The multi-cloud services market has continued to grow at a steady rate with significant CAGR over the years, and its growth is expected to increase in coming years. The growth is due to the need to manage cloud resources and services within an organization using a single pane of glass approach. Most organizations currently use multi-cloud strategies by combining at least two cloud service providers with their private cloud on-premises. However, management of these cloud services and resources has become challenging with each service provider having its unique UI, billing approach, and management methodology. Therefore, with an abundance of resources managed across cloud providers, it became difficult to handle, which in turn forced CIOs to hire and retain different subject matter experts for each cloud provider, implement, and maintain a strategy in the midst of ensuring standard governance, security compliance, and policies.
In an Abiquo Platform cloud model, the control plane is in Abiquo, while the data plane is the infrastructure being managed. Abiquo works with cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), private clouds, and virtualization technologies. This ensures that the best-in-class service is provided to clients by different vendors, giving organizations flexibility to move workloads across cloud providers without being confined to a specific provider. Additionally, with this approach, organizations are able to optimize their costs by using their preferred cloud infrastructure provider based on a specific workload requirement.
Hybrid clouds pose some new security challenges for businesses that adopt it. The best option in case of a security breach is to avoid it. Abiquo’s provides multi-level security policies which allow administrators to set permissions for particular objects like networks, hypervisors, etc. In addition, Abiquo’s access control support allows for setting permissions with the help of RBAC model so only authorized personnel can access confidential data and services.
The next benefit of Abiquo solution is that it can support various other cloud service providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, OpenStack, etc. with a high degree of flexibility. When it comes to selecting a cloud service provider it depends on various business requirements. It is essential to have freedom of choice and Abiquo makes it possible. There are certain situations where a business might have to move workloads from one cloud to another. For some reason, this might not be feasible due to vendor lock-in. Abiquo’s interoperability feature helps avoid these problems.
Abiquo’s supports integration of various automation and DevOps processes, which means it supports API and scripting which can help deploy infrastructure with code. Support for CI/CD makes deployment of cloud infrastructure very fast. Automation features are of great use as more and more organizations are switching to DevOps methodology. The ability to integrate Abiquo into DevOps automation pipeline helps improve the overall standard of infrastructure and application deployment, leading to reducing errors and faster time to market.
Automation: The Abiquo Hybrid Cloud Platform provides a series of automation solutions that enable IT teams to manage and handle complex environments with lesser manual effort. The platform’s automation features can be leveraged to automate the provisioning, de-provisioning, and scaling of resources, ensuring that applications have the resources they need when they are needed while also eliminating the costs associated with idle or orphaned resources. Automation can also be used in the area of backup and disaster recovery to help businesses achieve business continuity and avoid downtime in case of failure of any of the clouds.
Integration: The Abiquo Hybrid Cloud Platform also offers integration as one of its key differentiators. The platform is designed to allow IT teams to integrate their existing tools with the cloud management platform through its APIs and connectors, for example integration with the existing ITSM tool, monitoring system, or business application to keep the tool chain constant. This integration will enable businesses to take advantage of the cloud management features provided by the platform while keeping their existing tools in place.
Hybrid clouds do have the benefit of scalability but it is not as easy as it sounds. Abiquo’s support for scaling cloud infrastructure helps address various requirements. It can help with on-boarding of new users, network size, storage space, etc. If new resources are needed at very short notice it can handle. The use of automation means that users can scale resources up or down in very little time, thus making a significant difference.
User experience is something which Abiquo has kept in mind from the start. Interface is very clean and attractive. Navigation is also very smooth. Documentation is very detailed and support is available when one requires it.