Axxius Whitepaper. MaaS The future of cloud automation

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1 Axxius Whitepaper MaaS The future of cloud automation

2 MaaS: The future of cloud automation 2 To the cloud Nowadays everyone spends a lot of time and effort in standardizing, scripting and automating their IT to better support business applications and functions. It makes things easier when creating new environments and to integrate (and intertwine) with existing applications, services and IT-components. By scoping modular and defining standardized building blocks, good progress is made. However, it still requires a lot of effort, knowledge and resources to establish this kind of level of transparency for your business applications. Even more if you want to host them in the cloud. The cloud gives us a great deal ease of use. With just a few clicks you get a host with the selected specifications. You might think: "How hard can it be, right?". Well, it never is just about a server, an OS or an IT-component. But rather the business application or function which in turn is part of an application chain. Perhaps the application makes use of 3rd party webservices, other cloud assets or maybe even on-premise assets. Imagine a setup where you want to host the application in the cloud, but demands the database to stay on-premise. This will always require configuration customization to some extent. How would one manage and maintain these kinds of installations and configuration? How would you manage and maintain these activities across two or even more cloud providers? What customers are saying about current cloud promises Even though we have cheaper IT assets with the cloud, it is still too complex to maintain and integrate with our existing assets. With endless choices in vendors, technology, product and functionality comes predefined assets that aren t compatible with on-premise or cloud deployments. Dynamically scalable cloud environments require additional components and effort. With high level and transparent security, we still end up with the responsibility of encryption and authentication. Axxius has a single solution for both Cloud and on-premise: MaaS.

3 MaaS: The future of cloud automation 3 Our vision As an innovation partner with our customers, we have taken it upon ourselves to create and build a future where we can utilize the cloud to its full potential and bring the power of the cloud to the next level. We went back to the drawing board to reengineer the multi-cloud theoretical architecture model to a fully workable environment. Always looking to a flexible component based architecture to make sure our solution is future proof. We have taken components frequently used by our customers and built a Pay-as-you-Go / Payas-you-Use model. Then we added automated maintenance, giving our customers the opportunity of having a worry-free maintained IT-environment where downtime is something of the past. Figure 1 Evolution of automation Our cloud forecast MaaS makes the use of your application layer more flexible than it ever has been. Data can be kept on-premise and a connectivity with the Cloud can be arranged. We offer a simultaneous multi-cloud infrastructure and services that can be used with a Pay-as-you-Go model in place, so that you can pay only for what you use. MaaS includes automated provisioning and configuration which means that we can automatically scale with the real-time demand of your business. With MaaS, your business will take the next step in the evolution of automation.

4 MaaS: The future of cloud automation 4 Multi-cloud The concept of multi-cloud was born from a security perspective; mitigating risks by separating your data and workload within more than one cloud environment. For example: a cyber-attack on your business application on one cloud environment, without the loss of business or data. The connectivity between corporate cloud providers is secured using site-to-site VPN and the OS, including application stack, is provisioned using MaaS. With MaaS, one can have a multi-cloud setup with an active/active spanning over multicloud providers. This will enable cross-cloud deployments. A full blown dedicated disaster recovery site is no longer needed, but is ready when it s required. This way, seamless workloads can also be moved between cloud environments. Other than risk management of corporate data in cloud, this also enables high availability of configurations where transactions or web requests get distributed across components hosted on different cloud providers: transparent to the business applications. The IT environment is event driven, business rule driven, feature driven, and even cost driven. Automated maintenance With MaaS, the maintenance of application layers and the underlying components are fully automated. The monitoring and reporting components in conjunction with the CMDB keep track of the current install base, configuration and it's characteristics that are required for the business application. The whole lifecycle of the application is tracked and changes to the underlying components are performed appropriately. It does not matter if a change is initiated by the business (a new business application release) or a bug fix for one of the components. Because you are in control, due to the way how everything is tracked, the outcome of the change is already known. Figure 2 Automation in conjunction with the cloud

5 MaaS: The future of cloud automation 5 Beyond the cloud As a next step, Axxius committed herself to also tackle the greatest challenge of all: What about unforeseen events that have to be acted upon? Though still in development, we would love to give a glimpse of the future where Artificial Intelligence (AI) is intertwined in day to day ITprocesses and able to keep your business up and running 24/7. This enables more focus on your core business activities to ensure that business keeps growing and excelling. With the use of AI, analyses and information is provided timely and efficiently in order to make to right decision and take actions accordingly. What your business has to gain from AI and cognitive services: AI informs about bottlenecks and advises on how to gain efficiency AI notices how components and applications are used and advises on how to further utilize the current assets AI understands the business requirements and advises with which assets these can be met Looking to the future, it s important to always anticipate and prepare for change that goes along with new developments. With AI providing the right information in a timely and efficient manner, you gain insights in a new and profound way. This way you are able to shape the future of your business according to the goals that are set in place.

6 MaaS: The future of cloud automation 6 Figure 3 Key benefits About Axxius Axxius is an advanced technology knowledge company with over 20 years experience in Middleware. Based in The Netherlands, our customers range from large financial institutions to government to Fortune 500 companies. We build innovative solutions for every day IT challenges. Produced in the Netherlands January 2017 Copyright 2017 Axxius All rights reserved. Axxius, it s logo and MaaS are trademarks of Axxius.