CIO Bulletin

Boost Efficiency and Scale your Cloud Managed Services with an All-in-One Solution: Abiquo

Abiquo makes it easier for cloud administrators to manage different clouds instead of having to shift from one console to the next. Admins can just stick to one console and get all the information and perform all the tasks needed, ALL in one place. Abiquo is a hybrid cloud solution used to build secure, multi-tenant and hybrid cloud services by pooling infrastructure resources into virtual data centers and exposing them to users through a unified web-based portal and APIs. Tenants can use a catalogue of Virtual App Templates or upload their own Virtual Machine images, and consume and create blueprints for fast delivery of business-critical resources.

In addition to supporting all the major hypervisors, Abiquo customers can extend their reach into the public cloud by adding services from cloud providers such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and more. Add true multi-tenancy and consistency with support for private cloud tools such as VMWare vCenter, vCloud Director, VMWare NSX, and OpenStack. Abiquo does not require a “clean slate” or “rip and replace” approach, rather, existing cloud solutions and workloads can be managed by Abiquo with no interruption of service.

Consuming the service

Build a unified catalogue of application blueprints, VM templates and ISO and your customers can consume your cloud service in a controlled, simple way. Abiquo’s drag-and-drop creation of new VMs and applications reduces the need for training and gets your sales team and your customers started in minutes! Simplify your configuration management through powerful integration with Cloud-init, Chef, Terraform and Ansible.

Build your own SaaS/PaaS marketplace, appliances and service templates and set pricing levels for you and your resellers across Public and Private clouds, applications and services and other resources within your hybrid cloud.

Controls over your cloud service

Abiquo’s Business process management encompasses both workflow and policy rules controls across cloud tenants, users or specific groups within your business. Controls such as allocation limits, dedicated resources, infrastructure overbooking, configuration management and service scopes can be defined, enabling your business to define and create a tiered approach to service delivery. The Abiquo API provides full control of all Abiquo functions. This means you can perform every function, from user and security control, to provisioning new VMs, to gathering information on any system element through the API – all controlled by the same privileges, roles and scopes security model. An example would be to integrate your order management system to automatically create Enterprises, Users and a Virtual Datacenter for a new customer, or to update capacity limits when a customer increases their order size.

In addition to the REST API, Abiquo enables 3rd party integrations to be driven by events on the Abiquo hybrid cloud platform. For example, you may want to notify the Sales team that a customer is low on resources, or to update your ServiceNow CMDB when a customer deploys a new VM. This means that it’s easy to fit your Abiquo cloud into your existing processes, or to define new processes as you need. There’s also a Workflow API which can be used for email approvals and much more.

Charging for your cloud service

Abiquo provides powerful usage metering of consumption across your hybrid cloud. Usage data vCPU, vRAM, storage, networking, template/images used (for license metering), backup events and more – all tracked by the hour.

You can build multiple price models/rate cards for different customers. For AWS and Azure you can sync your pricing to the real cloud costs, then configure markups or discounts to normalize prices. Abiquo also gives you the option to provide show-forward costs to your cloud consumers.

Abiquo also downloads real bill data from AWS and Azure which can be used for display, optimization and billing purposes. A Hybrid Cloud dashboard helps users to understand their bills. Abiquo’s award winning portal provides your customers a way to access, monitor, control and consume your cloud resources, and to leverage public cloud providers such as Amazon AWS.

Your customers get an easy-to-use solution that supports multiple brands labeling, enabling your business to exploit both value-added reseller and direct sales.

Scheduled reports can be sent directly to you and your customers/users, and they can access on-demand reporting and statistics. Use these reports for service management, to identify upsell opportunities, or identify customers whose growth suggests a new project which you can support with additional services.

Meet the leader behind the success of Abiquo

Xavi Fernandez, Co-founder and CEO co-founded Abiquo in March 2006. Previously, he worked as a project manager, senior developer and Java developer for Everis Consulting Group. At Everis, he led teams that developed applications for large companies such as PepsiCo and Gas Natural.

Xavi’s work focused on developing XML, HTML, J2EE, Weblogic, Oracle and SQL-based applications for these large companies. Before his work with Everis, Xavier built a wireless network for an entire town in Spain. He holds an ITIL certification from Hewlett-Packard, as well as an IGNITE certification from the University of Cambridge, among other certifications. Xavi holds a B.A. in electrical engineering and an MBA in industrial management from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in Barcelona, Spain..