stuff is iffy. They have no resolution model and think that AppDNA will all of the sudden tell you the magic to get a layer to work. Silly. Tell me its broke but have no native layering tools to solve the issues of like .NET stuff in two different layers.
Unidesk I set this up in a View 5 environment (that is now View 6). Someone else runs it now but its still pretty solid. They have no profile tools and are layering only. The good thing is that their App compat and all that cross layer conflict stuff is awesome (best I have seen). They are why I set the bar so high on my .NET apps and no other layering company has been able to run these apps in different layers.
On the downside they take over provisioning. No using composer in that environment. They build, and update the desktops and connect the disks to the machines pre-boot. They are great for our couple of hundred "persistent" desktops. Shared layers underneath, but the users think they have a persistent desktop and can install things. Hands down king of layering and app compat. But needs to be able to snap their layers on to existing environments.
Right now my environment has Unidesk and a small group of Citrix PVD in the Citrix side that is going to migrate to the Unidesk+Vmware. I have been beating on AppVolumes for 2 months or so and have about 10 test users. LWL was not chosen, but I may revisit as I need layers that can snap on to the project enzo VMs that are coming AND can deal with my apps.
Shiny things to me (hot add of apps) dont mean much unless all (or almost all) of my primary applications work. I hope LWL has gotten better.
