Summary: SingleHop introduced a new software-as-a-service tool called AI that enables administrators to manage, monitor and patch servers wherever they reside: in SingleHop data centres, on-premise, with servers hosted by other providers, in colocation environments and on public clouds like AWS and Azure.
Details: AI is free software-as-a-service and requires only the installation of some code on the infrastructure to be up and running. Once running, AI constantly monitors and analyzes server performance. It then takes the data these processes produce and aggregates them into a unified portal view. With this information, administrators can monitor performance, install updates and security patches, along with other routine tasks. There are also predictive features that produce alerts to suggest preventive measures.
Benefits and value: The goal of AI is to reduce the amount of time, energy and limited resources spent on relatively routine administration and maintenance tasks – something that can get particularly cumbersome when working with different servers, operating systems, environments and service providers. It has the added benefit of being preventive – providing data that can help administrators optimize performance and bolster security. The unique spin here is that the tool is completely agnostic. This is not just for SingleHop servers. It can be used anywhere. SingleHop recognizes that for most organizations, IT is dispersed across different environments and lives with more than one provider if not many. The value of AI is taking disparate management responsibilities and tasks, consolidating it and making it more organized and efficient.
Hybrid: Within the SingleHop world, there is an immediate use case. It recently acquired Datagram, which has a meaningful colocation customer base. They can take advantage of the tool for existing colocation infrastructure and AI gives it a reason to also buy SingleHop servers and manage them in a unified environment (or servers that are on-premise or elsewhere).
Angle: Some might look at this new offering and wonder why SingleHop is supporting other services. But to reiterate, SingleHop has recognized that infrastructure is fragmented and dispersed and there are few tools for organizing all that. Instead, IT is burdened and inefficient and SingleHop wants to address that pain point. In doing so, it is creating value and in the long-term there will be room to monetize that. It might be a freemium service over time or it may be enough that it serves as an incentive for end users to revolve their world around SingleHop’s tools, portal and platform. The first phase will be to get mindshare and usage. This should track well given the lack of similar tools out there.
