Nerdio has launched a Nerdio for Azure cost estimator to help MSPs more easily manage pricing and customer spending decisions. The new tool follows on the heels of the IT-as-as-service solution provider’s Nerdio for Azure edition announced in June.
“Running things in a public cloud is very different from a cost perspective,” says Vadim Vladimirskiy, CEO of Chicago-based Adar Inc., developer of Nerdio. “With a private cloud, you know the costs are fairly fixed. In Azure everything is consumption based…Wrapping your mind around the complexities of pricing to customers is a very nontrivial thing.” Helping MSPs negotiate that challenge more easily was Nerdio’s motivation for building the cost estimator.
The tool is designed to help MSPs estimate the entire cost of running IT in Azure. The calculator includes fields and dropdown menus for desktop and server information; Office 365 and Remote Desktop Services (RDS) licenses; and for choosing additional features in both Azure and Nerdio for Azure, such as desktop auto-scale and reserved Azure instances.
The tool applies cost assumptions based on Adar’s estimates, but Vladimirskiy says partners can modify any of the assumptions based on their own experience. He adds that the calculator supports international currencies as well. Partners can use the tool to demonstrate a variety of what-if scenarios to their customers based on features and consumption.
The summary provides an average per-user/per-month price as well as a simple cost break down.
Vladimirskiy says partners have been asking for help with pricing Nerdio for Azure. “We always try to decide new features based on partner feedback. We kept hearing they wanted something for public cloud, which we launched this year. Second, they said it’s easy to deploy but they don’t know the ramifications/cost. They asked, ‘how do I bill and price?’ So we decided to come up with a tool that makes it easy to use for our partners to model different scenarios and then decide how they want to package it for clients.”
In addition to the calculator tool, Nerdio has a sample packaging document that MSPs can use to present to clients, showing them a predictable per-user/per-month scenario. He says the prices have 50 percent margin built in for the MSP. Prices get updated as Azure fees change.
The cost estimator is available now to current MSP partners as part of the Nerdio Admin Portal. MSPs who aren’t Nerdio partners will be able to access the tool on the company’s website.
