One of our key strategic partners—Nerdio, hosted their first ever in-person Conference NerdioCon in Cancun, Mexico a couple of weeks ago. Co-founder and CEO, Paul Heaton and Senior Cloud Consultant, George Zajakovksi had the opportunity to attend the sold-out conference as a Nerdio Platinum Partner. The 3 days were a jam-packed combination of work and play, and while we’re not going to confess how many strawberry daiquiris and pina coladas were had during this trip, we will reveal some of the awesome insights we gained from the top minds in the cloud and virtual desktop space that spoke at the conference. Speakers included Vadim Vladimirskiky, CEO of Nerdio, and Virtual Desktop leaders Scott Manchester, Kam Vedbrat, and Tatiana Ospina from Microsoft.  

Insights from NerdioCon

Vadim Vladimirskiky’s keynote speech from the first day can be broken down into 3 parts: The past, present, and future of Managed Service Providers (MSPs) relationship with Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) technologies.  

I. The Present: Current Market Opportunity for VDI Integrations and MSPs

Vadim argues that COVID accelerated cloud and MSP transformation, paving the way for the Virtual Desktop era. He backs up that claim with a staggering statistic:  Azure continues to grow at a rate of 50% for the past four consecutive years. This is a rough valuation of $15 billion in just 12 years. 

But the question remains… Are MSPs still relevant in a cloud world? He argues “Yes” and here’s why. As cloud technology gets more and more complex, MSPs are needed to abstract the complexity of such technologies to deliver value to non-technical customers. For example, as the reliance on cloud, cyber security, and virtual desktop applications continues to grow, MSPs are needed to assist businesses such as healthcare organisations and law firms whose practice does not have the expertise or bandwidth to keep up with the latest tech evolutions in those arenas. MSPs are the bridge that gets VDI and cloud products to consumers.  

II. The Past: Takeaways from 2021: How Nerdio has helped MSPs convert businesses to AVD (Azure Virtual Desktop) 

It’s no secret that we’re big fans of Nerdio’s offerings. In fact, Paul spoke on this during Vadim’s keynote speech. When asked what his favourite thing about working with Nerdio is, Paul answered “the value.”  

The value Paul referred to includes Nerdio’s Partners Program, certifications, partner community, Nerdio Accelerate for MSPs virtual learning hub, online help centre, weekly “Lunchin’ with Nerdio” webinars, and its world-class support. It’s no wonder Nerdio has reached over 2 million users across their products. It’s certainly a testament to the market opportunity for VDI integrations and for MSPs, but also the quality-of-service Nerdio provides us.   

That quality of service can also be said about their ability to take feedback from customers and partners to innovate consistently and rapidly. In 2021 alone, Nerdio created 180 new features for Nerdio Manager for MSP and 171 new features for Nerdio Manager for Enterprise. Such features were created with a turnaround time of roughly a month!  

III. The future: Nerdio’s Newest Product and Programs Announcements 

The future at Nerdio is promising and impressive as it’s past with its suite of new products:  

A. Manager for MSP 3.0: Nerdio manager for MSP integrate with Microsoft Endpoint Manager 

• Apply policy and baselines, ensuring endpoint compliance  
• End point analytics to monitor performance and user experience  
• Remote assistance to users with Remote help 

B. Application Management: 

• Manage apps on multi-session AVD desktops  
• App masking which allows you to assign and manage applications to specific users/ groups via Nerdio. 
• Install and manage apps via Intine integration 

C. Cost management: 

• Compare a deployed environment to a saved estimate 
• Pre-schedule shut down of desktop images  
• Receive warnings and notifications for unused images 
• Leverage Windows 365 Enterprise license optimisations 
• API access to new and existing features 

D. Keeping MSPs Up to Date with the latest from Microsoft: 

• New commerce experience that changes pricing options in cost estimator 
• Full management of Windows 365 Business 
• Windows 365 Enterprise Azure AD (Active Directory) join with no AD required 
• Support for new Ephemeral OS (Operating System) Disk types for AVD host 

Complimenting these new products are a roster of new programs: 

• Nerdio CEO SUMMIT  
• Weekly “office hours” call 
• Access to Nerdio’s top engineering experts 
• Partner-to-Partner Engagement  
• Nerdio AVD training camp 

Learn more about their newest offering on Nerdio’s website.  

Final thoughts about NerdioCon from Paul and George