Automation drives next wave of multi-cloud management tools
Enterprises adopt multi-cloud strategies so they can select the services that best fit their needs. However, the number of cloud services can easily multiply and add management complexity. The right tool can help — but enterprises need to choose carefully.
As the market for multi-cloud management tools continues to evolve, it can be difficult to find the right fit. Market consolidation is just one of the many factors enterprises need to consider. Many leading third-party vendors have been acquired — Microsoft, for example, bought Cloudyn, and CloudHealth Technologies is now a part of VMware. Consolidation will continue in the future, which will likely slow the research and development momentum needed to improve these third-party tools. Organizations need to consider if ownership change at their preferred vendor will affect the product, and, ultimately, their multi-cloud management strategy.
In addition, special-purpose multi-cloud management tools, such as those built for security, cost and performance, won’t always be the end game for a lot of enterprises. Orchestration frameworks such as Kubernetes, and the applications platforms built on top of them, can sometimes offer more management consistency for multi-cloud deployments. Products such as OpenShift abstract the underlying infrastructure and treat management as a foundational architectural component, rather than a tool that’s bolted on after the fact.
Multi-cloud management tools have changed a lot in the last several years. These tools were once used as brokerage services or abstraction layers that boiled public clouds down to the lowest common denominator. But, as organizations move to higher-level cloud services and agile development practices, these tools are now more about enabling automation and governance. The next generation of multi-cloud management tools and approaches focus on three features: Ops-focused tools deal with cloud services in terms of individual components that they need to track. They do so by automating the use of the services by “what” and “who” to assist with security. For example, they might track which developers are using which specific services, for what purpose and when.
