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Rising hardware and software renewal costs for VMware Horizon made on-premises VDI unsustainable.
Managing VDI infrastructure required ongoing maintenance of connection servers, gateways, and supporting components.
Supporting dozens of county departments required faster, repeatable deployment models with clear cost allocation.
Solution
Migrated from on-premises VMware Horizon to Azure Virtual Desktop managed through Nerdio Manager for Enterprise.
Implemented auto-scaling and scheduling to shut down resources during non-production hours and reduce cloud spend.
Standardized deployment processes using pools, tags, and centralized management to support multiple departments efficiently.
Moving away from costly, hardware-bound VDI
Riverside County Information Technology (RCIT) provides centralized IT services to more than 40 departments across Riverside County, California, supporting critical public services for one of the largest counties in the United States.
For years, the team relied on VMware (now Omnissa) Horizon running on-premises infrastructure to support virtual desktop environments. While the solution met functional needs, the underlying model was becoming harder to justify.
“Things were working fine, except in terms of cost,” said Rebecca, Systems Administrator at Riverside County. “It was time for hardware and software renewal.”
With both hardware refresh cycles and multi-year licensing commitments approaching, the team began evaluating alternatives. The goal was to move to a cloud-based model that would reduce upfront investment while maintaining familiar functionality for users.
After comparing AWS and Azure-based approaches, Riverside County selected Azure Virtual Desktop with Nerdio Manager for Enterprise.
“I thought it was more user-friendly for us on our side,” Rebecca explained.
Lowering costs with automated scaling and flexible resource control
One of the first and most immediate improvements came from the ability to control infrastructure usage dynamically.
With Horizon, systems remained powered on regardless of demand. In contrast, Nerdio enabled the team to automatically shut down virtual machines during non-production hours.
For a typical Monday through Friday work schedule, this eliminated unnecessary compute costs during evenings and weekends.
“We didn’t have to pay for resources that we were not using,” Jose explained.
That same flexibility extends to more complex use cases. For example, one department required 144 virtual machines for training, but only on certain days of the week. Instead of leaving those systems running continuously, the team provided controlled access so users could power resources on and off as needed.
“That’s a waste of money if they’re just running,” Rebecca said. “So we gave them the ability to manage it themselves.”
By combining automated scheduling with user-driven control, Riverside County aligned infrastructure costs more closely with actual usage—reducing unnecessary spend while ensuring resources are always available when required.
Eliminating infrastructure maintenance overhead
Beyond cost savings, the move to Nerdio Manager significantly reduced the operational burden on the IT team.
Previously, maintaining the VDI environment required constant attention to infrastructure components, such as connection servers and gateways.
“All that infrastructure is out of the way now,” Jose said. “We don’t have to do any of that.”
Instead, the team can focus on maintaining desktop images and ensuring applications are running smoothly rather than managing the underlying platform. This shift allows IT staff to spend more time supporting departments and less time maintaining infrastructure.
Delivering repeatable VDI across departments
Riverside County’s IT organization supports more than 40 departments, each with unique requirements and budgets.
With Nerdio, the team can now deploy virtual desktop environments quickly and consistently using standardized pools and tagging.
“It’s really fast when using the tags, creating the pool, and making sure that it's separated,” Rebecca said.
This approach also enables clearer cost allocation. Each department can be billed based on its own usage, without requiring shared hardware investments or upfront capital expenditure.
“We can divide the cost, and each department will pay for what they need,” Rebecca explained. The organization achieved a scalable, repeatable model that supports both operational efficiency and financial transparency.
Expanding cloud desktops across the county
With the initial deployment in place, Riverside County is already looking to expand its use of Nerdio across additional departments.
As more teams request virtual desktop environments, IT can now deliver a standardized solution without increasing operational complexity.
“We can take what we’ve already built and provide that same solution to other departments,” Jose said.
The team is also exploring deeper integration with Microsoft Intune to further streamline patching and device management.
For Riverside County, the move to Nerdio has shifted virtual desktop delivery from a hardware-dependent, resource-intensive model to a flexible, cloud-based service that can scale with demand.
Read the full customer story
See how Riverside County reduces costs and simplifies VDI with Nerdio