Monitor Amazon Cloud Services On Your iPhone

Newvem, an Israeli startup that brings analytics to cloud management, has released an application for the iPad and iPhone that lets IT managers manage their cloud workloads, even when they're away from the office.

Cloud Smart Meter is Newvem's first application for Apple's iOS devices. Released Nov. 6, it offers managers on the go a read on what resources their company is consuming from Amazon Web Services. iPad and iPhone users can get a view of unexpected trends with their cloud workloads, assess operational risks such as an overworked virtual server and make management decisions through the application.

The application offers a set of key performance indicators, as well as analytics tools that are familiar with Amazon's pricing model and can recommend different configurations within Amazon's pricing scheme. The iPad and iPhone app allows IT managers to "clearly see how much of their AWS is currently in use and subsequently use only what they need," said Zev Laderman, co-founder and CEO, in an interview. One of the application's screens includes a graph showing EC2 "footprint utilization." If lots of spare capacity is evident, for example, it might be possible to trim the number of servers running. The application might also suggest switching out some more expensive on-demand servers for Amazon less expensive reserved instances.

[ Want to learn more about how Newvem brings smarts to managing your cloud workloads? See Amazon Cloud Costs: Startup Finds Hidden Savings. ]

The application also projects whether daily or monthly costs are stable or trending up.

Newvem has previously offered The Managerial View, a free online service showing a company's aggregate cloud use and rate of utilization of servers. In September, Newvem added S3 Analytics to Managerial View, and high-level information from it is now part of the iOS application. Earlier this year, Newvem launched its Reserved Instances Decision Tool to better match predictable workloads to a lower-priced cloud instance. High-level information from the tool is available through the iOS app.

Cloud Smart Meter is available through the Apple App store, and more information is available at Newvem.com. Laderman said the analytics part of the app tries to compare business benefits against costs to help users get most effective use of the cloud rather than simply saving money. Part of that involves risk analysis, which matches up cost, security, availability and utilization attributes. Services covered include elastic load balancing, Amazon database services and elastic block storage.

More than half of federal agencies are saving money with cloud computing, but security, compatibility, and skills present huge problems, according to our survey. Also in the Cloud Business Case issue of InformationWeek Government: President Obama's record on IT strategy is long on vision but short on results. (Free registration required.)