Buyer Beware: Cloud Management Vendors Are Not Equal

Cloud management vendors have made the cloud a more attractive venture for organizations of all sizes. After all, running a cloud deployment often sounds simpler than it is. 

Enterprises want to take advantage of the benefits the cloud offers. But to do this, they must manage their cloud resources and operations effectively. One way to optimize cloud management is to implement a cloud management platform (CMP). 

Understanding the CMP Market

The CMP market has two categories: third-party tools and cloud vendor native tools. 

Cloud vendor native tools refer to the tools provided by public Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) vendors. These include Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure. The tools work exclusively with their products. Native tools provide unmatched, deep functionality into the specific platform. 

Third-party tools are cloud management tools built by third parties. These tools work seamlessly across a multitude of clouds. An example of such a tool is CloudBolt. There is no cloud provider attached to these tools. This gives you the flexibility of operating in multiple environments and avoiding vendor lock-in. 

In essence, enterprises that use a single vendor could get by using the vendor’s native tools. In contrast, those with a hybrid cloud setup would benefit from using third-party cloud management vendors’ tools.

Evaluating Cloud Management Vendors

Today, cloud management has turned into a wide and varied market with providers specializing in various segments. One of the problems many enterprises have is selecting a cloud management vendor that’s the right for their businesses. 

The good news is, it’s not that difficult to choose a vendor. We’ve narrowed it down to four major areas that you should focus on when evaluating vendors.  

Cloud Management and Brokerage of Services 

The CMP should be able to spin up and spin down resources on-demand, sometimes automatically, across cloud providers, and provide expansive self-service IT capabilities. 

Expense Management 

Cloud costs are one of the biggest pain points for an enterprise after it has moved to the cloud. The right CMP should help the organization to analyze cloud spending and compare it to historical averages. The tools should also identify wasted resources that an organization could shut down to reduce cloud costs. Rightsizing your cloud is one of the easiest ways to reduce wastage since you’re not paying for unnecessary services. 

Operational Monitoring 

A CMP should help you determine the following about your cloud deployment:

• The number of resources you have running and how they compare to the past. 
• The number of users accessing your environment and what they’re doing. 
• The cloud services users are utilizing at any one point.

Governance 

Go for a cloud management vendor whose tools help you set governance policies. You should be able to dictate whether users can access your cloud and what they have access to. The tool should help you set up and monitor data management policies to secure your cloud from unauthorized access. 

Conclusion

A CMP should carry out the following functions: orchestrating, monitoring, optimizing, and governing workloads and resources while also providing self-service. It should give you visibility into cloud usage with the aid of a dashboard. 

Request a CloudBolt demo today to see the new way of cloud management.