How to choose a cloud management platform (CMP)

• 12 Dec 2019
• Written by: Ilya Tsapin
• Architecture
• Digital Transformation
• Managed Services

Cloud computing has changed how businesses can scale their operations and services, freeing up time, people, and money to focus on what’s important. With infrastructure as a service (Iaas), companies can spin up virtual computing resources at will, paying only for the power they use. When combined into a hybrid model with on-prem infrastructure, this computing power can be adjusted to suit the needs of any business. Here's what to consider when choosing a cloud management platform.

Regardless of how many services you use in the cloud, staying organized can sometimes be challenging. This is where a cloud management platform (CMP) can be helpful.

What is a cloud management platform (CMP)?

A cloud management platform is an interface that provides to centralized access to all your cloud solutions and on-prem environments. Just as an analytics hub organizes analytics tools, a CMP unifies process of procuring infrastructure. Cloud management platforms can be hosted however suits your needs: on-prem, in the cloud, or in a hybrid fashion.

The benefits of a cloud management platform

The key benefit of a CMP is cost control and management of expenses like capital expenses, operations expenses, etc. A cloud management platform provides:

• Cost monitoring and forecasting

• Alerts

• Recommendations on cost optimization

• Workload balancing and orchestration

• Ability to move workloads between clouds and on-prem and between clouds

• Service catalog capability and automation

In short, a CMP can optimize costs and resources, increase observability, enhance security, and govern deployment processes.

Choosing a cloud management platform

If you’re looking for a CMP, you’ll need to decide on an end goal. Do you want to optimize costs (including both cloud spend and on-prem costs) or are you looking for seamless deployment of solutions? Do you want the ability to spin up a secondary environment with a different cloud provider? There are many solutions on the market that provide different capabilities.

What is the current state of current CMP technology?

All cloud management platform providers are somewhat in the same level of maturity. Some provide a free assessment to evaluate available infrastructure and optimize your costs. Others are more development-centered and help you to procure complex infrastructure in an automated way. In this case, you could deploy in one cloud and have automatic restoration/backup functionality in a different cloud and/or region. Cloud management technology continues to improve; as you evaluate a solution, be sure you are looking at up-to-date solutions. Bulk procurement of virtual machines has come a long way. Licensing optimization, cloud PaaS solutions, and CMP-native managed services continue to improve.