Nerdio CRO Landes: AI ‘Another Reason That Customers Should Bet On The Cloud, Bet On Azure’

‘Lots of MSPs, they want to use AI … You need to have your data in the cloud. And if you're not doing that, you're really not going to be able to leverage the full power of AI,” Nerdio CRO Joseph Landes says.

Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop management vendor Nerdio continues to invest in its platform and its Partnerd partner program, with Chief Revenue Officer Joseph Landes telling CRN that the vendor still sees opportunities in taking share from legacy virtualization vendors while capitalizing on the interest in artificial intelligence.

On the platform side, the Chicago-based company has recently unveiled multi-Entra ID support in its Manager for Enterprise offering, allowing for the management of multiple identities under Microsoft’s Entra product (formerly Azure Active Directory, or AD) in a single-tenant environment – which, Landes said, is part of Nerdio making its platform more friendly to users trying to simplify Azure adoption.

“Microsoft has put a tremendous amount of investment around Azure,” Joseph Landes, chief revenue officer of Chicago-based Nerdio, told CRN in an interview. “AI is another reason that customers should bet on the cloud and bet on Azure. Lots of MSPs, they want to use AI. …The first thing you need to do is you need to be in the cloud. You need to have your data in the cloud. And if you're not doing that, you're really not going to be able to leverage the full power of AI.”

Nerdio And Microsoft Azure

Nerdio is a member of CRN’s 2024 Channel Chiefs.

Meanwhile, the vendor will make a major shift for partners starting Dec. 1. On that date, partners will automatically enter Nerdio’s new partner program based on the number of customers under management with Nerdio. All prior partner program minimum commitments and discounts will expire on Dec. 1 and prices will revert to manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP), according to the vendor.

The new program no longer has a minimum license commitment, allowing all Nerdio partners to get benefits, according to the vendor.

Although the new program has a different discounting structure than before, Nerdio has not removed any internal use licenses and has been adding benefits to its program, including enhanced service-level agreement (SLA) support for “platinum tier” partners, according to the vendor.

In a September 2023 report, Gartner forecasted desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) spending to reach $4.6 billion in 2027 compared to $3.1 billion in 2023.

Dennis Perpetua, global chief technology officer of digital workplace services and experience officer, vice president and distinguished engineer at New York-based Kyndryl – No. 9 on CRN’s 2024 Solution Provider 500 – told CRN in an interview that Microsoft has been doubling down on the VDI space, opening new opportunities for automation and optimization.

Windows 365 represented a big shift for Microsoft in the space, with Azure Stack HCI another tentpole moment for the vendor in the space. Perpetua said. Partnering with Nerdio has saved the solution provider time on automation and dashboard creation in growing the Kyndryl Microsoft VDI practice.

The popularity of remote work is a factor in customer interest in VDI, plus Windows 10 end-of-support planned for October 2025 and Windows 11 as a more optimal way to experience new AI offerings driving more users to new PCs equipped with Windows 365, he said.

Nerdio’s tools have “lowered that critical mass threshold and opened it up to be much more accessible for more companies to be able to actually use VDI as a solution,” he said. “That brings in more reliability, more robustness in terms of what the overall compute environment is, but also cost effectiveness associated with it and increased security around it as well.”

Efforts that could help push VDI forward for customers is more innovation in identity and access management (IAM), including offerings around biometrics, Perpetua said. Those capabilities are especially enticing to users in financial services as an added layer of security.

Here’s more of what Landes had to say to CRN on Nerdio’s products and the market opportunity.

How is Nerdio continuing to advance its product portfolio?

We announced what we call ‘multi-Entra ID support.’ … for complex enterprise IT environments. … It was actually a feature that was recommended by an individual named Garion Brown (global vice president of platform engineering) at a company called Teleperformance. … They're a big customer of Nerdio’s. … One of the core values at Nerdio is that we're an outside-in company.

We really do a lot of our development by listening to our customers and our partners, seeing what they want. And that drives a lot of the development. And then (every) four to six weeks, we have a new release of our product, which is chock full of recommendations from customers.

So Garion … someone we work closely with, said, ‘I really think that if you had this, it would be a game changer for us.’ The idea being that there are many organizations who need a different (Microsoft) Entra ID (formerly called Azure Active Directory) for each, let's say, department. … Nerdio Manager for Enterprise is a single tenant product. So unlike our MSP product, which is multi-tenant where the MSP has multiple clients under one portal, Nerdio Manager for Enterprise is a single-tenant product.

But even in a single-tenant product, it allows you to manage multiple Entra IDs, Multiple AVD (Azure Virtual Desktop) instances from a single console.

So the IT pro doesn't have to log into one instance of Nerdio Manager, log out, log back in for maybe a different department that needs their own Entra ID. So it really streamlines … to make sure that the security policies can be applied to all the different environments that they're managing.

And really it also simplifies just the reporting and being able to get the insights into the AVD usage across multiple Entra IDs. So that's not something we've had in the past.

Any updates on Nerdio’s partnership strategy?

We have a formal agreement with Kyndryl. We've been working with them on a case-by-case basis. But having a more formal partnership with them, it really gives us access to just a broader market. And they've got great expertise in it, infrastructure, cloud services.

And as we continue to expand out around the world and serve many large enterprises, being able to partner with Kyndryl with their existing AVD customers and with new ones that they find is something really, really super for us. … We announced a relationship with Carahsoft. … They just have so many resellers that purchase from them.

They have all these different contracts with government agencies. And oftentimes we're being asked, ‘Hey, we'd like to work with you Nerdio. Do you have a relationship with Carahsoft?’ So now we do.

How are the enterprise and MSP businesses? Partners use both NME and NMM, right?

(We’re) continuing to see both sides of the business – our enterprise business, our MSP business – continue to drive forward. … A typical (partner) whose customers are SMB (small and midsize business) clients will gravitate toward the MSP product (which has) multi-tenancy and cross-tenancy. They could set up a policy once and it can be used across multiple accounts, multiple customers.

Partners who are – let's call them the enterprise SIs of the world – they typically gravitate toward the enterprise product because they don't really need multi-tenancy.

And they need some more of this kind of functionality that we support in the enterprise products. So it's a self-selecting thing that's worked pretty well for 99.8 percent of the people. And then there are some edge cases where you get some enterprise company that's like, ‘Oh, yeah, I'd like to use your MSP product.’

Is Nerdio going deeper into the Microsoft security product portfolio?

MSPs come to us asking us to help demystify more things other than Azure. Our first entree into that was Intune.

We announced at NerdioCon that it's Defender for Endpoint that we're taking on next. And then Microsoft 365. Our goal with the MSP product is to help MSPs really evolve their practice and manage a true cloud practice using the Microsoft Cloud.

Do the Kyndryl and Carahsoft partnerships show how Nerdio looks at partnering with solution providers in the future?

The Kyndryl side is really more about the enterprise partner side of our business. There's almost not a day that goes by that some enterprise partner around the world doesn't sign an agreement with us. … We're going to continue to meet customers where they are.

And a lot of times it's about working with large multinational partners like a Kyndryl and then sometimes it's working with more local partners. … We're going to certainly see that continue as as we continue to grow, as we continue to expand geographically and such.

Carahsoft to me is – I call it more of a specialty agreement where you just had enough people saying, ‘We really like to work with them. Can you do something with them?’ … A good partner of ours (is) Maureen Data Systems.

They really specialize in state and local governments. And they know the New York agencies better than anyone. For a company like us to have to figure out how the New York agencies work – it’s much better to have a partner that really knows that.

Does disruption in the legacy virtualization market continue to bring business to Nerdio and its partners?

The momentum remains. We continue to see the chaos of Citrix and VMware out there in the market. It grows even stronger by the day. Customers and partners are looking for another solution. And the obvious solution is Microsoft.

Microsoft has taken a clear leadership position in desktop-as-a-service. And we are Microsoft's closest partner when it comes to desktop-as-a-service.

So I feel like that is a great tailwind. Not one that we take for granted. But a great tailwind in the market.

On the MSP side of our business, I continue to believe that there's a tremendous amount of growth ahead for MSPs who are looking to build cloud practices using the Microsoft Cloud.

I really believe we're still just scratching the surface. When we started our company six years ago and we were out there talking to people about Azure – there were some people that knew what Azure was. But they didn't really have any thoughts of using it.That's changed a lot.

Microsoft has put a tremendous amount of investment around Azure. AI is another reason that customers should bet on the cloud and bet on Azure. Lots of MSPs, they want to use AI. … The first thing you need to do is you need to be in the cloud. You need to have your data in the cloud. And if you're not doing that, you're really not going to be able to leverage the full power of AI.

It's so much fun being part of an ecosystem that changes so quickly. And it's so much fun being part of a company that is leading the change in so many areas.

Should partners working in hybrid environments look to Nerdio?

We have built technology on top of Microsoft's Azure Stack HCI (hyper-converged infrastructure) product.

We had Azure Stack HCI support in our product before it went into general availability at Microsoft. … But absolutely. There are definitely great hardware vendors out there who have built great Azure Stack HCI solutions. And we get that question a little bit. … And we support them.

Sounds like Nerdio is benefitting from the AI rush?

It's no surprise that AI is front and center in every (Microsoft) kickoff call that we've attended as a managed partner, in every event that we've been to – it’s AI, AI, AI.

And that's great. It is an important thing for people to get their arms around. But I always come back to the foundation of AI is Azure.

You have to be in Azure to take full advantage of these AI capabilities. And that's key. If you're really not betting on Azure – and I don't mean just using Azure for Entra ID. But really, fully using Azure. Putting everything in Azure, you're going to be behind as an MSP.

I know I've been saying that for almost six years. But you're going to continue to fall further behind because the world is changing, and the opportunities out there for MSPs to differentiate are there. But you have to be in the cloud. You have to be in Azure.

Has Nerdio benefitted from interest in the Microsoft security stack?

We're all about amplifying the work Microsoft's doing. So Microsoft is definitely putting a bigger emphasis on Defender and overall security (portfolio) … Almost every MSP … I talk to buys Microsoft 365 Business Premium. That is their standard offer.

Few people don't use Microsoft 365. But how much of Microsoft 365 are they actually using? Imagine you're paying ($22) a user a month. And when you ask an MSP, ‘What are you using Microsoft 365 for?’ (They say) ‘Oh, yeah, I'm using it for SharePoint, Teams and Exchange.

Did you know that you could use it for Intune? Did you know you could use it for security? Did you know you use it for this and this and this? You start adding up the things and most people say, ‘I don't use that. I buy a point solution because I can't really figure out how to use it.’

That's the value that we provide is abstracting the complexity and bringing the Microsoft Cloud products to the masses.

Nerdio CEO Vadim Vladimirskiy (pictured) previously told us the faulty CrowdStrike update incident was an opportunity for leveraging Nerdio as a backup tool – do you continue to see benefits from the incident?

As Vadim told you, some (users) were calling us just to say, ‘Look, I reverted back my virtual desktop to this date. I just want to make sure I did it right.’ … It was further proof that if you're using AVD or using Windows 365, you probably came out in much better shape.