Auwau
Automating the Data Protection Infrastructure End-to-End

It all started in 2006—a period when cloud computing was still in its nascent stages and IBM Spectrum Protect, today’s leading-edge data protection platform for enterprises, was still called by its inceptive name, Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM). It was during that time Thomas Bak—an entrepreneur and IT specialist—came up with a unique and pioneering idea of developing a multi-tenant self-service web interface for TSM to take the enterprise complexity out of TSM and deliver backup as a service for companies of all sizes. Bak subsequently co-founded a backup-as-a-service provider company and invented a powerful multi-tenant self-service web interface – Cloutility. Thanks to its substantial capabilities, Cloutility was marketed extensively through OEMs and reseller agreements. As a result, the backup- as-a-service provider was not only able to cater to enterprises and mid-sized companies but also to individuals, like doctors, dentists, lawyers, and architects, who previously did not have access to an enterprise-class data protection infrastructure like IBM. Cloutility subsequently drove the backup-as-a-service company to its phenomenal success in the domain, making it one of the leading providers in the Nordics region.

When Bak’s backup-as-a-service company was later acquired in 2016, Cloutility was taken out of it to be marketed as a discrete product within a new company – Auwau. Five years later, built from best practices of the domain, Cloutility is still breaking new grounds to deliver cutting-edge data protection as a service. The platform currently consists of a set of automated services, a RESTful API, and a single-page web application, enabling both MSPs and enterprises to offer or distribute Spectrum Protect infrastructure to end-customers or end-users seamlessly. Cloutility is the go-to platform today to get all the functionality and tools for implementing or distributing IBM Spectrum Protect infrastructure as a public, private, or hybrid cloud service. It is indeed like a key that can open a window of cloud utilities for enterprises and MSPs vying to leverage the powerful data protection competencies of IBM Spectrum Protect and IBM Spectrum Protect Plus.

“Cloutility has always kept evolving to remain a modern solution that can cater to modern customer requirements, standardising and automating every business process around delivering enterprise-class data protection as a service,” asserts Thomas Bak, CEO of Auwau.

Unlocking the Cloud Utilities for Data Protection with Cloutility

The backbone of Cloutility is a really potent multi-tenancy model that allows the grouping of any organisational structure, be it of an MSP’s or enterprise’s.

For instance, say an MSP has a network of resellers, and they were added to Cloutility. Now, each of these resellers can also add their end customers to this software. But that’s not all! Each of the end customers can further add their regions, and each region can add their multiple departments along with their various server groups. For each of these tenants, Cloutility provides a diverse range of features, including plug-and-play functionalities, self-service administration, daily backup reporting, billing automation, and much more.

Similarly, enterprises leverage this multi-tenancy model to deliver hybrid and private cloud services within them. Enterprises can consolidate their backup infrastructure with Cloutility. At the same time, they can also segregate the different departments and business units that shouldn’t have visibility into each other’s data, thus enhancing the confidentiality, integrity, and right availability of data within the enterprise. Besides automating all the processes around the data protection infrastructure, interestingly, enterprises can avail considerable service level flexibility with Cloutility as well. To cite an example, depending on the data being protected, Cloutility offers calibration of features like retention and recovery time for data while regulating the subscription cost of the service. “Our billing system also allows the CFO of the organisation to comprehensively monitor the spending on data protection for each of the departments,” comments Bak.

A Solution that Easily Blends with Your Needs

Cloutility’s integration is as flexible as its expansive capabilities. The software can be plugged seamlessly into an existing IBM Spectrum Protect infrastructure that enterprises or MSPs have. Even if a company has a very large environment with thousands of servers and petabytes of data, Cloutility is built from the ground up as software that can easily get the way the company is managing Spectrum Protect. All they have to do is download, install, and connect Cloutility to the Spectrum Protect servers. As simple as that! “When a company looks at a new software solution, they always worry about how much they would have to change in the existing environment. With Cloutility, they don’t have to change anything at all,” notes Bak.

At the core of such potencies is a core team that has been working with Cloutility since its conception, which includes its lead developer, Lars Schmidt Weinreich, and the head of software development, Adam Barry. Thanks to this vastly experienced and talented pool of experts, Auwau is garnering widespread acclaim across the domain for its agility. Its time to market—from customer request to delivery of the feature—is often as quick as less than 24 hours. “We always ensure to build new features with a ‘WAU’ effect in mind,” adds Bak. And their solid client base indeed vouches for this ‘WAU’ effect.

An added feather on the cap, Auwau has already earned a co-sell-ready status with IBM. The company has also won a growing list of major accolades over the years, including the IBM Beacon Award – ‘Best Solution to Optimise the Worlds Infrastructure,’ IBM Integrated Service Management library award, and IBM Tivoli Award – ‘Best Cloud Solution.’

Riding on the coattails of such successes, today, Auwau is taking another remarkable leap in the domain. Auwau has announced its first support for a solution that is not IBM. Briefing on the same, Bak remarks, “As enterprises are increasingly adopting a multi-vendor strategy, a lot of our clients are asking us to support their data protection infrastructures from other vendors as well. While supporting that, I believe we are helping out our IBM clients to leverage all the benefits of a multi-vendor strategy and still have that single pane of glass, which they can tap into for all their data centre functionalities,” Bak concludes.