A leader in its field with a keen dedication to customer service, Trustack implements and manages secure infrastructure for 150 clients in the United Kingdom and across the globe. As an organization, Trustack provides a wide variety of clients with the most cutting-edge technology. With many customers still on-premises, they needed a solution that would reduce the complexity associated with cloud VDI management and deliver the necessary level of security for the modern threat landscape.
“The infrastructure required to run legacy VDI solutions can easily run into six figures and, on top of that, our clients were also spending tens of thousands of dollars more on annual updates, version upgrades, and constant fixes,” said Russ Henderson, Technical Director, Trustack.
Looking beyond the horizon
With the arduous upgrade process necessary for each customer plus regular maintenance costs, Trustack knew there was a better path forward that could deliver more value to their customers.
“After first being introduced to Nerdio’s management platform for Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD), the benefits for both Trustack and our clientele were immediately apparent,” stated Henderson. “Nerdio clearly understood AVD and demonstrated the efficiencies and ease-of-use of their platform, but once we looked at the total cost of ownership, it became a no-brainer.”
While transitioning to an entirely new solution can be quite expensive, analyzing the total cost of ownership over the span of five years clearly demonstrated the possible savings with AVD and Nerdio. Compared to the annual required updates released by the other vendors, Microsoft is constantly updating the AVD platform in the background, so it’s never an issue. The highly complex backend system is no longer a concern for internal admins or the service provider, and resources can be allocated to better serve the needs of the business.
“Of course, constantly doing all of the old on-prem VDI updates made money for Trustack, but at the end of the day, I’d rather help a customer use that money towards a new layer of security versus paying to keep the lights on outdated infrastructure they already have,” Henderson added. “While we may be losing incremental business in the short term, in the long term we see our business growing exponentially by being a strong partner and advising clients on how best to invest in their own organizations.”
Further, the tedious work on their old solution’s fixes and updates was taxing for Trustack employees. Even the most experienced IT professionals found the process to be a grind. After an introductory call with Nerdio, one staffer noted, “I’ve just seen the new way of delivering VDI. I don’t want to do it the old way again. I’ve wasted two weeks of my life fighting system upgrades. I don’t want to do that again.”
Karbon Homes: a success story in non-profit
Once Trustack had completed its proof of concept with Nerdio and was up and running, they began to identify the customers that would most benefit from making a change.
Karbon Homes is a UK-based non-profit organization focused on providing quality homes for those in need and shaping sustainable locations for local communities. They were in the process of migrating away from an on-prem VDI infrastructure in favor of AVD when Trustack approached them about Nerdio.
Initially, Karbon Homes had tried using a popular enterprise VDI management solution, but as soon as they implemented Nerdio, the Karbon Homes Infrastructure and Operations team instantly recognized the competitive 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 truly 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.
“With Nerdio Manager for Enterprise, everything is simplified for our admins so they can focus on delivering more value to the business,” reported the Infrastructure and Operations team at Karbon Homes. “But we’ve also observed significant cost savings across our AVD environment while still ensuring our users have access to desktops when and where they need them. For a non-profit, the ability to more efficiently leverage our resources while better serving our clients is a win-win.”
Growing with Nerdio
For its customers, the ROI from Nerdio is fairly straightforward, but for Trustack, the value Nerdio provides extends far beyond. The relationship with Nerdio is much more than the standard vendor/customer dynamic; Nerdio is not only a technology provider, but a business partner helping Trustack expand its client portfolio and evolve its sales model for long-term success.
“Our partnership with Nerdio is invaluable. The quality of their technical resources and responsiveness is unmatched by other leading cloud vendors we work with,” said Henderson. “But the true value-add lies in the way Nerdio will fundamentally change our business moving forward. Once fully into the rhythm of delivering AVD with Nerdio, we will be able to ship two or three times as many projects compared with native AVD. This shift will also evolve the company from a five-year CapEx cycle business to a model with a monthly OpEx pipeline and revenue stream, all while enabling Trustack to deliver better service to our customers.”
