Nerdio Adding Endpoint and Application Management Through Intune to Manager for MSP Solution

Nerdio is integrating device and application management functionality from Microsoft Intune to Nerdio Manager for MSP.

The company announced that update and the addition of enhanced multi- and cross-tenant management functionality to its flagship cloud management solution for managed service providers on the opening day of its NerdioCon partner event in Cancun, Mexico.

Both moves are early steps in longer-term plans by Nerdio to expand a tool for deploying and managing Microsoft Azure, Azure Virtual Desktop, and Windows 365 environments into a “holistic, modern, multitenant, workflow-powered cloud management platform,” according to CEO Vadim Vladimirskiy.

“You can envision Nerdio Manager for MSP being this management overlay that combines all the different Microsoft cloud technologies in a single multitenant management platform that MSPs can build their entire practice on,” he says.

Currently in public preview and slated to enter general availability early in the second quarter, the Intune integration will give users centralized access to Intune functionality through the same interface they use to administer Azure services and virtual machines.

“It’s everything from unified endpoint management, application management policies, baseline security, everything that Intune has to bring to the table,” Vladimirskiy says.

Like Nerdio Manager for MSP’s existing Azure-related capabilities, the new Intune functionality is designed to make an otherwise complicated technology simpler to learn and use. “Intune is a popular technology out there and lots of MSPs want to start using it, but they’re finding the complexity challenging,” Vladimirskiy says.

Nerdio announced new support for virtual device management in Nerdio Manager for MSP through an integration with Microsoft Endpoint Manager at last year’s NerdioCon. The Intune functionality adds physical endpoint management capabilities to the product. According to Vladimirskiy, even the most cloud-oriented MSPs need to take monitoring and managing laptops, desktops, and other devices seriously at a time when rapid adoption of SaaS applications is shifting control over security settings and practices from technicians to end users.

“Once that endpoint functionality is completely controlled by the user, security becomes a huge concern and a point of focus, and being able to easily manage physical endpoints that are not connecting through a virtual desktop to the data becomes super important,” he says.

The new cross-tenant functionality unveiled today lets MSPs define a core set of configurations, workflows, and policies and then apply them to multiple clients at once. It too is currently in public preview and scheduled to become generally available early in the second quarter.

“Envision a security policy that an MSP has developed as a best practice that all of their customers must comply with,” Vladimirskiy says. “Instead of having to copy that policy from each customer one to the next and then maintain it on an individual basis, they’ll be able to create one central version, assign it to all of their customers, and then maintain compliance and automatically remediate against any changes from that policy.”

Any changes they make, moreover, will roll out automatically to all relevant clients at once. “They may be deploying a certain app to a large portion of their customers,” Vladimirskiy says. “Once they update that app centrally, it’ll automatically become available to any customers that are consuming that particular app.”