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Findex needed a secure, flexible virtual desktop platform to support a global workforce, but its legacy Citrix environment was costly, complex, and no longer aligned with current needs.
Seasonal spikes and rapid geographic expansion made manual management of shared AVD desktops increasingly time-consuming and difficult to scale.
IT required a more cost-effective, dynamic solution that could grow quickly, enforce tight security controls, and significantly reduce operational overhead.
Solution
Findex standardized on Azure Virtual Desktop and deployed Nerdio Manager for Enterprise to automate operations, streamline image and host management, and scale capacity based on real-time demand.
Nerdio’s policy-driven Auto-Scaling reduced compute costs while ensuring larger host pools were available during peak periods, improving both performance and predictability.
Built-in lifecycle management, host creation scripts, restore points, and rapid provisioning of Windows 365 Cloud PCs allowed IT to reduce manual work and deliver secure, role-based access.
Modernizing a financial services leader across APAC
With more than 2,500 employees across Australia and New Zealand and an expanding global contractor workforce, Findex manages a diverse mix of financial services, including accounting, business advisory, audit, tax advisory, wealth management, and consulting. To support this hybrid and geographically distributed model, the company relies heavily on virtual desktops. But its legacy Citrix environment was costly, complex, and no longer aligned with how the organization needed to scale.
When Citrix shifted from perpetual licensing to a far more expensive subscription model, the economics no longer made sense. “Azure and AVD were more economical,” explained Jimmy Fulcher, Solution Specialist at Findex. “We didn’t need a lot of the features that Citrix provided, and we found that AVD with Nerdio had everything we actually required at no additional cost.”
Moving from legacy VDI to a flexible AVD foundation
Findex transitioned from a Citrix-based desktop environment to a fully Azure-centric model, using Azure Virtual Desktop for shared desktops and Windows 365 Cloud PCs for developers and high-resource roles. For Fulcher, who inherited the environment after rollout, this shift was transformative.
The ability to dynamically expand or contract resources became increasingly important as the business expanded its workforce model to include international contracting. Initially adopted during COVID-19 to manage short-term capacity pressures, this approach has since matured into a flexible resourcing capability that supports team across accounting, tax, wealth, and even software development work.
Improving efficiency and freeing IT to focus on high-impact work
Managing remote desktops used to require extensive manual effort. With Nerdio, Fulcher estimates he is 30–35% more efficient, especially when managing shared AVD pools.
Key capabilities, like restoring images, rolling back versions, and running scripts at host creation time, eliminate friction from the image lifecycle. A recent example: the new Teams installer was breaking when sysprepped. “With Nerdio, we just run a post-startup script during host creation, and it installs Teams automatically,” said Fulcher. “Problem solved.”
Resilience and continuity when every billable minute counts
Nerdio has also strengthened Findex’s operational resilience. During a recent endpoint outage, IT redirected users to shared AVD desktops and quickly added capacity to handle the influx. Because many Findex teams bill by the hour, every minute of uptime matters. “If anything goes wrong on the local endpoints, we have another option where we can direct people to allow them to continue working,” said Fulcher. “That can prevent potential downtime.”
This flexibility is equally valuable during seasonal peaks, such as end-of-year tax periods when workloads surge and temporary staff are added.
Visibility, control, and access for distributed teams
Nerdio provides a unified interface for managing both AVD and Windows 365 Cloud PCs, simplifying oversight across environments. IT can assign different access levels to support staff, enabling them to troubleshoot without exposing sensitive configuration settings. “Having the ability to give people a different level of access to view and modify things is very helpful,” said Fulcher.
Looking ahead with confidence
Findex plans to continue expanding its workforce, deepen its use of Windows 365, and leverage Nerdio to support more rapid provisioning, stronger security, and higher resilience. The combination of AVD, Cloud PCs, and Nerdio provides a scalable foundation for a business that must support thousands of users across varied roles, geographies, and workloads.
Read the full customer story
See how Findex accelerated global contractor onboarding with Nerdio-powered AVD
