“We’re building out full capabilities to take advantage of a much deeper set of the Microsoft 365 tools,” Nerdio Chief Revenue Officer Joseph Landes says.

Microsoft cloud products management tools vendor Nerdio is expanding its capabilities further into the Microsoft “modern work” portfolio while introducing a per-customer, per-tenant pricing structure to allow for flat rates regardless of user count.

The Chicago-based vendor’s push beyond its specialties in Microsoft Azure and Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) means ways for MSPs to use Nerdio Manager for Microsoft collaboration tool Temas, cloud storage service OneDrive, document manager SharePoint and email product Exchange Online.

“We’re going to continue to be super focused on desktop virtualization, which is our heritage, but we’re going to be just as great when it comes to allowing you to leverage the full power of Microsoft 365,” Nerdio Chief Revenue Officer and co-founder Joseph Landes said. “We’re building out full capabilities to take advantage of a much deeper set of the Microsoft 365 tools.”

Landes previewed the new Nerdio Manager capabilities during a talk he gave at CRN parent The Channel Company’s XChange NexGen 2024 event. Nerdio released its news during ConnectWise’s IT Nation Connect conference, which runs Wednesday to Friday in Orlando, Fla.

[RELATED: Nerdio Exec Touts CIS Relationship As ‘A Pretty Significant Step Forward’]

Nerdio Manager Gains Teams Capabilities

Marcial Velez, CEO of New York-based Nerdio user Xperteks Computer Consultancy–a member of CRN’s The 2024 MSP 500–told CRN in an interview that the vendor’s tools simplify Azure and Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) adoption.

Velez said he is interested in new Nerdio capabilities around managing policies from the Manager tool.

“The ability to create a profile that you should be able to then apply all the Microsoft policies that are specific to a certain profile, and do it in Nerdio Manager, is an amazing tool,” he said. “I will be looking into that a lot further.”

In CRN’s 2024 Channel Chiefs, Nerdio said that it expects the number of channel partners it works with to increase within the next 12 months.

Among the new capabilities for Nerdio is centralized management for settings, file storage, email and compliance policies for Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint and Exchange Online.

The goal is for improved collaboration and data management for solution providers leveraging these Microsoft products, according to the vendor.

Nerdio also has Entra (formerly Azure Active Directory, or Azure AD) identity management and security policy application for multiple environments to make industry security compliance easier, according to the vendor. Nerdio users also gain management of Microsoft Active Directory users for environments not fully migrated to the cloud.

More Nerdio Manager users will also gain access to its “console connect” capability for remote controlling user devices to troubleshoot physical and virtual endpoint issues. The capability might make Microsoft users reconsider having a separate remote monitoring and management (RMM) tool, Landes said.

Nerdio’s mission has been simplifying adoption of a variety of Microsoft tools so that solution providers and users don’t feel they have to buy single-purpose tools that might already be included with their Microsoft license, the CRO said.

He’s often heard from MSPs that Microsoft tools for remote management, security and other technological areas can be too complicated for the multi- and cross-tenant use cases of solution providers, leading MSPs to seek out other tools, Landes said. The push further into the Microsoft productivity stack doesn’t reflect any slowdown in the opportunity for AVD.

“Azure Virtual Desktop continues to be an incredibly relevant way for you to bring a desktop user into the cloud,” Landes (pictured) said. “If anyone here is using the old Remote Desktop Services, RDS, I would urge you to take a look at Azure Virtual Desktop. Because AVD is the more modern way for a user to stream their desktop from the cloud, as is the new Windows 365.”

Landes continued: “We’re going to continue to see more and more and more of a shift from the on-prem VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) to the cloud-based DaaS–desktop-as-a-service, led by Microsoft and led by Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365.”