1 week Ago By Chris Mellor
provisions multi-tenant backup services for MSPs and departmental enterprise with automated billing and stats. It is a tiny Danish firm, just three people, with a mature Cloutility software stack and highly valued and easy-to-use functionality by its 50 or so customers, which is why we’re writing about it. Auwau’s web-based software enables MSPs and companies to deliver Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) and S3-to-tape storage as a service; Cloutility supporting IBM’s Storage Protect; and Storage Defender, Cohesity Data Protect, Rubrik and (S3 to tape endpoint-based) Archival Gateway.
IBM is an Auwau reseller. CEO Thomas Bak founded Auwau in Valby, Denmark in 2016, basing it around a spin-out of acquired backup-as-a-service software while he was a Sales Director and Partner at Frontsafe. Cloutility runs on a Windows machine and has a 30 min install.
It doesn’t support Linux, with Bak saying he “never meets a SP who doesn’t have Windows somewhere.” Although BaaS provisioning is a core service the nested multi-tenancy automated billing is equally important, and the two functions are controlled through a single software pane of glass. Users canactivate new backups and schedule backups from Cloutility via self service.
Bak told an IT Press Tour audience: “Multi-tenancy is a big draw [with] tenants in unlimited tree structures. ..
. We automate subscription-based billing.” Cloutility provides price by capacity by tenant and customers can get automated billing for their tenants plus custom reporting and alerting.
He said: “We sell to enterprises who are internal service providers and want data in their data centers.” On-premises and not in the cloud in other words. Universities could invoice per department and/or by projects for example.
Role-based access control, single sign-on and two-factor authentication are all supported. Auwau offers OEM/white label branding capability so every reselling tenant of an MSP could be branded. Their recurring bills and reports will reflect this branding.
An MSP can set up partners and resellers in their multi-tenant tree structure who can add and operate their own subset of customers as if the system was their own. The Nordic cloud uses Cloutility as does . Development efforts are somewhat limited; there are only two engineers.
Bak says Auwau will add new backup service provisioning connectors and billing when customers request them. He doesn’t have a build-it-and-they-will-come approach to product development. It’s more of a case of being able to depend upon a future cash flow from customers requesting a new BaaS offering which would spur any development.
He has Veeam support as a roadmap item but with no definite timescale. There are no plans to generate IBM COS to general S3 target capability nor support for Cohesity NetBackup. In the USA and some other geographies would be a competitor, but Bak says he never meets N-able in the field.
Bak is very agile. He finished his presentation session by doing a handstand and walking around on his hands. That will make for unforgettable sales calls.
IBM Storage Defender is a combination of IBM Storage Protect (Spectrum Protect as was), FlashSystem, Storage Fusion and Cohesity’s product. This will run with IBM Storage’s DS8000 arrays, tape and networking products. There is no restore support for IBM StorageProtect as it is not API-driven.
Rubrik and Cohesity are OK for restore..
