Nerdio Adds GenAI Capabilities To Microsoft Cloud Management Offerings

New versions of Nerdio Manager for MSP and Nerdio Manager for Enterprise are ‘aimed at making the lives of IT professionals easier,’ Nerdio CEO Vadim Vladimirskiy tells CRN.

Nerdio, which offers products for managing Microsoft cloud technologies, has added generative artificial intelligence capabilities as part of new versions of Nerdio Manager for Enterprise and Nerdio Manager for MSP.

Vadim Vladimirskiy, co-founder and CEO of Chicago-based Nerdio, told CRN that making Nerdio products a one-stop shop and adding the ability for customization help the company continue to stand out in the competitive world of virtual desktops and virtual desktop infrastructure, a prominent technology in enabling remote workforces.

“All of that is with the goal of making the lives of IT professionals … easier in managing and optimizing Microsoft Cloud products with a focus on desktop virtualization and user computing, helping them maximize their investments in the Microsoft Cloud,” Vladimirskiy said.

Nerdio Updates Include AI

Michael Goldstein, CEO of LAN Infotech, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Microsoft solution provider and member of CRN’s 2024 MSP 500, told CRN that Nerdio has helped his business by simplifying tenant management.

“They have been very helpful with our customers,” Goldstein said.

At Nerdio’s annual NerdioCon event earlier this year, the vendor revealed that it has more than 250 enterprise partners worldwide and influences more than $225 million of Azure consumption.

Looking at each of Nerdio’s main offerings, Nerdio Manager for MSP version 5.0 now has AssistPro, an AI-powered in-application assistant trained on Nerdio’s knowledge base for quick troubleshooting answers.

Nerdio Manager for MSP can also leverage computer vision for automatic backup validation and identifying issues in restored servers, for example, Vladimirskiy said.

Future GenAI features include automatic script generation and report writing, Vladimirskiy said.

Nerdio Manager for MSP’s Unified App Management feature, which was already implemented in the enterprise product, aims to make a more consistent and simpler experience across customer environments, according to the vendor.

MSPs can centralize storage, standardize app delivery methods, and create rules around groups of users and individual users, Vladimirskiy said. Nerdio has also integrated Azure reservation monitoring, recommendations, procurement and management into the product, with Nerdio Manager for MSP giving recommendations on how to buy reservations and reporting whether the user is consuming enough of them or should buy more, for example.

“The lower they [MSPs] can reduce their costs, the more margin falls to the bottom line, and that’s a significant focus for us,” he said.

In private preview is a “console connect” feature for remote support across any device from a single portal.

Boot Diagnostics Insights uses Microsoft Azure AI optical character recognition and boot image validation.

The new Nerdio Manager for MSP has Microsoft Defender for Endpoint support, marking Nerdio’s expansion beyond Azure infrastructure, M365 and Intune endpoints into security.

Defender “is a very powerful security solution that’s already built into” certain packages of M365, Vladimirskiy said. “[But] a lot of MSPs say it’s very difficult to approach and enroll customers into the solution.”

“We’ve decided that we’re going to give them the ability to easily enroll customers, monitor compliance and manage various capabilities of Defender for Endpoint or Defender for Business,” he said. “And ultimately, we’re going to expand into other areas of that security suite on the Defender side of things.”

Meanwhile, Nerdio Manager for Enterprise version 6.0 now includes storage optimization for Azure files and Azure NetApp files, log analytics, operating system disk swapping and advanced predictive drain mode, according to the vendor.