Mastering Multi-Cloud Management: Top Platforms, Tools, and Solutions

Taylor Karl
/ Categories: Resources, Cloud
Mastering Multi-Cloud Management: Top Platforms, Tools, and Solutions 2106 0

Multi-Cloud Management: Tools, Platforms, and Trends

In increasingly complex information technology (IT) environments - over 80 percent of enterprises have deployed a multi-cloud strategy - businesses need to monitor and secure applications and workloads across multiple public clouds. Effective multi-cloud management solutions give IT teams the tools to manage multiple clouds from a single interface. They can then choose the best services from different cloud providers, making adapting to changing business needs, market conditions, and technological advancements easier. 

As more businesses embrace multi-cloud strategies, the demand for professionals capable of handling complex environments, optimizing resources, and driving strategic initiatives is on the rise. Understanding how to manage and integrate multiple cloud environments is a valuable skill that significantly enhances a professional's marketability and career prospects. So, whether you’re a professional considering new career avenues, or a corporation interested in upskilling your workforce, you should educate yourself on the value of multi-cloud. 

This blog post will explain the fundamentals of multi-cloud management, compare and contrast popular multi-cloud platforms, and detail the critical functions you should look for when selecting one.

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Understanding Multi-Cloud Management

Multi-cloud management refers to the set of tools and procedures that enable businesses to monitor and secure applications and workloads across multiple public clouds. An effective multi-cloud management solution allows IT teams to manage various cloud environments from a single interface, supporting multiple cloud platforms such as AWS and Azure and tools like Kubernetes. A multi-cloud approach is increasingly popular because utilizing multiple vendors allows you to cherry pick the capabilities that best suit your specific business needs and minimize vendor lock-in. 

Why multi-cloud management matters

Multi-cloud strategies in modern computing cannot be overstated. Diversifying your cloud portfolio provides more opportunities for optimizing costs and performance based on the strengths of each cloud service. In short, you get to match specific features and capabilities to optimize your workloads in the cloud based on factors like speed, performance, reliability, geographical location, and security and compliance requirements. Here are some of the ways a multi-cloud approach will benefit your organization:

  • Security and compliance: Deploy and scale workloads while implementing security policies and compliance technologies consistently across all of your workloads, regardless of service, vendor, or environment. 
  • Risk mitigation: A single point of failure won’t crash your entire system. Instead, when one platform has a problem, you can just move applications and services to your other cloud option.
  • Scalability: Distribute workloads across clouds by leveraging the elastic capacity of different providers based on demand.
  • Flexibility: Select the applications from each cloud platform that best suits your specific business needs.
  • Innovation: The most popular cloud providers are always developing new products and services for their cloud platforms.

Multi-cloud challenges

When you’re using multiple cloud platforms, you can’t simply turn them on and walk away. The opportunities are great, yes, but there are several challenges just about every company has to deal with when adopting a multi-cloud strategy. 

Personnel shortages

Managing different platforms can be hard, especially if your team doesn’t have the relevant skills or knowledge. Nearly half of companies see skill shortages as the biggest hindrance to their multi-cloud operations. The same study shows a third believe insufficient training is preventing them from fully realizing the potential of their multi-cloud strategy.

Cost management

When done right, a multi-cloud strategy can offer cost savings. When it’s not, it can lead to unexpected expenses, blow up budgets, and impact other areas of IT operations. With different pricing models and billing structures across each cloud platform, it can be tough to maintain a clear view of costs. Eliminating underutilized or redundant resources requires constant monitoring.

Security

Multicloud is a dynamic environment and can’t be protected by just extending your data center or on-premise-security framework into the cloud. You can’t take the same security approach to every cloud platform, they all require different protections. And while each vendor issues best practices and guidelines for doing so, multi-cloud environments are complex and require granular expertise in cloud networking, security, and all the product offerings from each cloud provider. 

Overcoming these hurdles is why multi-cloud management tools are so valuable. They allow you to implement consistent security measures across all clouds and adopt standards and best practices for interoperability.


 Exploring Multi-Cloud Management Platforms

Platform Description
CloudHealth by VMware A leading cloud management platform that optimizes cloud costs, ensures governance, and improves security for AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and other providers.
RightScale (Flexera) Provides cloud management for cost management, governance, and orchestration across various cloud services like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.
ServiceNow Cloud Management Offers tools for provisioning, cost management, and governance in multi-cloud environments, integrated with ServiceNow's IT service management suite.
Turbonomic (IBM) Application resource management platform that optimizes performance and reduces costs in multi-cloud environments with real-time analytics and automation.
BMC Multi-Cloud Management Suite of tools for cost management, service management, and automation across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and other providers.
Cisco CloudCenter Suite Comprehensive cloud management platform for managing applications across multiple clouds, with tools for cost optimization, governance, and automation.
DivvyCloud (Rapid7) Cloud and container security and compliance platform supporting automated governance and policy enforcement in multi-cloud environments.
CloudBolt Hybrid cloud management platform offering cost management, self-service provisioning, and governance across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and other providers.
Morpheus Data Unified multi-cloud and hybrid IT management platform for provisioning, automation, and governance across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, VMware, and other services.
Scalr Enterprise-grade Cloud Management Platform focused on governance, cost optimization, and compliance, supporting AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and other services.

 

Choosing the Best Multi-Cloud Management Solution

Customer supportConsidering the ongoing skills shortage in cloud computing and the inherent complexity of managing multiple cloud environments, the best CMPs offer self-service account management, easy-to-sign agreements, and simple onboarding for new users. You should also be able to set up a cloud account with the native provider straight through the CMP.

IntegrationA CMP must be able to integrate with internal and external systems automatically. It should also support APIs from public and private cloud platforms and be able to integrate with third-party systems. Avoid a system that requires manual integration.

Governance and securityIt should go without saying that any CMP has business continuity, disaster recovery, data flow, encryption, third-party compliance (e.g., SOC2), and access privileges baked into it, but that’s not always the case. Security should always be one of the top concerns when looking for a cloud-based platform, so you can protect your data, your customer’s data, and, by extension, your company’s reputation. 

Financial managementWe already discussed this briefly, but it’s important enough that we’ll say it again: If you’re not careful, it’s easy for your spending to get out of control when you’re managing multiple clouds all at once. Any cloud management platform you get should offer metering resource and service usage, allocating costs to specific groups, offering chargeback reports to internal stakeholders, providing invoicing services and forecasting costs.

 

Future Trends in Multi-Cloud Management

There are a number of emerging trends already impacting cloud computing. But with a shortage of skilled workers already impacting the market, companies need to catch up if they want to capitalize on these innovations. Here are a few things we can expect to see in multi-cloud environments down the line: 

AI and Machine Learning Integration is revolutionizing multi-cloud management by providing advanced analytics, automation, and predictive capabilities. These technologies help optimize resource allocation, enhance security, and improve overall efficiency. Machine learning algorithms predict resource usage, optimize performance, and prevent downtime, while AI-driven tools automatically adjust resource allocations for better cost efficiency and performance. Additionally, AI models enhance security by detecting anomalies and potential threats in real time.

Serverless Computing is gaining traction as it allows businesses to run applications without managing the underlying infrastructure. This simplifies multi-cloud management by abstracting away server management, enabling more scalable and cost-effective solutions. Serverless computing supports event-driven architectures, which are highly adaptable to changing workloads and can seamlessly span multiple cloud environments.

Edge Computing Integration brings computation and data storage closer to where it is needed, reducing latency and bandwidth use. Integrating edge computing with multi-cloud environments enhances performance, especially for applications requiring real-time processing. This trend is seen in hybrid cloud-edge solutions that optimize data processing and storage across distributed networks and in managing IoT devices and edge nodes through multi-cloud platforms to ensure seamless data flow.

Enhanced Security Posture Management addresses the growing need for advanced security across multi-cloud environments. New tools and technologies offer unified security management, providing a single interface for monitoring and managing security. Zero trust architectures, where no entity is trusted by default, enhance security across multi-cloud deployments. Automated compliance tools ensure continuous adherence to regulatory requirements by automating compliance checks and reporting.

Multi-Cloud Service Mesh simplifies communication and enhances security across different cloud environments in microservices architectures. Service meshes facilitate secure and efficient communication between services running on different cloud platforms and enhance monitoring and observability, providing insights into application performance and network issues.

Unified Management Platforms streamline operations by providing a single interface to manage multiple cloud environments. These platforms enhance visibility, control, and automation across diverse cloud services. Integrated dashboards offer real-time insights, while advanced automation and orchestration capabilities manage workflows and resource provisioning across multiple clouds. Additionally, multi-cloud DevOps tools support continuous integration and delivery practices across environments.

Blockchain for Multi-Cloud Security and Compliance offers enhanced security, transparency, and traceability, improving data integrity and compliance. Blockchain creates immutable logs of all transactions and activities across cloud environments, enhancing auditability and compliance. Decentralized security frameworks using blockchain reduce the risk of central points of failure.

Conclusion

Multi-cloud management platforms have made it possible for IT teams to manage multiple clouds from a single interface. This may not seem like a big deal to the uninitiated, but allowing them to choose the best services from different providers makes businesses more agile and profitable. It’s no surprise, then, that there is a growing demand for professionals skilled in multi-cloud management.

 

From the robust integration capabilities of platforms like AWS, Azure, and GCP to the specialized enterprise solutions offered by Oracle and IBM, understanding the strengths and features of each platform helps in making informed decisions - and companies need people do just that. With more and more companies embracing a multi-cloud approach, there’s going to be a massive need for companies to close the skills gap. At New Horizons, we partner with the leading cloud vendors to design training solutions for modern IT needs - get in touch to start future-proofing your business.

 


 

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