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A DIB client needed a fully compliant Azure Government enclave to securely manage CUI and meet CMMC Level 2 requirements.
C3 had to deliver strict data controls, a 100% AVD access model for hundreds of daily users, and predictable Azure Gov costs.
Without Nerdio, scaling AVD, separating QA and production, and enforcing consistent policies across multiple host pools would require heavy manual work and custom scripting.
Solution
C3 manages its Azure Gov enclave reference architecture using Nerdio Manager and Azure Virtual Desktop, ensuring all CUI access flows through a secure, compliant, fully managed AVD environment.
Nerdio automation, including Auto-Scaling, Auto-Heal, FSLogix management, policy enforcement, and application masking, improved performance, reduced operational effort, and saved Creation Tech thousands per month.
With Nerdio Manager, C3 can now standardize images and policies across clients and expects up to 80% faster onboarding for new CMMC enclave environments.
Building a secure enclave for the DOD supply chain
Creation Tech is a contract electronics manufacturer that supplies components for major defense contractors, including Boeing, L3Harris, and Lockheed Martin. As part of the Defense Industrial Base, they handle Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) and must meet the same rigorous Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) requirements that apply across the DoD supply chain.
“Our journey started about two years ago recognizing that we needed to become CMMC compliant,” said Reagan Gibb, Director of Business Systems & IT Operations at Creation Tech. Historically, the company operated under ITAR, with a strong focus on export control. But CMMC introduced a new, more prescriptive framework covering how CUI is stored, accessed, and secured.
Creation Tech chose to pursue a dedicated enclave model: a separate Azure Government environment where all CUI lives, governed by a consistent set of controls. That’s where C3 Integrated Solutions came in.
Leading with CMMC expertise
From the beginning, the partnership was about compliance first. “We hired them because of compliance,” Gibb said. C3 brought a CMMC-focused reference architecture that covered 110 CMMC controls, with roughly 80 handled directly through the enclave and associated tooling.
As applications moved from on-premises into the enclave, the work was intense: “It was an intensive time of making sure we were compliant, moving the applications that we had onpremises into this enclave environment,” Gibb recalled. Over 18–24 months, Creation Tech and C3 migrated CUI-hosting applications on a steady cadence, validating controls as they went.
In June 2025, the work paid off. Creation Tech successfully achieved its CMMC Level 2 certification “C3 directly addressed roughly 80 of the 110 CMMC controls,” Gibb said of C3. “That was why we hitched our wagons to them.”
Making 100% AVD access reliable for hundreds of users
Within the enclave, all users access workloads exclusively through Azure Virtual Desktop. “Our environment there is 100% VDI, 100% Azure Virtual Desktop,” Gibb said. “It is critical that it works well, and we are regularly refreshing images and using the Nerdio platform to maintain our AVD environment.”
C3 uses Nerdio Manager to manage Creation Tech’s AVD host pools, images, and FSLogix configurations. For C3’s Mike Thomas, the difference compared to managing AVD directly in Azure is stark:
Auto-Scaling, Auto-Heal, and a better user experience
On the cost and performance side, Nerdio Auto-Scaling keeps AVD capacity aligned with real usage. Creation Tech’s Azure Gov spend is about $40,000 per month, with roughly a quarter tied to AVD. Gibb estimates that Nerdio-driven Auto-Scaling shaves “a few thousand dollars” off that monthly compute bill by powering hosts down outside business hours.
For Thomas, the real story goes beyond cost savings to user experience. “We’re in the business of people,” he said. “The user experience is everything. If the user’s having a poor experience, they’re not going to be happy—and they’re not going to want to keep paying for a solution that’s not performing well.”
Nerdio’s Auto-Scaling engine monitors CPU, memory, and density (not just user counts) and can recommend adding hosts or changing VM sizes when resources are strained. Auto-Heal adds another layer of protection by detecting and remediating host-level issues before users feel the impact.
“With Nerdio, I know when I click deploy on something, it’s going to deploy,” Thomas said. “We’ve seen Auto-Heal detect problems with agents or hosts and fix them. Historically, that would’ve been a 2 am phone call—or worse, a problem when 1,000 people try to connect at 8 a.m.”
“Team human”: keeping people at the center
C3’s internal mantra, team human, shows up clearly in how they use Nerdio. Auto-Scaling isn’t just a cost control; it’s a way to keep users on healthy, responsive hosts. Auto-Heal isn’t just clever automation; it’s fewer outages and less frustration.
“We do what we do for a lot of clients,” Thomas said. “Nerdio helps me move fast and, quite frankly, trust that it’s going to work.”
On the customer side, Creation Tech sees that people-centric value through stability and predictability. “We’ve got a few hundred users that use it on a daily basis, and it has been… definitely beating expectations of how well it operates day to day,” Gibb shared.
Scaling secure enclaves for the future
Looking ahead, C3 is utilizing Nerdio Manager for MSP to standardize and scale its secure enclave architecture. The goal: one hardened golden image and shared policy sets that can be applied across multiple CMMC clients.
“As an MSP, one of the most exciting things is standardization,” Thomas said. “With Nerdio Manager, we’ll be able to deploy one set of policies for all our compliance customers and know it’s deployed 100%. Instead of building everything from scratch for each client, we’ll be able to click deploy and have a proven, compliant setup.”
That shift is expected to dramatically reduce onboarding time for new enclave customers. “Today, onboarding a new client is a very manual process,” Thomas explained. “With Nerdio Manager, it’s probably more like an 80% time savings.”
Read the full customer story
See how C3 helps Creation Tech achieve CMMC Level 2 compliance at scale with Nerdio