The Nerdio Partnerd Program has four tiers, with tier level determined by a combination of the number of Nerdio customers the end user has, and the number of engineers who have completed the new certifications also being announced.
Joseph Landes, Nerdio’s CRO
Nerdio, an Azure-focused management and optimization solution for MSPs which now has a strong focus around Windows Virtual Desktop [WVD], has announced the launch of their Nerdio Partnerd Program, the first partner program they have had. They also announced two certifications, also the first they have had, which are necessary for partners to advance in the Partnerd Program. The two certifications are Nerdio for Azure and Nerdio Manager for MSP.
Nerdio has a broad MSP channel, backed by a full roster of cloud distributors.
“We now have several thousand MSPs who use our software,” said Joseph Landes, Nerdio’s CRO. Most of the leading cloud distributors distribute us now, including Ingram, Synnex, Tech Data, Pax8 and Sherweb. We have a broad channel and our mission is to empower MSPs to build successful cloud practices with Azure and WVD.”
Somewhat surprisingly, given the importance of MSP partners to Nerdio’s business, this is their first formal channel program.
“We have always been all about educating MSPs and helping them be successful with Azure,” Landes said. “We didn’t see the need early on to have a formal program, particularly as we offered a lot of great benefits. More and more partners were asking for it, however, so we felt, especially given the growth of the company, that it was time to put something formal in place.”
The Partnerd Program has four tiers – Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum. Membership in a tier is defined both by the number of customers an MSP has deployed using Nerdio software, and by certifying a required number of engineers for a specific tier. All four tiers get access to the Nerdio Partner Portal.
“Bronze requires 1-2 customers, Silver 3-5, Gold 6-9 and Platinum 10 or more,” Landes said. “But they also need to have a number of engineers certified, and we announced the certifications for those as well.” The certifications are Nerdio for Azure (NFA-100), which is focused on the company’s original product and Nerdio Manager for MSP (NMM-200), which covers their new offering around WVD. Both are free for MSPs to take, and Nerdio says completion requires about two to four weeks. Completion of the course makes an individual a Nerdio Certified Engineer.
“Partners have been asking us for these, both for Nerdio for Azure and our newer product, Nerdio Manager for MSP,” Landes indicated. “We would like 50% of MSP engineers certified on Nerdio. Azure and WVD are very technical services, and we want to make sure MSPs are fully enabled to be successful.”
These are also Nerdio’s first certifications.
“We had always relied on the engineers going though the Microsoft certifications, and we initially thought that was enough, but we were getting a growing number of requests to be certified specifically on Nerdio software,” Landes said.
The Partnerd Program offers MSPs multiple enablement benefits, including a complete asset library with case studies, content white labelling capabilities, testimonials, product demo videos, discounted pricing, custom training sessions and monthly webinars, and a dedicated Nerdio Go Live Engineer for support.
“Some of these had been offered ad hoc before, and have now been formalized as part of the program,” Landes noted. “We earlier created a group within Nerdio – Go Live Engineers – where we assign the MSP a GLE on their first deployment. We have now formalized that as part of the program. Quoting Architect is also something we had been doing ad hoc. It has now been formalized free of charge.”
Nerdio also announced that their new WVD-focused offering, Nerdio Manager for MSP has entered general availability.
“It is the logical evolution of Nerdio for Azure,” Landes said. “It is focused on WVD and brings in a lot of really advanced capabilities.”
Landes said that while Nerdio Manager for MSP supercedes Nerdio for Azure in some ways, they will continue to offer both solutions.
“Those who will continue to use Nerdio for Azure really fall into two groups,” he commented. “One is MSPs whose techs are trained on it and who don’t want to change. That’s more of an inertia thing. But there are also MSPs who don’t do WVD but who still want to do Azure. We expect that most MSPs will switch to the newer product, but we don’t have any plans to phase out Nerdio for Azure. We will let the market determine what happens.”
Nerdio is making one further announcement, that the Nerdio Manager for MSP Cost Estimator Tool is now available to the general public.
“It allows for pricing out what it will cost to purchase Azure resources needed to move to the cloud,” Landes said.
