The Sunny Future for Cloud Management Tools
So you invested in a shiny new enterprise cloud that cost a couple of million. Just how are you going to manage it?
Companies build enterprise cloud to save money, deliver more flexible IT services, and speed application time to market.
However, as many companies have found to their chagrin, standing up an enterprise cloud is only half the battle—managing it successfully is the real challenge.
Previously, the available tools only addressed bits and pieces of the overall systems, so the only way to manage a cloud infrastructure was to build expensive in-house tools that integrated the management across the various cloud components. DIY is fine for large cloud service providers that have legions of expert systems administrators to support it, but it is not an acceptable solution for the average enterprise.
To address the obvious gap, an emerging class of enterprise-ready, cloud management tools is in various stages of development, launch, or production. A sampling of these includes the more mature platforms such as Agility Platform by ServiceMesh, BMC’s Cloud Computing Management for Enterprises, Enstratus, and RightScale Cloud Management.
Up and coming tools include Cloud Cruiser, which focuses on cloud billing and chargeback, plus Scalr and AppFirst, with both taking an interesting open source approach. ServiceMesh, Kaavo, and AppFirst have developed some SDLC and workflow tools for a more application-centric view of cloud management.
Cloud Management tools typically fall into two categories. Cloud brokerage tools are designed to shift workloads to the most cost effective cloud based on a combination of internal rules and the costs of various public cloud offerings.
Originally pioneered by RightScale to manage workloads across public clouds, other venders such as Scalr, Enstratus, and Cloud Cruiser also offer this capability. While moving data and workloads between cloud vendors on the fly remains a challenge, for completely cloud-based services, brokerage tools make sense.
For an enterprise that needs to manage across private and public cloud infrastructures, more comprehensive tools that can support the underlying private infrastructure plus handle the cloud SDLC are called for. This is where the new offerings from Enstratus and ServiceMesh really shine.
With the 2010 purchase of Cloudkick by Rackspace, the November 2012 acquisition of Cloupia by Cisco, and the July 2012 acquisition of DynamicOPS by VMware, it is clear the enterprise IT vendors are waking up to the fact that well-integrated cloud management tools are essential for a successful enterprise implementation.
As the focus shifts away from a straight cloud cost arbitrage model and toward a more sophisticated view of how to manage cloud services for the enterprise, hopefully these tools will continue to mature to match the growing need.
Are they really enterprise ready? For the most part, not yet—but they are getting there fast!
