Cloud Management - Deploying and Managing a Cloud Infrastructure - page 89

cloud platforms from multiple vendors. Most organizations will probably be requiring services
from multiple vendors simply because most vendors specialize in some service or another in
order to differentiate themselves from each other. So when an enterprise needs Software as a
Service (SaaS) technology for certain applications and also a platform for development, chances
are they would need two separate providers for both services. This creates unnecessary com-
plexity because those two cloud services are not meant to work with each other, even though
in principle they should. This is a challenge for basic tasks like provisioning, orchestration,
governance, and overall management. The situation in the industry right now is that there are
a bunch of cloud computing silos being built separately by different providers. Most of them
are innovative and will be needed by an enterprise or two. But the problem is that they are not
made to coexist, and that's what the OpenStack open-source project aims to solve. For now,
however, we have this fragmentation and we are left with a multi-cloud management challenge.
What we need is an innovative solution that is built on a layer above these
standard separate silos, cloud platforms, or end points that have been
implemented across the enterprise, a solution that can act as an abstraction
layer so that you do not have to conform to the nuances of each cloud plat-
form. That solution is the cloud management platform.
Management platforms are integrated products made up of several applications and
tools that provide monitoring and management of private, public, and hybrid cloud envi-
ronments. To be called a management platform, a product must at least integrate interfaces
for self-service provisioning of computing resources like server and storage images and
virtual machines, enable billing and metering, and provide workload and performance
optimization to some extent. More advanced solutions may offer extended functional-
ities like better micromanagement and automation of computing resources and may have
facilities to integrate with other cloud environments for collaborative work. It may also
support advanced monitoring akin to that of the tools used by the service providers them-
selves to monitor and micromanage certain aspects of the infrastructure and environment.
Figure 4.1 shows a basic overview of how a management platform can connect different
implementations of cloud environments.
Cloud management platforms enable the deployment and management of enterprise-
class services and applications across all cloud types. They serve to bridge different cloud
platforms and act as a central focal point and management center to make different clouds
from different vendors play nice with each other, to an extent. This kind of system really
helps in solving the vendor lock-in debate between proprietary and open-source cloud plat-
forms. It may not be a total answer and solution to the problem, but at least it helps some-
what. Management platforms are available as SaaS or as stand-alone on-premise software
that enables you to control your cloud from within your own data center.
Management platforms then provide automation using a set of rules and policies as a
blueprint to minimize the need for users and developers to know how to do what needs to be
done for each separate cloud platform out there. They simply a set of tools and capabilities
that the user can harness to be able to perform all cloud computing functions effectively and
consistently across the multi-cloud environment. So instead of multiple silos or end points,
the user is presented with a single plain field, minimizing the complexity to a bottom layer.