Customer Stories
Customer story
Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop
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- Needed to transition from on-premises infrastructure to a cloud-native environment to support rapid growth.
- VMware Horizon Cloud was too costly and had rigid licensing constraints.
- AVD was chosen for scalability and costeffectiveness, but managing it natively at scale required additional tools.
Solution
- Implemented Nerdio Manager for Enterprise to streamline AVD management.
- Automated tasks and introduced Auto-Scaling for cost efficiency.
- Reduced administrative workload, enabling efficient management of thousands of desktops.
Overview
In 2021, the Issa brothers purchased Asda, one of Britain’s largest supermarket chains, from Walmart. The ambitious new owners wanted to scale the chain rapidly and expand into convenience stores.
To scale to the degree the Issa brothers envisioned, Asda would need to digitally transform its on-premises infrastructure to be cloud-native and implement a new, dynamic VDI solution. At the same time, the business was looking for ways to reduce the cost of the transformation.
Initial considerations
For VDI, an Asda senior engineer (the “Engineer”) first considered VMware Horizon Cloud, but the rigidity of licensing and costs were prohibitive. He then learned Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) was included in Asda’s existing MVP Solution, and the answer became obvious. With AVD, the up-front cost savings compared to VMware were immense, but Asda’s environment was enormous and complex. IT leadership knew an AVD environment would require a lot of hands-on attention and a tool that could enhance the AVD platform features to simplify its management.
“The AVD platform hadn’t matured enough, and we struggled with a lack of Azure-specific expertise,” the Engineer confessed. “From a functionality perspective, I thought it would be impossible to do what I had been tasked with using native AVD.”
Checking out Nerdio
Nerdio Manager for Enterprise ticked all the boxes for the Engineer. “When I pitched Nerdio to leadership, I said, ‘Look, you could pay thousands of pounds to hire additional engineers to manage AVD natively, or I can pay $7 per license per user for a tool that will do it all for us.’ It was a quick ‘yes’ from there.”
As Asda began onboarding, a typically complex process, Nerdio made the journey as simple as possible and integrated seamlessly with Azure.
One-stop shopping with Nerdio
With Nerdio up and running, the Asda IT team immediately saw the effects with countless hours
saved from unnecessary administrative work.
Customizing Scripted Actions to Asda’s specifications, they were able to streamline everything from scheduling to image management. Additionally, automated security updates removed the risk of human error, improving both performance and security across the organization.
With a goal to find significant areas of cost savings, it was Nerdio’s Auto-Scaling feature that really stood out for the IT team. Since they could eliminate sessions not in use, Asda was only paying for the resources consumed, generating massive savings for the company.
Price check
Asda’s IT team has been able to add resources and scale while reducing department costs. In fact, over the span of two years, Asda easily went from managing around 400 machines to more than 5,000 dedicated desktops with Nerdio. The company now has anywhere between 6,000- 7,000 monthly users with over 3,000 concurrent licenses, making it one of the largest deployments in the UK.
At the end of its digital transformation, Asda now has a cloud-native VDI solution using Azure Virtual Desktop with Nerdio. The company has achieved its IT goals, scaling for rapid growth and seeing savings of upwards of £56,000 a month.
“Above all, for me, the best part about Nerdio is that it just works!” exclaimed the Engineer. “We’ve been using Nerdio for two years, and I’ve never had a problem. I don’t have to fix it—I barely have to touch it. In fact, the only time I log into Nerdio is to do a new deployment or to do a quick update on the platform. This is what makes Nerdio a true game changer.”
About Asda
Headquartered in Leeds, ASDA is the UK’s third-largest supermarket by market share, employing more than 150,000 colleagues and serving over 18 million customers every week in its stores and online. ASDA has a long heritage in providing customers with low prices and in June 2023 was crowned the UK’s lowest-priced supermarket by the Grocer magazine for the 27th consecutive year. In October 2020, ASDA was acquired from Walmart by the Issa brothers and TDR Capital. In 2023, Asda confirmed the acquisitions of 119 Co-Op fuel sites with attached convenience stores and EG Group’s UK business, bringing the total store count above 1,000 for the first time in its history.
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