(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Managing and monitoring cloud computing solutions can be a tricky juggling act for smaller enterprises.
ScienceLogic (www.sciencelogic.com) has taken this into consideration and designed a new integration server for businesses to customize and automate management and monitoring of their private and hybrid cloud environments.
EM7 G3 Integration Server combines a secure and pre-integrated set of applications with automation tools, reporting, single window view and centralized data repository – all optimized to work together for proactive and efficient IT operations and cloud management.
ScienceLogic offers the Integration Server as a physical or virtual appliance with a web-based interface.
As a result, users can automate their operations management and integrate private cloud operations with critical business systems instead of relying on a vendor or hiring consultants.
In an email interview with the WHIR, ScienceLogic CEO David Link discusses how EM7 G3 Integration Server can ultimately simplify data center, private cloud and public cloud monitoring in a single solution, while providing cloud service providers with new revenue opportunities.
The WHIR: What kind of customer is the EM7 G3 Integration Server intended for?
David Link: Managed service providers and in particular those offering cloud services would benefit the most from using EM7 G3 with the Integration Server. We think anyone who has built their own customer portal will love the value-added opportunities offered by the Integration Server. It literally opens up thousands of possibilities to leverage the data stored in EM7 and serve it up to customers in highly personalized and meaningful ways. The bottom line is that this level of service and customization will open up new revenue streams for service providers who are always looking to differentiate themselves.
WHIR: What are the main benefits of EM7 G3 with the Integration Server over other cloud monitoring solutions?
DL: I think the secret sauce lies in the fact that EM7 was originally designed and continues to be improved with service providers in mind. We believe that service providers have been running their operations like a private cloud before the term “cloud computing” even existed – managing a multitenant environment sitting on top of shared resource pools that require virtualization, metered chargeback, etc.
The difference now is the speed customers expect for sophisticated product provisioning and service delivery. They want complex solutions delivered on-demand through a self-service model – and that puts a lot of pressure on service providers to deliver those on-demand services, the same way, the right way, every time.
The complexity of providing these kinds of services in this way is enormous, and this is exactly what EM7 G3 with the Integration Server was designed to simplify. Our comprehensive solution has built-in tools to enable automation – for provisioning, remediation and workflow – and easy integration between multiple vendor tools on the back-end that true cloud monitoring requires. Other cloud monitoring solutions are not designed for service providers, usually solve only a part of the complete cloud monitoring set of requirements or need integration of multiple tools to provide what EM7 does in a single solution.
WHIR: Can you talk about REST-based API design and its advantages?
DL: REST is a style of software architecture that closely follows the HTTP protocol itself. By the very nature of REST, APIs following this style tend to be self-documenting and very quick for developers to learn and use. RESTful APIs make use of the existing verbs in the HTTP protocol such as GET and POST rather than inventing a whole new application specific vocabulary as happens with alternative approaches such as SOAP. A well written RESTful API is intuitive and consistent to use and very fast both in development time and execution. Following our overall design philosophy to simplify IT management, the EM7 RESTful API makes it quick and easy for a service provider’s own engineering resources to develop the automation and integration that is custom and proprietary to their business, instead of paying consultants or vendor resources for integration projects using more complex and often multiple APIs that were never intended to work together.
WHIR: Are there any other comparable products currently offered by competitors?
DL: To our knowledge and based on the feedback from customers, there are no comparable products that enable the levels of automation combined with integration that the Integration Server used with EM7 G3 provide. Of course there are run book automation tools, monitoring point solutions and platforms, and of course APIs used for integration between third-party systems, but these solutions are complex, require integration and are not designed with service providers in mind. Many of our competitors offer partial APIs to their products. Often other products’ APIs reflect the “growth by acquisition” strategies many of them employ. We have come across several products which offer legacy, language-specific APIs in one part of the product, completely different SOAP APIs in another part, and no API coverage at all in the rest of the product. Customers simply get there faster with EM7 G3 and the Integration Server which cuts the complexity that can stop these kinds of projects before they even start.
WHIR: What has the feedback been like so far from customers?
DL: The feedback has been great. The CTO of one of the major cloud service providers recently told us that he didn’t believe it was possible with the existing tools in the marketplace to accomplish the automation goals to take their business to the next level. He thinks we’re two years ahead of the competition. We had similar feedback from one of the largest dedicated hosters in Europe who is using the Integration Server to enable not only initial automated provisioning but also ongoing configuration changes. The self-service portal can allow customers to make changes as their business requirements change, and using the Integration Server, those changes flow automatically through operations in real-time.
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