What is Multicloud Management?

Multicloud management refers to the practices, technology, and techniques used in combining disparate cloud services into a single logical system. Multicloud, in this most general sense, is the combination of two or more cloud services, implying that each organization will have their own multicloud management strategy based on the services the business requires for their unique set of needs. Multicloud leaves the door wide open for many options, including any combination of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) models. This can lead to cloud configurations that include on-premise private clouds, hybrid clouds, and public clouds, while serving multiple locations and edge sites.

Because of the ensuing complexity possible in multicloud configurations, management and governance centralization is the main tenet of multicloud management, ideally implemented through multicloud management platforms (also cloud management platforms) that aim to create a single-pane-of-glass view of all cloud resources. To this end these platforms provide consistency in deploying applications to multiple environments, maintaining security and compliance policies across platforms, and drawing insights and visualizations based on monitoring of event and log data.

Multicloud management platforms feature capabilities found in cost management apps, automation software, and infrastructure monitoring software. They are capable of:

• Cloud Monitoring and Analytics — Cloud platforms monitor all cloud resources, and optimize off baseline. They can provide helpful analytics like usage, cost, and performance across multiple vendors and locations helping administrators understand the cost benefit of their networks.
• Self-Service Cloud Computing — Self-service cloud computing allows teams to directly access cloud resources. By eliminating the requirement to work through an agent of the service provider, and granting direct access, DevOps teams can more easily control and provision their workflows as needed.
• Automated Workflows — In the cloud, automation has been a fundamental enabling technology that has effectively eliminated most human error, while it has also enabled containerization, orchestration, and microservices architecture. By operating in the cloud, organizations can also leverage the advantages of automation, thereby gaining unprecedented agility, speed, and reliability.

Overall, the main benefit of multicloud configurations and using multicloud management platforms is to avoid vendor lock-in—the complete reliance on a single vendor without an immediate ability to or the impracticality (financially, technically) of switching to another vendor. Vendor lock-in is lower at more fundamental levels of cloud services, for example, if using only IaaS, then transferring data stores may be more straightforward than retrieving data locked in a PaaS solution data structures. In the case of PaaS data, if the vendor simply does not offer an export feature, chances for vendor lock-in are high.

Specific benefits of multicloud management include:

• Reduced Complexity Leads to Less Workload — The centralization provided by cloud management platforms that reduces complexity can significantly lead to reduced workloads on teams. Teams that are unburdened from multicloud administrative workflows can focus their attention to more relevant or progressive tasks.
• Cloud Visibility — Multicloud management platforms provide the necessary visibility across multiple cloud providers, providing the oversight capabilities necessary to make sound business decisions.
• Unified Security — Building on full cloud visibility, multicloud management platforms are uniquely situated to provide a unified security view. This position allows security teams to proactively address system security concerns, and be able to address ongoing issues.
• Cost Controls and Management — Cloud payment models are based on pay-as-you-go schemes to mirror their scaling and flexibility characteristics. More usage, greater services, more capacity may be paid in graduating tiers. Using multicloud management platforms to track usage and costing can help when comparing cost benefits between different vendors.
• Improve Service Availability — Multicloud strategies in support of high availability depend on redundant systems that can orchestrate workloads across multiple cloud environments. For this reason, multicloud management becomes a critical enabler of improving service availability.

Multicloud management works by centralizing multiple cloud services under a platform that orchestrates workloads across clouds. Powerful analytics tie data together into a single source of truth, granting organizations unprecedented insight and control over their clouds. These platforms are often open-source, making them highly supported across cloud providers.

Moving workloads is a primary function of multicloud, and key enabling technologies include Kubernetes, and Docker. These technologies create the container and container orchestration that allows for portable workloads to move across clouds. This is where cloud management platforms come in to help enforce policies across all your cloud environments.

Multicloud management platforms help companies tie together multiple cloud services under a centralized management system. According to the software review site G2, the top 10 most popular cloud management platforms are (in no particular order):

• Zesty — Zesty provides an AI-driven platform that will automatically manage cloud resources in real-time.
• Nutanix Beam — Nutanix promotes a multi-cloud governance service that automates cloud security compliance using 250+ audit checks.
• Azure Arc — Azures brand of cloud management to unify on-premise, edge, and multicloud.
• Turbonomic — An IBM company, Turbonomic aims to ensure application performance with its proprietary network performance management software.
• Spot Cloud Analyzer — Spot promotes a product that analyzes cloud spend, automatically reducing costs up to 90%.
• Serverless360 — Serverless360 is an enterprise grade cloud management platform that supports Azure.
• Flexera One — Flexera One is a SaaS cloud management platform with visualization features that cross on-premise, private and public deployments.
• Mist — Mist is an open-source cloud management application.
• Snow Software (Snow Commander) — Snow software is proficient in detecting cloud software licenses.
• IBM Multicloud Manager — IBM's brand provides control and performance across all cloud environments.