Nerdio’s newer and more advanced platform will be well suited for MSPs with more experience in Azure Virtual Desktop, who want more flexible deployment options.
Ryan Walsh, Chief Product Officer and Channel Chief at Pax8
Cloud distributor Pax8 and Azure Virtual Desktop optimization specialist Nerdio have announced that they have expanded their partnership. The new relationship is a global one that will give MSPs access through Pax8 to Nerdio’s Nerdio Manager for MSP platform.
Pax8 and Nerdio first partnered in 2019, to bring Nerdio’s Nerdio for Azure offering to MSPs. Nerdio was at that time the company’s flagship offering. However, in early 2021 they introduced Nerdio Manager for MSP, a more advanced solution which is targeted at a somewhat different audience.
“Nerdio for Azure has constantly grown business with us, which explains our enthusiasm about this additional product,” said Ryan Walsh, Chief Product Officer and Channel Chief at Pax8. Over the last 12 months, Pax8’s Nerdio business has grown 10x with more than 5x buying partners.
“Nerdio for Azure is a turnkey solution, where you don’t have to go it alone,” Walsh noted. “You turn it on, and it sets up and optimizes a new environment. It’s ideal for setting up a new Azure infrastructure. There remains a market for this, even with the more advanced product available, which is why we don’t expect the original product to go away. We have partners who are new to Azure. We have ones who are not comfortable with things like identity management in Azure. For these types of partners, Azure for Nerdio might well be the better tool.”
There are partners, however, who can use Nerdio Manager for MSP to address broader use cases.
“This gives considerably more flexibility in how you use the product,” Walsh said. “If you want to deploy on an existing Azure infrastructure or Azure desktop, this might be for you. If you already have that environment set up, and if you want more customization control, Nerdio Manager for MSP will let you do deployments faster. If you want to write automation scripts, you can do that for Nerdio Manager for MSP, and you can’t with Nerdio for Azure.”
Walsh said that Nerdio Manager for MSP also has more granular differences that pay off in these difference use cases.
“Instead of spending multiple days to deploy. Nerdio for Azure can do it in 2-4 hours in a green fields deployment,” he noted. “But if you have an existing deployment, it takes 10 minutes to deploy with Nerdio for MSP because there’s something already there. There are some other things you can’t do with Nerdio Azure, like manage Active Directory on their own. Our channel account managers can guide each MSP through that, so that they will know which version is right for them.”
The different audiences means Nerdio Manager for MSP will expand the total addressable market.
“We love Nerdio for Azure, but if you have some other needs, Nerdio Manager for MSP is just gold, and will influence more people,” Walsh said. “It will improve adoption because it addresses more use cases.”
Walsh said that he expects the new Nerdio product will continue the steady growth of Azure Virtual Desktop (formerly Microsoft Virtual Desktop.
“When the pandemic hit, there were MSPs who thought they should have considered it before, but we still didn’t see a rush to it,” Walsh said. “It was more a steady ‘tell me more about it’ trend, which was powerful. We are still carrying this message to MSPs they should look at this. The remote trend to home work is unlikely to swing back so much so that you don’t have to have a technology like this. The business landscape for remote workers is not going to change. It also speaks to the timing of the addition of this product.”
Walsh said that the power of the Microsoft suite comes from two trajectories – Microsoft 365 and Azure.
“These are some of the most popular bootcamps we have,” he commented. “Their growth has been steady. What will influence things is that these deployments do require expertise. Some didn’t know if they had it. Nerdio answered that question for Azure, and now with Manager for MSP we have more options than ever to drive adoption. For anyone who resisted Nerdio for Azure because of lack of flexibility or because it didn’t run on an existing deployment – now they have an option.”
