CHICAGO, Nov. 11, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- SingleHop today announced AI, a first-of-its-kind, free, SaaS platform for remotely monitoring, managing, and patching servers and operating systems no matter where they are hosted - any cloud and any provider. Using advanced automation and predictive intelligence technologies, AI aggregates data from disparate server environments into one, simple-to-use, unified portal and suggests next steps, enabling IT staff to take immediate action across their entire server ecosystem. This dramatically reduces time spent on routine and repetitive tasks and speeds completion of critical actions. Account registration is now open at http://try.ai.
AI overview video: https://youtu.be/ZcWpmmj6orI
With the execution of one line of code, SingleHop makes what is often a multi-month process of specifying and deploying expensive monitoring and management systems a less than 60-second process. The free solution is managing tens of thousands of servers at initial rollout and is designed to scale exponentially.
A Radically Different Approach
Forrester Research reports that only 27% of US enterprise IT tech spending in 2015 will go to new projects, while almost twice that (48%) will go to ongoing operations and maintenance (1). AI addresses this imbalance at both SMB and enterprise levels, allowing IT staff to increase efficiency without headcount and empowering them to move beyond operations to innovation.
"SingleHop's AI is a great equalizer for organizations that don't have the resources to conduct day-to-day operations and to innovate simultaneously," said Phil Shih, managing director, Structure Research. "Its ability to securely manage services unilaterally across server and cloud environments adds real business value, taking into account the exponential growth of hybrid IT and cloud strategies while addressing an area of the market that is currently underserved."
With AI, IT staff have a simple, secure, streamlined way to monitor, manage, respond, schedule, delegate, or take immediate action on alerts, triggers or routine maintenance across all their servers with less effort and before issues escalate.
The task of patching 100 servers by hand, for example, is automated and replaced by a few clicks of a mouse. The comprehensive system view provided through AI's unified portal and its path to immediate action improve systems operations and decrease time drain for IT staff.
Automation that Delivers Actionable Intelligence
AI constantly monitors and assesses the health of the servers and their applications. It uses a predictive intelligence engine to evaluate and recommend actions and next steps through an "Action Items" tab that incorporates data from across the entire server ecosystem, in contrast to monitoring systems that provide alerts but no recommended fix or ability to address an issue.
Real-time, business intelligence consolidated in a single dashboard gives IT administrators comprehensive oversight of their servers at all times. Historical performance metrics at OS and application levels allow users to both fine tune their environments by creating threshold triggers on specific metrics and to identify where configuration optimizations are necessary.
"AI is game changing," said Jordan Jacobs, VP of products SingleHop. "All of the research we've seen supports that the vast majority of IT time and budget is allocated to keeping the lights on. With one tool, we can break that cycle. Imagine the productivity gains and reduced downtime achieved by IT professionals who have actionable intelligence at their fingertips across their entire server ecosystem through a single portal. It's an incredible leap forward in efficiency and economics."
Beginning today IT professionals who register at http://try.ai will have early access to the AI beta. The beta will help SingleHop rapidly collect feedback, make fixes, extend features and improve the user experience for the powerful tool.
Any Cloud. Any Provider.
Through SingleHop's patent-pending technologies, AI works securely on any server running Windows or Linux (CentOS/Red Hat) including:
- servers within AWS, Azure, and other public clouds
- bare metal servers hosted at third-party providers in addition to SingleHop
- virtual machines inside of on-premise deployments running OpenStack, Hyper-V or VMware
- colocated servers in any facility worldwide
Sample Use Case
An IT admin is responsible for managing 90 VMs spread across two public cloud providers. He also has a number of on-premise, physical servers, as well as a private cloud hosted in a colocation facility. He learns that a new zero-day exploit threatens an application running in several of his servers at multiple locations.
Before AI, in order to determine if servers were affected, the admin would have faced the labor-intensive task of individually logging into every server and assessing its vulnerability. Once the affected servers were identified, he would then need to manually install the requisite security patch one-by-one.
With AI's automation engine, however, the tedium and repetition is eliminated. The admin instantly sees a patch notification in his Action Item list that identifies the affected servers. With one click, he can simultaneously apply the patch system-wide, schedule it for later, assign the task to a team member or to one of SingleHop's certified engineers.
About SingleHop
SingleHop, a leading global provider of hosted IT infrastructure and cloud computing, brings together a unique combination of enterprise-class technologies from industry-leading vendors, and a proprietary automation engine, to deliver a customized cloud infrastructure experience for enterprises of all sizes. The company's powerful portal and award-winning automation platform make it simple to design and support the optimal cloud environment. Their service includes full life-cycle, white-glove support, instantly-scalable solutions, and comprehensive integrated security. SingleHop serves more than 5,500 customers in more than 124 countries with data centers across the United States and Europe.
(1) Forrester Research, "Forrester's Data Can Help CIOs Defend And Improve Tech Budgets," by Andrew Bartels with Peter Burris, Amanda LeClair, January 23, 2015, Updated February 10, 2015
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