Case Study: Penn State University expands remote learning to 1,000+ global users and saves 71% on AVD spend with Nerdio

Nerdio Bolsters New Era of Remote Learning for Penn State University

Penn State University, a public research university with 24 campuses and a global World Campus, needed to expand remote learning and enable off‑campus access to physical labs after the pandemic. Their existing remote‑access solution couldn’t scale, so they adopted Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) and engaged Nerdio, deploying Nerdio Manager for Enterprise to simplify and automate AVD operations.

Nerdio implemented Nerdio Manager for Enterprise on top of AVD, delivering an intuitive GUI, burstable multi‑trigger autoscaling, out‑of‑the‑box scripted actions and a full REST API to automate session host and image management. As a result, Penn State supported over 1,000 active AVD users worldwide, reduced administrative effort, improved cost‑reporting, and saved more than 71% on its AVD bill.

Penn State University

Ian Cohn

Systems Design Specialist