Nerdio has added support for Microsoft’s just-unveiled Windows 365 virtual cloud desktop service to its management platforms for Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) and other solutions based on Microsoft Azure.
The new functionality, which Nerdio announced on the second day of Microsoft’s annual Inspire partner conference and one day after the debut of Windows 365, lets technicians provision and administer both AVD desktops and “Cloud PCs” through a single pane of glass, according to Chief Revenue Officer Joseph Landes.
“We have a unified console to price, to deploy, to manage, and optimize really all kinds of virtual desktops in the Microsoft cloud, both Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365,” he says.
That functionality is available now in both Nerdio Manager for Enterprise, which was called Nerdio Manager for WVD before today, and Nerdio Manager for MSP.
Introduced early in 2020, Nerdio Manager for Enterprise is designed to help corporate IT departments new to Azure Virtual Desktop, which was named Windows Virtual Desktop when it debuted in 2019, quickly add virtual machines to an existing Microsoft Azure environment. Nerdio Manager for MSP is a multitenant version of the product introduced this January.
Windows 365, which is scheduled to become generally available on August 2nd, streams complete virtual desktops running Windows 10 or the forthcoming Windows 11 to a wide range of client hardware, including PCs, Macs, and devices running the iOS and Android operating systems. The service offers channel pros and their customers an alternative to AVD that’s less flexible but also simpler and billed at predictable flat monthly rates, rather than on a consumption-priced basis.
According to Nerdio, users can employ the cost estimator tool in both of its Nerdio Manager solutions to determine whether Windows 365 or AVD makes more sense for a given customer based on price and functionality.
Windows 365 subscribers can choose between two editions of the product. Windows 365 Business is a heavily automated and streamlined version of the product meant for users with limited knowledge of virtual desktops or the Microsoft cloud. Windows 365 Enterprise is a more configurable version that requires familiarity with Azure Virtual Network, Azure Active Directory Domain Services, the Microsoft Intune mobile device management system, and other components of the Azure public cloud.
“What Nerdio does, just like we always do, is we abstract a lot of the complexity for an MSP, and for an enterprise company or partner as well,” Landes says.
In addition, he continues, while technicians can use Microsoft Endpoint Manager to administer Windows 365 Enterprise, that platform is single tenant. Nerdio Manager for MSP, by contrast, consolidates multiple tenants in one interface.
MSPs who have “co-managed IT” relationships with internal IT departments that don’t need multitenant functionality can use the single tenant Nerdio Manager for Enterprise to create and operate AVD and Windows 365 environments more easily than Microsoft Endpoint Manager makes possible, Landes adds.
In addition to Windows 365 support, Nerdio Manager for MSP has received additional updates, including the ability to white-label the management interface and to run the console in dark mode.
Nerdio Manager for Enterprise, meanwhile, now includes PC over IP (PCoIP) remote display technology through an alliance agreement with Teradici, which invented PCoIP. The protocol compresses, encrypts, and transmits only pixels to a broad range of software clients, mobile clients, thin clients, and stateless “PCoIP Zero Clients” for better performance and security.
“A bunch of our customers, on the enterprise side primarily, have been asking for that,” Landes says.
For Nerdio, today’s rollouts represent the culmination of more than a year’s worth of close behind-the-scenes collaboration with Microsoft during the Windows 365 development process.
“This isn’t something that sort of just came up today and we’ve been scrambling around to figure out how to support it,” Landes says of Microsoft’s “Cloud PC” service. “We’ve actually been part of this for a year.”
Nerdio introduced its first partner program this May.
