API Functionality Added to Cartika IaaS Cloud Server Platform

When it comes to managing IT, one of the most important goals historically has been staying “in control.” In years gone by, any changes to a user’s internal or hosted IT environment was a “closed’ proposition with most IT managers or Managed Service Providers (MSPs) fighting hard to keep constraints on every aspect of the systems they supported. There were some valid reasons for this at the beginning, but over time users demanded more flexibility while those running IT, became overwhelmed with increasing change requests. Back around 2000, things started to change as we saw the emergence of, and eventual wide-scale adoption of modern web Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) providing end-users with integration to, and from, burgeoning web giants such as Salesforce.com and eBay. For those not familiar with the term, APIs are a set of routines and protocols used as building blocks for software development and communication between programs. The purpose of APIs in the context of managing cloud infrastructure is to allow users to see, change and automate certain aspects of their systems without the need for complex back-end coding. Cartika has always strongly believed in opening up as much “self-managed” functionality as possible for its clients and partners. From days long before the term “Cloud” was coined, we developed portals that allowed users to monitor and manage their resources as needed. Recently, we have developed a new and exciting extension to our Infrastructure-as-a-Service Cloud Server Platform called “Client Area APIs.” Our Client Area APIs offer customers complete programmatic control over a wide variety of functions within their Cartika IaaS cloud environments. From the account perspective, they can easily control account details such as contacts, invoices, billing, and the selection of various services. On the technical side, Client Areas APIs let clients use our code to operate their compute resource pools across a broad range of components including VMs, disk space, operating systems, IPs, DNS, PDU ports and other parts of the infrastructure. The most significant benefit of this new capability is that all the control can take place within a client’s own set of management tools – this saves them valuable time and helps streamline their processes. Here are just a few use-case examples of the flexibility Client Area APIs can provide: