What is Cloud as a Service by ahomé?

Let’s dive straight in. ahomé Cloud as a Service is a web application which allows a business to manage its IT services or for an IT business to resell its services. ahomé consolidates in one tool all the three categories of cloud computing, iaas, paas and saas. The advantage here of this model is that it brings freedom to businesses to choose their business service and scale as needed. For instance to demonstrate the simplicity of ahomé, any business can become a cloud provider without having any owned infrastructure, and resell cloud services and third party applications.

In this article, we tell you how ahomé Cloud as a Service achieves this through its business model and the type of businesses that can benefit the most from ahomé.

ahomé Cloud as a Service model is designed to demystify the cloud.  The aim is to take away all the complexities of cloud computing and make it accessible to all. This allows businesses to focus on their core commercial operations. As such, ahomé Cloud as a Service, with its intuitive web interface, can transform all IT assets including on premises assets such as NUC, Raspberry Pi into cloud based managed assets. ahomé can also transform a traditional datacenter infrastructure into a modern cloud based infrastructure with its Software Defined Network feature among others.

The cloud as a service model is basically two fold. Firstly host ahomé inhouse and manage your IT operations with a comprehensive dashboard. ahomé is a tool which conveniently handles complex infrastructures with multiple cloud providers as well as security, back up, SDN, cloud applications to name a few.

And secondly, a most valuable tool for IT businesses which are able to resell their services or a catalogue of service without investing in any additional infrastructure. This implies that an IT business can choose its cloud hierarchy level and simply operate from there. Start small and upscale as needed. ahomé with its Multitenancy feature, allows a business to manage its client portfolio from one platform together with the billing and invoicing facility. Start your IT ecommerce cloud business smoothly. Enjoy all the benefits of cloud computing while increasing turnover.

•  Vendor Lock out/ Freedom

Unlock your business from one singular vendor with a few simple moves. Yes this is possible! With ahomé Cloud as a Service, make migration fearless. Move your data easily across public cloud providers with our automated documentation process.  And follow the progress with our web console to ensure all your data is migrated as you need. ahomé brings you freedom to manage your business independently and to decide where you would like to host your data.

•  Monetise your operations/ Cost visibility

Our aim is to make the cloud available to everybody without breaking the bank. With ahomé Cloud as a Service, be aware of the costs of your infrastructure at all times. If you are reselling your services, stay aware of your turnover as well as margin on each service line, and make more efficient business decisions.

• Flexibility

Choose your hierarchy level in cloud service where you want to operate. You can be a user of ahomé and consume services offered by the platform for IT management. Or become a reseller of cloud services and efficiently manage your clients and service catalogue from one platform.

• Highly Customisable

ahomé can easily be adapted to your infrastructure and requirements be it on Azure, AWS, Google Cloud Platform, on-premise or across multiple providers. Its Multitenancy architecture allows for a fully customised white label for its clients. ahomé can thus be installed in house or used to resell services following different corporate brand identity and guidelines.

•  Lack of Talented Architects & Engineers

It is a fact that there is a clear lack of cloud experts on the worldwide market.

A recent Forbes article rightly described the shortage as a cloud talent drought within the IT market that is plaguing enterprise organizations, causing business bottlenecks, competitive disadvantages, security issues, and compliance risks. And this shortage is amplified by the industry-wide movement to cloud-native technologies. ahomé with its automated processes dramatically compensates for this lack of expertise. Most of the cloud complexities are handled by ahomé, alleviating business bottle necks and allowing companies to focus on business development.

• Energy & Power

In certain regions of the world such as Africa, energy and power are serious challenges. Regular power cuts are becoming a normal and nobody wants to be facing these issues during work hours. ahomé has taken this into account and can run on low power consume devices such as a NUC or Raspberry Pi. For small companies the ahomé Plug & Play is an ideal product. Moreover, it can be said to use an eco-responsible technology.

• Internet Costs 

Internet costs and transit can be a burden depending on where you are in the world. With an infrastructure build on premises facilitated by ahomé, keep your traffic and data local and move away from internet limitations. Moreover, keep working as usual even with no Internet!

• Limited Budget 

Many companies have limited budget for their IT infrastructure. ahomé allows you to achieve more with less resources and offers tailor made products for every budget.

Cloud Service Brokers (CSB)

As more companies turn to cloud, the role of IT is shifting from simple provider of technology to a more enabler of technology consumption by employees. And this is where the role of the Cloud Service Broker becomes strategic.

As defined by Wikipedia, a Cloud Broker is an entity that manages the use, performance and delivery of cloud services, and negotiates relationships between cloud providers and cloud consumers. And Gartner says that a CSB offers combined technology, people and methodologies to implement and manage CSB-related projects.

For CSBs, ahomé is a real added value product as it manages all 3 types of cloud computing on one platform. This allows CSBs to manage and combine technologies as necessary, without the need for technical technological expertise as all processes are automated. Simply choose your technology, your distribution, cloud provider or on premise equipment for project implementation and management. Accelerate your client cloud adoption with the simple processes of aggregation, integration and customization, facilitated by the key features of ahomé. On the other side, CSBs can focus on the commercial aspect of the business rather than the technological headaches of finding the right Cloud Services talents for project implementation. Gain time, efficiency and money.

Managed Service Providers (MSPs)

A managed service provider (MSP) is described as a company that remotely manages a customer’s IT infrastructure and/or end-user systems, typically on a proactive basis and under a subscription model.

MSPs is becoming more and more in demand as companies outsource their IT or part of it for more cost effectiveness. However, with cloud adoption, MSPs have to diversify their business call to integrate different performance metrics, technology infrastructure components and sales compensation programs, to name a few.

This is where ahomé Cloud as a Service becomes an efficient tool for MSPs as it brings an element of differentiation on the market with a better managed solution. ahomé can help MSPs to actively maintain, monitor, support and report with a hands on approach to their clients. To name a few benefits, ahomé enables MSPs to:

• have a consistent and documented infrastructure that can be replicated easily and is idempotent.
• easily manage monthly recurrent revenue through the integrated billing system.
• efficiently manage hybrid cloud environments.
• have their own cloud and offer added value services to their clients.
• resell other cloud providers’ capabilities, with cloud-based backup and disaster recovery (DR)
• easily expand the catalogue of service on offer
• upgrade their business as they choose the type of cloud of computing they offer

Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs)

Gartner says a Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP) provides outsourced monitoring and management of security devices and systems. Common services include managed firewall, intrusion detection, virtual private network, vulnerability scanning and anti-viral services.

The demand today for MSSP services is increasing as security for small or large businesses  become crucial. This growth in demand is led by multiple factors such as government regulations, rising security breaches across enterprises, cybersecurity incidents and cloud technology adoption. Research firm MarketsandMarkets forecast the security services market will reach about $34 billion by 2021 and is projected to reach $46.4 billion by 2025, which definitely predicts a booming market coming up.

For MSSPs, ahomé can become an essential tool as it facilitates the management of the required security tools and clients portfolio from one platform. Deploy all the supervision tools like ElasticSearch, Prometheus, Grafana from one platform automatically. Follow the clients’ portfolio proactively with live updates and stay on alert about your client’s system security. Be ready to intervene within seconds. Moreover, move across tools easily to convene to your clients’ needs and requirements.

Datacenter

Traditionally, as defined by CISCO, a datacenter is a physical facility that organizations use to house their critical applications and data. The key components of a data center design include routers, switches, firewalls, storage systems, servers, and application-delivery controllers. However, in today’s era, the traditional datacenter needs to be modernized to be scalable, resilient, support growing workload demands and respond to IT complexities from the evolution of cloud.

ahomé datacenter has been designed to assist datacenters in this process, whether it is to modernize an existing datacenter or planning one from scratch. We go even one step further where the ahomé tool enables datacenters to transform into a cloud provider and resell a catalogue of services to its clients.

A datacenter can be more than a storehouse for data. With ahomé virtualisation and automation processes, accelerate and expand your datacenter business. Start small and scale up as needed. Develop your region and encourage local companies to keep their data local, accessible and safe with you.

Internet Service Provider

Traditionally an Internet Service Provider is a company that provides internet access to both retail and business customers. Aside from this, its services can extend to email services, domain registration, web hosting, colocation among others.

However ISPs have the ability to broaden this offer of services to its business customers by having a Private Hosted Cloud and reselling a catalogue of service. ahomé transforms an ISP infrastructure to enable it to resell more than the traditional Internet services. Moreover, ahomé also ensures ISPs are in compliance with strict security guidelines, proposing an enhanced value product to its corporate customers.

With a highly customized white labelled interface, ahomé further brings the opportunity to ISP to operate like a Cloud Service Provider. ISPs can upscale their commercial operations by offering a complete business pack with unique added values to their corporate clientele. This can include data storage, business services, monitoring, backups and more important all benefits of cloud computing.

In summary, we can say that the ahomé Cloud as a Service model is a powerful tool which allows for business as a service. The platform has the abilities to offer every service needed by a business as a service. We put an end to tedious routine IT tasks, and start managing IT services in an automated manner by ahomé. Irrespective of your budget or company type, the cloud should be accessible and this is our aim with Cloud as a Service.