Cloud Orchestration—Are We Finally Singing the Same Tune?
Are you holding back on moving applications to the cloud because of a diverse portfolio of installed systems?
Even after years of analysts’ dire warnings, the typical enterprise IT application portfolio is still comprised of a few thousand applications scattered over legacy hardware, virtualized infrastructure, and now dozens of disjointed shadow public Infrastructure as a Services (IaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) applications—truly legacy linguini.
Can cloud orchestration tools really be used to improve the management of IT application portfolios as they migrate on to public, private, and hybrid cloud platforms?
Sadly, even though cloud orchestration has been around for a few years, there is still much confusion about the definition of what exactly it is. This is not overly surprising, as cloud orchestration, which originally grew out of the need to address glaring gaps in the different components of a cloud stack, does not even have a single agreed upon purpose. In fact, the confusion has only gotten worse as vendors add a hodgepodge of new features to stay ahead of their competition.
Originally, cloud orchestration tools were used simply to build the most cost-effective cloud infrastructure for a given type of workload within a single public cloud environment. The RightScale tools were designed to build optimal workloads within the AWS environment. Given the dearth of IaaS competition and total lack of compatibility among cloud platforms at the time, even this limited functionality allowed companies to significantly cut their monthly cloud infrastructure bills.
The next step was to add the capability to broker across multiple IaaS vendor environments. Gravitant built on its relationship with the State of Texas by adding the capability to choose the most cost-effective cloud environment across public and private cloud environments. RightScale has quickly followed with its Cloud Analytics product, announced in November 2013, that promises more business-focused cost management and forecasting across multiple cloud vendor platforms.
As the market demand for more sophisticated orchestration applications grows, emerging companies have started nipping at RightScale’s heels by adding better brokerage algorithms, applications management, development workflows, dynamic networking, and other features to satisfy users’ demands for improved ways to manage their burgeoning cloud application portfolios.
Typically at this stage of the technology cycle, we would expect to see a convergence of features into broad and sophisticated tool sets, such as ServiceMesh. However, once CSC snapped up ServiceMesh with the intent to merge it into its own products, the remaining orchestration companies quickly fragmented back into tools that operate at different levels of the cloud stack: application orchestration with Cliqr and Appsfirst; network orchestration with Big Switch, F5, Brocade and CohesiveFT; and finally cross cloud brokerage with Kaavo, Cloudability, and Cloudyn.
Despite clear signs of better integrated tools coming, it looks like for the moment the cloud orchestration technology ride will continue to be bumpy. But that should not stop you from using the latest orchestration tools to make your cloud applications more flexible and platform independent today!
