Karbon Homes is a UK-based non-profit organization focused on building quality homes for those in need and shaping sustainable locations for local communities. Across Northern England, Karbon Homes has been providing a strong foundation for people to prosper since 2017.
Challenges faced
To ensure better service for its customers and improve user experience for employees, Karbon Homes made the decision to migrate away from its on-prem VDI infrastructure in favour of Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD).
Karbon Homes had tried using the PaaS version of their on-prem VDI solution, but as soon as Managed Service Provider, Trustack, approached them with a potential alternative that could improve performance for end users and streamline efficiency, the Karbon Homes Infrastructure and Operations team was eager to explore further.
“As a trusted partner, Trustack regularly makes us aware of new technology solutions they feel would benefit our specific organizational needs based on an in-depth understanding of our IT environment,” the Infrastructure and Operations team stated. “They knew we needed a tool that would reduce the complexity associated with cloud VDI management to empower our team and recommended Nerdio Manager for Enterprise.”
Solution
After Trustack demonstrated how easily AVD could be managed and optimized with Nerdio Manager, the Karbon Homes team quickly on-boarded the platform and experienced the Nerdio difference.
Session hosts were always available when users needed them thanks to the pre-staging option in Nerdio’s patented auto-scaling functionality, but outside of business hours, they could still scale down to run as lean as possible.
Plus, with the auto-scale history and analytics, the team was able to get granular with usage analysis, examining the average host performance and fine-tuning from there. Furthermore, image management and re-image scheduling, along with automated patching and remediation, drastically streamlined admin tasks.
Benefits and outcomes
Karbon Homes currently hosts nearly 700 monthly active users in Nerdio Manager for Enterprise, which saves them over 60% on their overall Azure Virtual Desktop costs. That extrapolates out to a saving of nearly £10,000 per month. Not only have the fiscal savings been immediately impactful, but the automation and orchestration features have helped to accelerate IT initiatives and streamline operations.
“The Nerdio platform has enabled Karbon Homes to optimize spend across their AVD environment while still ensuring users have access to desktops when and where they need them,” said the Infrastructure and Operations team. “For a non-profit, the ability to automate and customize controls to more efficiently leverage our resources while better serving our customers is a win-win.”
