Multi-tenant self-service, monitoring, reporting and recurring billing for S3 object storage and data-protection

Our locally installed web-based software solution enhances the delivery of S3 object storage and data-backup services for IT departments and managed service providers (MSPs).

Cloutility®

Let's face it: Providing storage- and data-protection services demands a lot more than actually storing and backing up and recovering data, in addition to having the technical expertise to keep one or more storage and data-protection technologies running smoothly.

Many tasks occur at regular intervals, e.g.:

  • Simple repetitive tasks when onboarding new customers (direct or from channel partners)
  • End-user management (roles, privileges, passwords, etc.)
  • Self-service access
  • Continuous monitoring of jobs for existing customers
  • Delivering status reports at various intervals containing data filtered for a particular use-case
  • Creating compliance reports each month
  • Recurring (monthly, quarterly, etc.) settlement/billing of customers

… all of which are time-consuming and prone to errors (especially if handled manually) while being necessary to keep your business running.

Our solution, Cloutility, has alleviated many of the challenging tasks associated with providing storage- and backup services for IT departments and MSPs for years, and chances are good that it can do the same for you.

Adds scalability

Having the ability to organize your hierarchy of business units (resellers, customers, locations, departments, server groups, etc.) combined with automation and central management of monitoring, reporting, billing, alerting etc. across the entire hierarchy, enables you to grow your customer base without also equally increasing the effort required to run your backup-as-a-service (BaaS) business.

Organizes and monetizes

A core of flexible and secure multi-tenancy lets you model your real-world organizational hierarchy of business units, and assigning subscription-based contracts provides your business model with recurring automatically created billing-data following a simple initial "set and forget" operation.

Makes users happy

Role-based self-service features lets your administrators (and optionally channel partners and even end-users) access reports online and/or via email and use various features right when they need them. This frees up valuable time for your administrators and makes end-users able to complete tasks which are important to them on their own.


Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

Well, it depends… Cloutility closes the gap between core administrative tasks (which can be handled through the technology provider's administration tools) and comprehensive business functionality related to business units/tenants (resellers, customers, departments etc.) and end-users. Cloutility provides a secure and flexible multi-tenant interface which allows you to model and reflect your real world of direct customers, resellers, departments, server groups etc. For each tenant Cloutility provides end-user-friendly reporting, monitoring and alerting, recurring billing automation, end-user self-service, a collaborative support tool, "white-labelling" of reseller tenants and much more. Depending on the underlying data-protection technology, we do provide various self-service administrative options, which in some cases can limit the need even for your backup-administrators to use the accompanying software.

The return on investment (ROI) manifests as a bouquet of benefits, including satisfied end-users that get the data they need when they need it, and the liberation of precious time for your core backup-administrators, which are given more time to concentrate on the intricate administrative tasks, which are their primary responsibilities. Additionally, Cloutility will let you establish a dependable monthly basis for automated billing, eliminate scripts prone to errors, and achieve a comprehensive enhancement of your data-protection operations in general. Cloutility sets your end-users, customers and resellers free and allows your data-protection business to scale and to grow with no extra internal ressources, while remaining structured according to the boundaries set by your backup-administrators.

Cloutility is installed locally (on-premise), and requires a Microsoft Windows Server operating system and a Microsoft SQL Server (including Express editions), along with access to the data-protection technology/technologies (which can be both local and/or Internet-based).

The initial installation and subsequent application of updates is a task - not a project: The software-installer is mostly a "next-next" experience (especially when applying updates), which also handles any database-updates, and with the aforementioned resources available, you can be up and running locally* in a few minutes (check out the videos in our support section). 

* Additional DNS configuration is required for local area network (LAN) and public access, and a (wildcard) SSL-certificate which covers both the API and the web-application being strongly recommended when going public.

In short: Nothing. Cloutility doesn't interfere with your backup processes, so in the event that there is a problem with Cloutility, your data-protection technology will continue to run on its own. Only services related to Cloutility, e.g. reporting, will cease to work if Cloutility isn't running.

Cloutility is extremely flexible when it comes to settling customer accounts:

  1. You can create your own subscriptions containing one or more products, which in turn can be based on fixed prices or variable prices based on various data-storage variables, e.g. backup data, archive data, transferred data etc. settled at various times within a billing cycle (first, last, average, sum), and which can be charged as units or packages.
  2. Each contract can be based on either subscriptions containing one or more products with different start dates and end dates, or on a commission model.
  3. You can even make contract exceptions for specific business units, which enables you to provide "special bids" which deviate from a business unit's regular contract.

We believe that our approach is quite comprehensive, but if your business case isn't currently supported, and that is what's holding you back, we'll gladly see what we can do to develop support for your scenario.

We prefer asynchronous communication, so the best way to reach us is via email to our support team at support@auwau.com, and we usually respond to inquiries on the same day (although our terms say within 48 hours on business days). If your inquiry needs further investigation, we usually do one or more remote screen-sharing sessions until we have uncovered the source of the problem, and if we determine that the problem is software-related, we will fix the issue and publish a software-update containing the fix (which can be ready approx. 30 minutes after we're done with development), which you can then apply to your local Cloutility-instance.

Absolutely! All of the features in Cloutility come from either us scratching our own itch, or from a customer having a certain need or problem which they were kind enough to share with us, and which we decided would/could fit into our feature-suite (which we often do). Usually a new feature starts with a support request, which we find out that we aren't able to satisfy, and which we then find a way of handling which can then benefit all of our customers. Every feature we develop becomes available to all of our customers, so the needs of one can benefit many.

From its beginning, Cloutility has been built with customizability and scalability in mind, so it contains a lot of customization options, which are all "set and forget" - all the way from styling the web-application and emails so they match your brand, to customizing the way jobs are interpreted, how reports are filtered, how frequently the various reports are delivered etc. So even though we cannot guarantee that we'll be able to meet all of your customization needs, we have a pretty good idea that what we already can do will cover most of them.

We currently support IBM Storage Protect, Rubrik Cloud Director Manager (CDM), Rubrik Security Cloud (RSC) and PoINT Archival Gateway (PAG, for S3 object storage). We also have legacy-support for IBM Storage Protect Plus although further integration with this platform is currently on hold. We are currently developing support for additional platforms.

Most of our contractual relationships are based on a "pay-as-you-grow" model where there is a direct link between the data-storage which is managed by your Cloutility-instance and what you pay to us: If you're successful, we're successful. Hence, you can start small and grow while remaining profitable.

Want to learn more?

We would love to give you a demonstration where you can get a feel for Cloutility, and where together we can determine whether it potentially fits your use-case. If it does, we can help you set up a "proof-of-concept" (POC) (either locally or using our SaaS-edition), so that you can make an informed decision before entering into a licensing agreement with us.

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