Features

Complete IT environments

The MyWorld cloud management tool is much more than a graphical interface to provision cloud servers. It’s both a business and technical tool and its innovative provisioning engine provisions complete IT environments consisting of servers, network, storage, traditional and SaaS delivered applications and includes configuration of external network components such as switches and firewalls. It includes complete IP address management with the ability to use private or public addresses to address the servers, one-to-one and subnet-to-subnet NAT.

Multiple Hypervisors

The provisioning engine takes an environment order in an internal XML format and can provision servers on multiple hypervisors. The designer and provisioning engine support environments with servers from a single environment being provisioned to different hypervisors. This allows for example an environment with the database server layer being provisioned onto VMware and the application or web layer being provisioned onto Xen.

Heterogeneous and Hybrid clouds

Heterogeneous clouds, consisting of legacy physical servers, such as large database clusters, and virtual servers, such as the application and/or web layer, are supported both within the designer and the MyWorld environment management console. Hybrid clouds, consisting of either local physical or virtualised infrastructure or remote virtualised infrastructure are also supported. This is extensible to the management of multiple local or remote virtualised infrastructures from a single instance of the application.

Integrated Monitoring

Integrated monitoring is provided which allows both monitoring and statistics collection at the server OS level and display within both the reseller/department portal and the MyWorld environment management console. The modular design allows additional monitoring systems to be integrated into the application.

Integrated Ticketing

Integrated ticketing allows the end user to open a support ticket from within the MyWorld environment management console to the reseller/department support. The reseller/department user can open tickets to the datacenter operator/IT department from within the reseller/department portal and these tickets are fully accessible in the bottom pane of the portal.

Resource control

The datacenter operator/IT department may allocate resources on a per login basis. If the user exceeds their resource allocation while designing an environment, they will be informed that they have done so, but will be able to continue to design and save the environment design, but will not be able to provision it until their resource limit has been raised. Resource limits can be applies on a CPU, Memory, Storage, Bandwidth, number of servers, switches, firewalls and also the cost of the environment and the total costs of all the user’s environments.

Full business lifecycle support for Cloud environments

Design, Cost, Licence, Provision, Bill, Manage and Sell cloud solutions with a three tier business model with web accessible Reseller portal, Drag & Drop designer, MyWorld environment management console and backend administration interface.

Three Tier model

The Three Tier model is pervasive across the whole application. It supports different access levels, features and pricing for the datacenter operator, partner/reseller channel and end users. This also maps into an enterprise environment as the IT department, business departments (Engineering, Finance, Sales etc) and the end user consumer of the IT services.

Reseller/Department Portal

The reseller portal allows a reseller or department to manage their customer/project details, access billing information on a per environment basis, raise support tickets and view the status of their provisioned environments.

Drag and Drop designer

A very intuitive drag and drop self service IT environment designer with a configurable library of infrastructure elements, server installed applications and SaaS delivered applications allow the user to design and cost a complete IT environment and provision it without intervention from the datacenter operator or IT department.

Environment management console

The environment management console includes an active network map which mirrors that which the user created in the designer and which enables the user to click on a server to login and power up and down a server. The management console also shows per server statistics such as CPU, RAM and disk space usage. The reseller/department user may choose to edit the environment from within the MyWorld Management console which will open the designer and populate it with the existing environment which can then be changed. Only those components which are changed within the designer will be touched by re-provisioning and some actions, such as adding Disk space, changing firewalls rules etc may be performed hot, while others such as changing the CPU or RAM on a server will require a reboot of that particular server. The end user of the environment may login to a read only view which provides them with the active network map, monitoring and statistics.

Pricing

Each element in the designer library is represented as a product and has an associated cost. The datacenter operator/IT department can enter both the cost and sell price for each component. Multiple pricing tables are supported, allowing pricing to be set on a per partner basis, along with the ability to set a date from when the new pricing will come into effect. The datacenter operator/IT department may also set a margin % on a per reseller/department basis and the reseller may set their margin on a per customer/project basis, allowing for very flexible pricing.

Multiple Currencies

Multiple currencies are supported across the application – in the designer pricing pane, quotation and billing output. An additional currency pricing table is generated from an existing pricing table by applying a conversion factor and the individual products may then have their prices edited within the new pricing table.

Quotation generation

Once a reseller or department user has designed an environment, they can then generate a quotation in PDF format and save their design. Once approval has been granted for the design and its cost, they can then log back into the designer and with a single click their environment will be provisioned.

Billing & invoicing

Billing information is available to the datacenter operator/IT department via the administration interface on both a per-reseller/department and individual environment basis. Within the reseller portal, the billing information can also be viewed on a per environment basis and also downloaded in .CSV format for input to other systems. The datacenter operator/IT department may also generate invoices for their resellers/departments in PDF format via the administration tool. The format of the invoices may be customised and branded.

White labelling

All screens within the application may be branded and again the three tier model comes into play. The datacenter operator may brand both the initial login page and backend management interface to their own branding and apply per reseller branding to the partner/reseller portal and MyWorld console views.

Role based logins

The backend administration system provides role based logins which allow the account management team to manage their own reseller details & logins or the department head to manage their own department details & logins. This self service ability reduces the burden on the datacenter operator/IT department technical staff.