WheelHouse IT is a renowned managed service provider (MSP) with a strong presence across multiple locations, including South Florida, the New York City area, Long Island, Los Angeles, Iowa, and Arkansas. Through a series of mergers and acquisitions, WheelHouse IT has adopted a “best of breed” approach to IT, allowing their team to deliver robust solutions tailored to the technological needs of businesses of all sizes.
Specializing in the healthcare, legal, and general professional services industries, WheelHouse IT provides comprehensive support for client infrastructure while proactively securing workstations and networks against online threats.
As early adopters of Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD), formerly Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD), WheelHouse IT has been at the forefront of virtual desktop solutions. With experience with Remote Desktop Services (RDS), Citrix, VMware, and Amazon Web Services (AWS), the company recognized the limitations of these platforms, particularly in terms of scalability and efficiency.
The manual processes involved in launching and managing virtual machines (VMs) were time-consuming and labor-intensive, often leading to significant client downtime in the event of system failures.
“As longtime Microsoft partners, we were excited to get our hands on the beta version of WVD when it was first rolled out,” said Gani Zebersky, CEO and Managing Partner, WheelHouse IT. “We saw this as an opportunity to majorly enhance our service offerings, so despite the complexities we faced with initial customer implementations, the team was determined to find a way to better manage the platform.”
Implementing Nerdio
Recognizing the need for a comprehensive management platform to streamline AVD deployments and optimize operations, the Wheelhouse IT team started doing their own research and consulted industry forums.
“We quickly identified Nerdio Manager for MSP as the standout solution in this space,” noted Nikko Pabion, Director of Technology, WheelHouse IT. “The platform’s intuitive interface and granular access controls empower all of our engineers to universally administer, manage, and implement AVD deployments without compromising security.”
WheelHouse IT can define and enforce role-based access policies, providing junior engineers access only to the tools and functionalities they need to perform designated tasks. This minimizes the risk of accidental misconfigurations in Azure and ensures no accidental costs are incurred without over-reliance on select senior team members.
“But could we do it better ourselves?”
At one point, WheelHouse IT thought the organization could save money by developing an in-house DIY solution to replace Nerdio, but the reality proved to be far more challenging than anticipated.
“Without Nerdio’s sleek, user-friendly platform, the process became convoluted and complex, posing significant obstacles for our technicians,” continued Pabion. “Despite our best efforts to replicate Nerdio’s automation functionality, we quickly realized that scaling our own solution across multiple clients was unfeasible.”
Within a few months, WheelHouse IT found themselves returning to Nerdio. Using Nerdio Manager for MSP, WheelHouse IT can accomplish in a few clicks what previously required a multitude of complicated steps, enabling the team to swiftly deploy new environments and meet evolving customer needs.
Deja vu: implementing Nerdio again
Following WheelHouse IT’s return to the Nerdio fold, the MSP was able to serve its clients better than ever. The efficiency and reliability of Nerdio Manager for MSP proved to be indispensable across a number of use cases:
Client outage resolution
WheelHouse IT was serving a client with 300-400 employees spread across the United States when a major outage occurred. While one team worked tirelessly to address the outage, another simultaneously deployed Nerdio to transition the client from an outdated terminal and AWS setup. Despite the severity of the outage, WheelHouse IT seamlessly migrated the client to AVD, maintaining business continuity, and ultimately reducing the client’s cloud bill by changing vendors.
Mergers and acquisitions integration
A large customer was in the process of acquiring 10 companies and wanted to ensure uniform access and experience across all entities. Leveraging Nerdio, the WheelHouse IT team created a single cohesive environment with different pools within AVD, providing seamless migration, integration, and management across all subsidiaries.
Resource-intensive application migration
For customers utilizing graphic-heavy applications for photo/video editing or AutoCAD, the Nerdio support team has been key in helping WheelHouse IT easily transform those entire environments from local to virtualized.
Exploring the Intune integration
WheelHouse IT has recently embraced the new Nerdio integration with Microsoft Intune, improving the way the MSP deploys applications and policies and standards across its client base.
“Nerdio helps me come up with very easy, simplistic policies that are easy to roll out to all of the WheelHouse IT clients,” Pabion added. “Plus, the portal then provides a centralized platform for policy management and enforcement; I can actually go in and make sure that these policies are uniformly applied across every one of our managed tenants.”
Furthermore, WheelHouse IT utilizes the Intune integration to deploy applications in a standardized fashion across all VMs, ensuring consistency, reliability, and efficiency in application management across the entire client portfolio.
Amplifying profitability
“The Nerdio team has been instrumental in helping us understand the profitability of Azure, how to quote AVD, how reserved instances work, et cetera.” Zebersky related. “The hands-on, in-office training taught the team how to price and architect more accurately so we can close deals with confidence.”
Additionally, the transition to the “per-user model” has made quoting even easier for account managers, increasing profit margins further.
“Nerdio improves the entire workflow across the company — beyond sales and implementation, Nerdio has also been an invaluable tool for procurement and billing,” lauded Pabion. “Our admin team can just jump into the portal and multiply the number of users by our price quote, removing the notorious complications inherent in Azure billing. Everyone is thrilled to have Nerdio back as an essential part of our MSP toolkit.”
To discover more about why this MSP re-engaged with Nerdio to improve workflow and profit margins after trying to “do it themselves” in-house, download the full case study PDF below.
