Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is an increasingly commoditised service dominated by vendors – most notably Amazon and Rackspace – that have the size and scale to compete on price. For competing cloud service providers to survive against these large players, they must offer more customised, unique and comprehensive business services to enterprises looking for flexible IT options.
In order to build and operate differentiated solution sets that are modular, flexible and cost-efficient, providers need more than just IaaS – they need an extensible platform that can enable a range of services. Differentiation can come in the form of:
· The ability to build clouds that use VMware, Xen, Hyper-V and KVM hypervisors to match customers’ requirements for platform capabilities and costs
· Migration of existing workloads, services, or entire virtual hosts and their VMs, into the cloud
· Multi-factor and granular Service Level management capabilities
· Service layering: the ability to add SaaS services, such as Identity Management, Privileged User Management, Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service and others, to complement IaaS through a single common cloud service delivery platform
NetIQ Cloud Manager offers these aspects of differentiation and more, giving service providers such as Tieto and others the ability to set up multiple levels of service to meet specific customer criteria and budget requirements. With this maximum range of choice and flexibility, providers can refine and differentiate their service offerings, while delivering greater business value to their customers.
The latest iteration of this platform, NetIQ Cloud Manager 2.2 , includes a Cloud Mobile application designed for end users to manage the cloud and new services – including add-ons and service levels – at anytime, anywhere. Additionally, it includes the new Cloud Marketplace iPad application. Created with local and regional cloud providers in mind, the application enables Sales personnel calling on customers and prospects to provide quotes on the fly, making delivery of services fast, easy and flexible.
“Cloud service providers realise that they have a two-fold challenge: they must understand the fluid needs and demands of their customers, and deploy the right combination of technology that can deliver value at the speed of business,” commented Mike Robinson, Senior Solution Marketing Manager, NetIQ. “NetIQ offers these providers the cloud platform and complementary solutions with the service creation and personalisation they require to fully differentiate their services from one-size-fits-all competitors and expand their brand footprint in a highly-competitive market.”
