About CIQ Cloud

Operational Visibility for Modern IT

CIQ® Cloud is an Operational Visibility platform developed by Almaden, Inc., the company behind the Collective IQ® family of IT management solutions.

Designed for Managed Service Providers and internal IT teams, CIQ Cloud brings together operational information from Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, artificial intelligence, cloud platforms, identity, security, compliance and other business-critical services.

Its purpose is simple: help IT teams see more of their technology estate, understand what matters and take informed action.

We call this Operational Visibility.

From Collective IQ® to CIQ® Cloud

The CIQ name isn't new.

CIQ is the short form of Collective IQ®, Almaden's established product family spanning IT Asset Management (ITAM) and Digital Employee Experience (DEX).

CIQ® is a registered trademark of Almaden, Inc. in the UK.

Collective IQ® was built around an important principle: collecting technology data has limited value unless that data can be transformed into information that helps people understand what is happening and make better decisions. Collective IQ® applies that principle to areas such as endpoints, IT assets, applications and the digital employee experience.

CIQ Cloud extends the same philosophy into cloud operations.

Modern organisations increasingly depend upon Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, cloud infrastructure, identity platforms, security services, artificial intelligence and an expanding collection of SaaS applications. Each generates valuable operational data, but that information is usually fragmented across separate administration portals, dashboards and monitoring systems.

CIQ Cloud brings those signals together to provide a broader understanding of the technology estate.

The Idea Behind CIQ Cloud

The concept for CIQ Cloud was conceived by Peter Stevens, Chief Information Officer of Almaden, Inc.

Peter has spent more than 35 years working in enterprise systems management, monitoring and IT operations. His experience includes working with global organisations and technology companies including Vodafone and NetIQ, as well as running an international systems-management consultancy for 15 years.

Throughout that career, one problem has remained remarkably consistent: IT organisations rarely suffer from a lack of data. The difficulty is turning information spread across different products and platforms into something people can understand and act upon.

Cloud computing has made that challenge considerably greater.

An organisation might now depend upon Microsoft 365 for productivity, Entra ID for identity, multiple cloud platforms for infrastructure, specialist security and DNS services, and a growing collection of SaaS and artificial intelligence applications.

Each platform provides its own view.

Very few provide a view of the whole operational environment.

The original concept behind CIQ Cloud was therefore not simply to create another monitoring product. It was to create an operational layer capable of bringing information from these different technologies together and turning it into useful, actionable intelligence.

That concept became Operational Visibility with CIQ Cloud.

“No application is an island. Modern IT depends on an increasingly complex ecosystem of cloud platforms, identities, security services, DNS, AI and third-party applications.

Monitoring each component individually doesn't necessarily tell you what is happening across the environment as a whole. CIQ Cloud was conceived to close that gap — bringing information together so IT teams can see more, understand what matters and act with confidence.”

Peter Stevens, Chief Information Officer, Almaden, Inc.

What We Mean by Operational Visibility

Traditional monitoring remains essential. Organisations need to know whether applications are available, infrastructure is healthy and services are performing as expected.

But modern IT operations require answers to a much broader set of questions.

Are identities adequately protected? Are licences actually being used? Is security posture improving? Are important configurations changing? Are cloud costs increasing unexpectedly? Is the organisation maintaining its compliance position? Where is artificial intelligence being adopted, and is that adoption understood and governed?

Answering those questions requires information from multiple systems.

CIQ Cloud's approach to Operational Visibility is therefore based around a continuous lifecycle:

Discover → Monitor → Understand → Govern → Optimise

Discover

Identify the users, services, applications, assets and technologies that form the operational environment.

Monitor

Continuously collect the signals needed to understand how those environments are changing.

Understand

Turn data from different sources into context that helps IT teams recognise what matters and why.

Govern

Use that understanding to improve security, compliance, policy and operational control.

Optimise

Identify opportunities to reduce costs, remove waste, improve performance and operate more effectively.

Optimisation isn't the end of the process. Technology changes continuously, which means discovery begins again.

Operational Visibility is a continuous cycle rather than a one-time exercise.

Part of the Almaden Product Family

CIQ Cloud is developed by Almaden, Inc., an established software company specialising in IT management, IT Asset Management and Digital Employee Experience technology.

The relationship between CIQ Cloud and Almaden's existing Collective IQ® solutions goes beyond their names.

Both are based around the principle of turning large quantities of operational technology data into information that helps IT make better decisions.

Collective IQ® ITAM provides visibility and intelligence around IT assets and their lifecycle.

Collective IQ® DEX provides visibility into the digital experience of employees, devices and applications.

CIQ® Cloud extends that approach across cloud applications, identities, security, compliance, licensing, AI and the wider SaaS environment.

Together, they reflect Almaden's broader objective of helping organisations understand their technology environment rather than simply collecting more data about it.

The CIQ® and Collective IQ® Names

CIQ is the short form of Collective IQ.

Collective IQ® and CIQ® are registered trade marks of Almaden, Inc. in the United Kingdom. Almaden also holds or claims related trade marks in other territories.

The CIQ name represents the idea at the heart of the product family: combining technology information and operational context to produce useful collective intelligence.

CIQ Cloud applies that idea to modern cloud operations.

Details of Almaden's registered trade marks, applications and intellectual property can be found on the Almaden Trademarks & Patents page, including links to the relevant official intellectual property registers.

Built for MSPs and Enterprise IT

CIQ Cloud has been designed around two environments where fragmented operational information creates particular challenges.

For Managed Service Providers, the problem is multiplied across dozens or hundreds of customer environments. CIQ Cloud provides a multi-tenant operational layer that helps MSPs standardise monitoring and governance, identify customers requiring attention, automate repetitive reviews and provide meaningful information for customer reporting and Quarterly Business Reviews.

For enterprise and internal IT teams, CIQ Cloud provides a broader operational view across cloud services that would otherwise need to be understood through numerous vendor portals and administration tools.

In both cases, the objective is the same: reduce the effort required to understand the technology estate while improving the quality of operational decisions.

One Platform, Multiple Sources

CIQ Cloud is deliberately designed around an integration model rather than a single technology vendor.

The platform can bring together information from Microsoft 365, Microsoft Entra ID, Microsoft Secure Score, Exchange Online, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, Intune, Power BI, Google Workspace, DNS infrastructure, cloud platforms, network monitoring, IT asset systems and other operational technologies.

Artificial intelligence is becoming another important part of that ecosystem.

CIQ Cloud's OpenAI Monitoring capabilities provide visibility into known AI environments, while AI Estate Discovery helps organisations identify indicators of AI technologies appearing across managed endpoints.

As organisations adopt new technologies and replace existing ones, the underlying sources of operational data can change while the requirement for Operational Visibility remains.

This is a fundamental part of the CIQ Cloud architecture and philosophy.

Complementing the Platforms You Already Use

CIQ Cloud isn't intended to replace Microsoft, Google or the specialist platforms organisations rely upon to administer their environments.

Those products remain the authoritative systems for managing their respective technologies.

CIQ Cloud provides an operational layer across them.

By bringing relevant information together, CIQ Cloud helps organisations identify relationships, risks and opportunities that can be difficult to recognise when every technology is considered independently.

One platform. Multiple data sources. A clearer operational picture.

The Vision for CIQ Cloud

The modern technology estate will continue to become more distributed.

Organisations will adopt more SaaS applications, more cloud services and more artificial intelligence. Data will become available from an increasing number of platforms.

The challenge facing IT teams will therefore increasingly move from obtaining information to understanding information.

Our vision for CIQ Cloud is to provide the Operational Visibility layer that helps organisations meet that challenge.

A platform capable of discovering what's there, continuously monitoring what is changing, helping people understand what those changes mean, providing the information required for effective governance and identifying opportunities to optimise the environment.

Discover → Monitor → Understand → Govern → Optimise.

Collective intelligence applied to modern cloud operations. That's the idea behind CIQ Cloud.

About Almaden, Inc.

Almaden, Inc. develops IT management software that helps organisations understand and improve their technology environments.

Its Collective IQ® product family provides IT Asset Management and Digital Employee Experience capabilities, while CIQ Cloud extends Almaden's approach to Operational Visibility across modern cloud, SaaS and AI environments.

CIQ Cloud is developed by Almaden, Inc.

Collective IQ® and CIQ® are registered trade marks of Almaden, Inc. in the United Kingdom.