Nerdio, a Microsoft cloud management platform, announced Nerdio Manager for MSP (NMM) version 5.0 this week. The major upgrade aims to streamline app deployment, enhance security, and promote a uniform app experience. New features include AssistPro, an AI-powered in-app assistant, Unified App Management (UAM), and Console Connect for addressing end-user issues with remote access to virtual and physical desktops from a single pane of glass. In addition, NMM 5.0 now integrates with Microsoft Defender for Business and Defender for Endpoint.
These and other enhancements are part of Nerdio’s 2024 product roadmap.
“We have three primary product initiatives for this year,” CEO Vadim Vladimirskiy (pictured) tells MSP Success. “Number one, not surprisingly, is infusion of AI into all of our products” with targeted use cases for MSP partners. “This includes both generative AI-type functionality with our AssistPro and ScriptPro capabilities, but also machine learning and computer vision that [MSPs can use] to diagnose problems early and [automate] the types of things they could do manually.”
The second initiative is to deepen Nerdio’s virtual desktop management capability, he says. “We started with virtual desktops with remote desktop services, then Windows Virtual Desktop, eventually Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365. We’ve now expanded to management of Intune devices as well … and we are continuing to identify areas that MSPs need help with, automating that management experience and giving them cost savings through all the scaling.”
Vladimirskiy says the third initiative “is all about broadening the management that our products provide across other technologies in the Microsoft cloud ecosystem. … We’re starting out with Defender for Business and Defender for Endpoint, which is the thing that MSPs have been asking us about is to help them make Defender deployment and management easier.”
Giving MSPs More Control
Drilling down into some of the new features in NMM 5.0, Vladimirskiy says Control Console “will allow MSPs to remotely control either a user session, so they can actually see their screen and take control if the user allows them to, or control server VMs … be able to get on the screen of that machine and actually make changes and interact with it. This is something that’s been a request for a very long time, and I’m very happy that we’re now able to start offering it to our MSP partners.”
Unified Application Management is also something MSPs have been asking for, Vladimirskiy says. For MSPs managing a dozen or so clients and their apps, they’ve had to maintain installer files for each customer’s apps, and then installations and updates are fairly manual and time consuming, he explains. United Application Management “allows an MSP to create a repository of apps in the cloud, put up all the different apps that all the various customers use, and then assign those apps to the proper customers and create delivery rules that tell the system when to install the app for which customer, which user, and on what type of a device.”
Unified Application Management supports virtual and physical devices, including mobile devices. “So, an MSP can set up their app repository and create their delivery rules and just kind of let it run on itself,” he explains. “Whenever there is an update to the app, it’ll automatically push it down to the correct user on the correct device—without any involvement from the MSP.”
Integrating with Defender for Business and Defender for Endpoint is a capability Nerdio’s MSP partners have been asking for as well. The Business Premium license includes Defender for Endpoint but not many MSPs use it because of the difficulty, Vladimirskiy explains. “It’s hard to deploy, it’s hard to manage. It’s not multitenant capable.” With the integration, he says, “an MSP can onboard customers into Defender, and they can monitor compliance, and they can set up policies across the entire customer base and keep those policies consistently applied.”
The majority of Nerdio’s roadmap is driven by solving these types of MSP challenges, Vladimirskiy says. Nerdio gets input from its MSP partners regularly through forums, industry events, and training camps, he says.” There’s literally a mile-long backlog, which we then use to prioritize and create a roadmap. And it’s almost exclusively based on the requests that we get from the MSP ecosystem.”
