Developing tools with the Abiquo API: noVNC token generator

Most of the examples we have provided of how to interact with the Abiquo API are written in Python, so now it’s time to put some rubies in our blog. We will show you how to use Ruby to interact with Abiquo APIs. First we will consume events by connecting to the Outbound API, but we will not process event data, we will just use it as a trigger. When we detect a deploy/undeploy action, we will retrieve more information about deployed VMs by calling the REST API.

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Tip Tuesday: How to use Abiquo Events to increase revenue

In our latest release, Abiquo has introduced an Outbound Event Stream API. This lets you use events that are recorded in your Abiquo powered cloud platform for various purposes.
While it’s easy to see how these events can be used for monitoring and alerts, they can also be used to increase revenue from your platform.

Here are a couple of ideas to get you going:

Creating sales opportunities

In Abiquo, you can set ‘soft limits’ and ‘hard limits’ for each Enterprise (or “tenant” if you prefer) and each Virtual Datacenter. If you set the soft limit to, say, 80% of the hard limit, then you could use the Outbound Event Stream API to send an email to your inside sales team when your customer reaches the soft limit. If your organisation uses a CRM solution such as Salesforce, you can even have this change automatically updated in your CRM records.

Abiquo allow customers to set ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ limits to monitor customers’ usage

Getting closer to the customer

One of the big challenges in self-service environment is that your customer will be creating virtual machines and implementing new applications without you necessarily knowing about it. For a managed service provider, or even an internal IT provider, this reduces the understanding you have of customer projects.

Using the Outbound Event Stream API, you could alert a Solution Architect or Account Manager, perhaps with a CRM integration, to when a customer implements a new Virtual Datacenter or Virtual Appliance. You could also do this with the Abiquo Reporting Enhancement Pack of course, for an overview of this activity.

Learn more about Abiquo’s Outbound Event Stream API and how it can benefit your business on the Abiquo Wiki