Having one cloud is good – but two or more is the sweet spot. Enterprises are in a race to address the growing demand to move away from legacy IT environments. They want more agile, cloud-native, hybrid-friendly, consumption-based, modern IT environments. We have officially entered a multi-cloud world.
The explosion of the multi-cloud has brought forth the need for management tools to address the complexity of these environments. Managing workloads that span cloud services and architectures is no walk in the park. And multi-cloud management tools have risen to the occasion to plug this glaring gap. According to Gartner, there will be more than 30 tools for managing the multi-cloud by 2021.
Multi-cloud management does not fit a generally accepted definition. For this reason, vendors started with products that had a muddle of feature sets. But with time, most products have converged around similar features.
Here are some of the top cloud management platforms on the market today. They’re setting the pace with their cloud management platforms (CMPs) in the new decade.
1. CloudBolt
The CloudBolt CMP works with cloud environments and hypervisors. The platform automates the import and redeployment of legacy IT environments to the cloud. It also comes with modules for cloud cost and resource management. CloudBolt relies on agentless technology that simplifies the deployment of resource blueprints to various cloud environments.
2. Embotics
This CMP works with both private and public clouds. It comes with automation templates, cloud expense budgeting and reporting, self-service deployment, policy compliance auditing, and task approval workflows.
Embotics doesn’t come with integrated monitoring features. Some users find the UI somewhat confusing. Also, the company has been migrating the platform to a new REST API that doesn’t support some features.
3. Flexera (RightScale)
Formerly known as RightScale, this is one of the CMPs that has been around for a while. It has a rich set of features that include policy enforcement, service orchestration, usage controls, and budgeting and cost optimization. A lot of public cloud service providers support it.
Initially, RightScale was a SaaS product that targeted cloud-focused enterprises. It didn’t have an on-premise option for large organizations. Also, the platform is a bit complicated, and enterprises may require a professional to implement some of the features. One such feature is the multi-cloud gateway appliance.
4. CloudSimple
Google acquired CloudSimple in 2019. The products give enterprises a secure, dedicated environment for users to run and migrate VMWare workloads in public cloud environments. This includes demanding workloads, such as database-backed and high I/O apps. CloudSimple is capable of running the entire VMWare stack. This includes NSX-T, vSAN, and vCenter/vSphere. The CMP comes with a unified management console for all cloud deployments.
CloudSimple only supports Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure.
5. Hypergrid
This CMP relies on predictive analytics to optimize resource decisions and cloud costs. It has more than 400 million data points to work with. The product covers cost management and budgeting optimization, as well as policy compliance monitoring for both container and VM environments. It also comes with self-service provisioning with defined policies.
Some Hypergrid features are only available on Amazon Web Services (AWS). These include resource inventory and application cost modeling.
6. Morpheus Data
This is one of the top cloud management platforms. It comes with a comprehensive list of features. It offers modules for resource configuration, automated and self-service provisioning, policy compliance, reporting, and workload scaling. Morpheus Data covers more than a dozen cloud platforms. It also has a rich third-party ecosystem for integrations with backup, automation, ITSM, identity and access management, networking, monitoring, and security providers.
Morpheus is an on-premises only CMP. It doesn’t come with a SaaS option. The company’s cost management and optimization features aren’t as robust as the competition.
7. Nutanix Xi Beam
This product is the result of the company’s acquisition of Minjar. The CMP helps to monitor the consumption of cloud resources. It comes with modules for cost controls, consumption, spending policies, and optimization.
Unlike most CMPs, Beam doesn’t come with cloud service or infrastructure management features. While it does help optimize configurations and costs, it’s not a full workload management system.
8. Scalr
Scalr comes with a rich collection of cost management and optimization features. It’s an excellent choice if you want to control resource sprawl in any VM environment. It has an excellent user interface and is popular for its scalability to thousands of users.
The CMP’s support for VMWare environments is still immature. There are some feature gaps when compared with more mature products. You will need third-party integrations to overcome these limitations.
9. VMWare
VMware introduced x86 virtualization to the world. It has since expanded its stack, which now includes cloud deployments. The vRealize suite of tools comes with a control panel and central management console for VMware deployments. It has modules that cover resource catalogs, resource management, policies and self-service deployment, and CI/ID for DevOps organizations. The company acquired CloudHealth to help with cost optimization and management.