Pax8’s Nerdio Offering Helps MSPs Expand Cloud Business

‘This is built for an MSP who has multiple customers in mind. So everything they do in terms of getting their customer onto Azure or taking advantage of Windows Virtual Desktop, this tool is designed to help them do it more efficiently and more successfully,’ Pax8 chief channel officer Ryan Walsh tells CRN.

Pax8 has added Nerdio to its line card to help MSPs grow their cloud practice by streamlining the complications around cloud migration, virtual desktop setup, as well as cloud management in Azure.

“Specifically, what it does is really it helps an MSP get in and build an Azure practice,” Pax8 chief channel officer Ryan Walsh told CRN. “It's also taking advantage very specifically of Microsoft's Windows virtual desktop. So anybody who's sort of looking to take those servers from on-prem to the cloud Nerdio is going to help them do that easier faster more successfully.”

In a test, the Pax8 team tracked an experienced Azure user setting up a Windows Virtual Desktop environment. Over the course of a month, it took the person 28 hours. However when the team gave the same user Nerdio to perform the task it took him two hours.

“This is what prompted our early day questions about Nerdio: If you don’t have the product what does it mean? And if you do have the product what does it mean? What’s the cost of not having it?” Walsh said. “This is built for an MSP who has multiple customers in mind. So everything they do in terms of getting their customer onto Azure or taking advantage of Windows Virtual Desktop, this tool is designed to help them do it more efficiently and more successfully.”

For MSPs new to Azure, the cost of not having it seems to be a loss of efficiency, however Walsh said the product does more than streamline. It also gives MSPs new to the cloud space cost estimators that they can use when bidding jobs.

“Something we learned from our boot camps, is usually one of the first things that partners need help with is ‘How do I quote it? I don’t know what to buy,’ “Walsh said. “Nerdio addresses that.”

Chicago-based Nerdio also allows MSPs to monitor and control Azure usage, spinning up and spinning down servers as the job requires in order to save customers money.

“You get charged for what you use. Nerdio gives an MSP control over when do you turn that server on,” Walsh said. “When do you scale it down so you can get charged for what you are using and not what you are not.”

Ryan Burton, vice president of product strategy at Greenwood Village, Colo.-based Pax8, said because Nerdio was created by an MSP, it helps those users managed unintended costs of cloud migration.

“Azure is like a utility so if you keep it on all the time you’re getting charged for that,” he said. “So where Nerdio comes in is they’ll be able to orchestrate those environments to shut down servers when they’re not in use, saving a lot of money.”