Once again it is Technology Tuesday, and I am happy to finally get around to profile a really cool product called FeatherNet. If you haven’t heard of it, and especially if you are an infrastructure specialist, you will absolutely love this technology. You see, FeatherNet allows IT folks to do key tasks through their smartphone, including managing their cloud infrastructure.

Let’s imagine a situation where your key IT infrastructure guy is out of the office and all of a sudden something happens in your environment. Normally this would send off lots of red flags until he/she gets access to their laptop, connect to the network and reboot/configure/fix. What do you do in the meantime?

AdminBridge came up with the idea of FeatherNet to help allow IT professionals to perform the most frequent system admin tasks including Active Directory, MS Exchange, Vmware and Hyper-V through their smartphone. This means no matter where you are (the @Feather_Net Twitter feed is full of “I’m at Starbucks and just rebooted a VM” testimonials) you can access your environment and perform common tasks. Additionally, Managed IT service providers can use their logging capability and export them into common systems such as billing systems, even across multiple client networks and installations of the FeatherNet server.

And ofcourse, it wouldn’t be a great solution without security controls. FeatherNet leverages SSL encryption and all access is governed by Active Directory. This means that network administrators need to specify access for any user wishing to access the application.

So what kinds of things can you do with FeatherNet? From an MS Exchange perspective you can perform many management tasks related to mailboxes and distribution lists and manage users including passwords through Active Directory. With their VMware functionality, you can power on/off and manage VMs, Hosts, Guests and even take snapshots. This is great for the IT person who may have many responsibilities, especially in smaller organizations where they are constantly running around performing various duties.

It’s nice to see companies like AdminBridge taking advantage of cloud to offer cool products like FeatherNet, especially as it comes with a very enticing cloud price. Oh, and did I mention you can download a free 30-day trial? It’s worth playing around with, although I warn you, when you get used to managing your environment from the local coffee shop, it could be hard to break the habit.