Cloudyn helps companies keep track of Microsoft Azure deployments

One of the biggest challenges with large-scale public, private or hybrid cloud rollouts is monitoring usage and performance, to avoid bill shock or angry users. Offering to help companies manage such cloud deployments, Cloudyn launched its platform about three years ago, and on Tuesday it added Azure.

Up to now, Cloudyn has been able to monitor Amazon Web Services' EC2, Google's Cloud Platform and a number of OpenStack distributions, including those from Mirantis and Red Hat, according to CEO and co-founder Sharon Wagner.

The platform's main features are performance, usage and cost monitoring. It keeps track of all the resources that add to the monthly bill, including finding server and storage capacity that isn't being used. It can help pick the instances or virtual servers that best fit a company's workload.

Cloudyn can also help companies migrate from one cloud to another, using features such as workload simulation, which takes into account cost, performance and the user's location. Enterprises can choose what's more important to them of the three, to get an optimal result, Wagner said.

The clouds that Cloudyn supports all have their own tools for management and monitoring. Cloudyn, though, offers a single platform that can compare different services to help users figure out the best option. About 40 percent of Cloudyn's larger customers use more than one vendor, according to Wagner.

Most of the company's customers are enterprises; about 80 percent are based in the U.S., which has a relatively mature cloud market, while the rest are in Europe and the Asia Pacific region.

The Azure offering is immediately available. There are three price plans -- Lite, Premium and Enterprise/MSP. They are billed monthly and can be canceled or downgraded at anytime.

The Lite version is free and offers a high level overview of a company's cloud deployment. The premium version costs from US$229 per month and adds more granular insight into costs and usage. Cloudyn doesn't list what the Enterprise/MSP costs, but it adds functionality such as role-based views for accurate charge backs, according to the company's website.

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