This guide breaks down why MSPs are seeking platforms that expand beyond the capabilities of specialized Microsoft 365 management tools like Inforcer, to manage the entire Microsoft cloud ecosystem, including Azure infrastructure.
As a managed service provider (MSP), the platform you use to manage client cloud environments is the single most critical element of your service delivery. It directly dictates your operational efficiency, service margins, and ability to scale without adding headcount.
Is your team bogged down by manual scripting and jumping between portals, or are they delivering high-value, profitable services? This choice is the key to escaping operational drag and building a more efficient and scalable cloud practice.
Disclaimer: Content referencing Inforcer products is based on public information from those company’s websites, current as of the last article update. For the latest product details and further inquiries, please consult the official Inforcer website.
The demands on managed service providers have fundamentally shifted. Managing Microsoft 365 is now just one part of the job. Relying on tools that are hyper-focused on Microsoft 365 security posture management can create significant operational drag, limit your ability to manage Microsoft 365 configurations beyond security solutions, and don’t give your MSP the breathing room it needs to centrally manage users, devices, groups, and applications or build a profitable Microsoft 365 practice.
Your clients’ environments are no longer limited to email and Office apps; they now include complex, hybrid deployments, from physical devices to application management, and management that extends into the cloud, including Azure infrastructure for services like AVD. Tools focused primarily on the Microsoft 365 policy management layer are not designed to manage the complexities of this infrastructure. This creates critical visibility and control gaps that expose your clients to unnecessary costs and your MSP to operational inefficiency.
A truly modern platform acts as a force multiplier for your technical team. It must be multi-tenant by design and deliver measurable value in three key areas: integrated cost optimization, operational efficiency, and scalable security across the entire Microsoft cloud.
Your clients face ballooning Azure costs they can't explain, and the responsibility to control them falls on you. Without a platform that integrates deep Azure automation, your engineers are forced to manually deallocate resources and run custom scripts after hours. This process is not only inefficient and prone to error but also a major contributor to technician burnout, and it directly eats into your margins on every Azure-based client.
Wrestling with multiple, disconnected portals to manage a single client is a massive time sink. The high number of clicks and context-switching required for routine tasks—like onboarding a new Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) user who needs both an Microsoft 365 license and an optimized virtual desktop—adds up to hours of wasted engineering time. This operational friction prevents you from standardizing deployments and makes it nearly impossible to efficiently scale a profitable cloud practice.
The market includes various platforms, but the most effective solutions provide a truly unified approach that addresses the full scope of your clients' Microsoft cloud environments.
The MSP automation tool market includes a number of effective, specialized platforms. Tools like CoreView Configuration Manager (formerly Simeon Cloud), for instance, offer powerful solutions for Microsoft 365 configuration-as-code and tenant management. While these platforms provide deep value for Microsoft 365 administration, a different approach is required for MSPs who also manage client infrastructure in Azure, particularly Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD).
| Inforcer (Focused Microsoft 365 Platform) | Nerdio (Unified Cloud Platform) | |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 User & License Management | YES: Core focus is on M365 tenant and user administration. | YES: Manages users and licenses as part of a unified workflow. |
| Application Management for both Native Microsoft and Third Party Solutions | NO: Only supports native Microsoft applications. | YES: Offers truly unified application management. |
| Device and Group Management | NO: Still in development. | YES: Available all in one console. |
| Unified Security Policy (Microsoft 365 + Azure) | NO: Manages security policies within the Microsoft 365 environment only. | YES: Applies and enforces security policies across both Microsoft 365 and Azure infrastructure. |
For modern MSPs, Microsoft Intune is the foundation of endpoint security and management. However, relying on it alone creates significant challenges in cost control, security hardening, and operational efficiency when managing multiple clients at scale. The solution isn't to replace Intune, but to build a management layer on top of it. Different platforms solve different parts of this challenge.
This table breaks down the key differences in how each type of platform builds upon Intune's core capabilities.
| Intune Capability | Inforcer (Focused Microsoft 365 Platform) | Nerdio (Unified Cloud Platform) |
|---|---|---|
| Security Approach | Policy Enforcement: Excels at deploying Intune security baselines and monitoring for configuration drift across tenants. | Image-Level Hardening: Deploys desktops from pre-hardened images, ensuring security is built-in before policies are even applied. |
| Endpoint Policy & Enrollment | Specialized Policy Management: Offers granular tools for managing Microsoft 365/Intune policy rules, baselines, and backups. | Solving Intune's Gaps: Focuses on solving common Intune challenges at scale, such as policy conflicts, compliance visibility, and data retention. |
| Operational Scope | Microsoft 365-Centric: Manages Intune policies within the context of the Microsoft 365 environment. | Holistic VDI Management: Manages both AVD and Windows 365 from a single console, streamlining operations for mixed environments. |
Ensuring consistent security is a top priority. Platforms focused on Microsoft 365 administration, like Inforcer, excel at the policy layer. They provide powerful tools to deploy standardized Intune security baselines, monitor for configuration drift across tenants, and prepare clients for advanced tools like Microsoft Security Copilot. This is critical for maintaining a consistent policy posture.
However, a unified platform like Nerdio complements this by offering more robust controls at the user, group, application, and most importantly the device level, which tools like Inforcer do not address. Consolidated solutions like Nerdio excel at addressing security at the image level. Instead of just enforcing policies after a device is deployed, Nerdio allows you to deploy Cloud PCs and virtual desktops using pre-configured, security-hardened images. This ensures that hundreds of security settings are correctly configured before the user ever logs in, dramatically reducing the attack surface and guaranteeing a higher level of standardization from the very start.
A crucial capability gap with native Intune is the lack of tools to address common, time-consuming operational challenges across multiple tenants. While you can manage device policies, it's difficult to solve issues like policy conflicts or provide secure remote support efficiently.
This is a critical area where a unified platform provides value by acting as a management and automation layer on top of Intune. Nerdio, for example, helps proactively detect and surface policy drift and conflicts. This allows your team to resolve issues before they cause user downtime, rather than troubleshooting after the fact.
Your clients’ endpoint environments—including both physical and virtual desktops—are all enrolled and managed in Intune. This creates operational complexity for technicians who need to provide support and for compliance teams who need to prove historical adherence to policy.
A unified platform provides a centralized management console to streamline these functions. It can provide Level 1 help desk technicians with secure, direct remote access to endpoints via tools like Nerdio Console Connect, reducing escalations that consume senior engineer time. Furthermore, it solves the compliance data retention problem by providing long-term historical reporting that extends far beyond Intune's 30-day limit, allowing your team to generate audit evidence in minutes, not weeks.
An effective cloud practice requires a critical look at the tools that enable your service delivery. Use these questions to assess whether your current platform is a business accelerator or an operational bottleneck.
Taking action begins with evaluating how a purpose-built platform can help you transition from a reactive service provider to a proactive, high-margin cloud practice. The goal is to equip your technical team with a tool that eliminates operational friction and unlocks new opportunities for growth.
We suggest you evaluate how a unified platform like Nerdio can help you automate the mundane, standardize your service delivery, and manage the entire Microsoft cloud stack with unparalleled efficiency. By doing so, you can deliver more value to your clients, improve the day-to-day experience of your technical team, and position your MSP to profitably scale your most advanced cloud services.
