In recent years, a growing number of organizations have opted for a multi-cloud strategy. They are moving away from relying on one cloud service provider. By doing so, they aim to break free from the constraints of one cloud provider. Thereby gaining greater flexibility and reducing their dependence on one provider. A key trend in multicloud approach is to leverage the unique cost benefits offered by different cloud providers. As well as select the most suitable services for specific applications, teams, or departments. However, the complexity of managing multicloud deployment has emerged as a major hurdle. To address this challenge, this guide presents 5 top-rated tools for effective multi-cloud management, available for immediate use. Explore what is multicloud computing and streamline your cloud operations today!

What is Multicloud Computing and Storage?

In a single network architecture, organizations can leverage the benefits of multiple cloud computing and cloud storage services from diverse providers. By doing so, they can strategically allocate their workloads across several cloud environments. Thereby minimizing the likelihood of data loss or downtime while simultaneously enhancing flexibility and scalability.

What’s the Difference Between Multicloud and Hybrid Cloud?

In today’s cloud landscape, two distinct strategies have emerged: multi-cloud and hybrid cloud. The former involves using multiple cloud deployments of the same type, either public or private, sourced from different vendors. In contrast, the latter combines multiple deployment types, both public and private, with integrated or orchestrated connections between them. 

For instance, a multicloud strategy might involve operating two public cloud environments or two private cloud environments. On the other hand, a hybrid cloud approach would involve integrating a public cloud environment with a private cloud environment. This leverages infrastructure such as APIs, middleware, or containers to enable seamless workload portability.

It’s important to note that these two approaches are mutually distinct, meaning an organization cannot adopt both simultaneously. Instead, they must choose between interconnected clouds (hybrid clouds) or separate, independent clouds (multiple clouds). Enterprises increasingly seek to enhance security and performance. Therefore, multicloud adoption encompassing both public and private environments, is becoming a more prevalent trend.

Why is Multicloud Architecture Required?

When it comes to application development, adopting a multi-cloud architecture can offer numerous benefits. For instance, it enables the integration of top-tier services from multiple public cloud providers, allowing for a best-of-breed approach. Additionally, distributing workloads and data across two or more public cloud providers can mitigate risk and reduce costs. Another key advantage is avoiding dependence on a single cloud provider.

In many cases, on-premises infrastructure is also a necessary component of an organization’s environment. It is often due to economic, regulatory, or technical constraints related to legacy systems built to operate in a data center. 

In some instances, multi-cloud environments emerge from the integration of separate teams or applications, such as during mergers and acquisitions. This can result in a lack of cohesion, making integration a significant challenge. To overcome this, it is essential to collaborate with a vendor that is open and capable of developing a forward-thinking multi-cloud strategy.

What are the Benefits of Multicloud?

Avoid vendor lock-in: By diversifying their vendor base, organizations can liberate themselves from the limitations imposed by a single provider. Thereby avoiding the risks of being tied to a specific pricing structure and service offering. This diversified approach empowers businesses to explore alternative options if a vendor’s offerings no longer meet their needs or budget.

Enhanced reliability and redundancy: Distributing workloads and data across multiple cloud providers enhances overall reliability and redundancy. Thereby, minimizing the impact of outages or disruptions on business operations. This approach also enables organizations to cherry-pick the best cloud services, infrastructure, and solutions from various providers. Rather than being limited to a single vendor’s offerings.

Optimized performance: Multicloud environments facilitate optimized performance by leveraging automation, real-time data synchronization, and AI-assisted services. This helps to efficiently process and analyze vast amounts of data. 

Increased flexibility and scalability: Organizations can dynamically adjust storage, computing, and other resources in response to changing business needs. And that too without being locked into predetermined capacity commitments. 

Geographic diversity: Organizations can ensure data control and compliance across diverse geographic locations. This approach enables the replication and distribution of data across various regions, thereby facilitating adherence to specific regional regulations.

What Do Multi-Cloud Management Tools Do?

To ensure seamless operations across multiple public clouds, organizations rely on multi-cloud management. Its a comprehensive approach that encompasses workload and application monitoring, multicloud security, & optimization. By providing a single, unified platform, multi-cloud management tools enable efficient oversight and control of deployments spanning multiple clouds.

While many cloud solutions excel at managing a single cloud environment, there are several cross-cloud management platforms available today that cater specifically to your needs. Leveraging these platforms can significantly enhance visibility across cloud deployments. While also streamlining the number of tools required for monitoring and optimization, ultimately simplifying multi-cloud management. So, let’s look at these tools now.

5 Multicloud Management Tools To Consider 

1. Züs Blimp Storage

Blimp is a cutting-edge multicloud storage management tool that addresses the challenges of multicloud strategies. It offers superior security, privacy, and ease of management. With its intuitive user interface and streamlined setup process, Blimp makes multi-cloud deployment and governance a seamless experience within minutes that usually take months. 

Designed for optimal performance, Blimp offers a free egress solution for S3 storage. It boasts a user-friendly interface, a data visualization layer, and a design flexibility to have a private or hybrid cloud as well. By allowing developers to customize performance, uptime, security settings, data integrity, and transparency through data and parity shards, Blimp outperforms traditional S3 solutions. 

Its sharded server architecture enables seamless additions or replacements of storage servers. This makes it ideal for various use cases, including AI data lakes, backups, disaster recovery, log storage, analytics, application data, and video and image storage.

One of Blimp’s key strengths is its robust security and privacy features. It sets the benchmark for safeguarding sensitive information, particularly in AI applications, through proxy re-encryption, advanced encryption methods, and immutability. This ensures data remains completely secure and protected. 

With Blimp’s Züs protocol and free egress, organizations are guaranteed complete operational flexibility. This eliminates the risk of being tied to a single vendor. Organizations can optimize their data storage by tailoring shards to meet specific business needs. This strikes a balance between data redundancy, access speed, and cost efficiency. 

Migrating data from S3 to Züs is a seamless process requiring no code modifications, ensuring a hassle-free transition. 

By adhering to stringent ethical standards for data management, Blimp establishes a foundation of trust with its users, ensuring that they retain control and ownership of their data. It also maintains the utmost transparency and safeguarding the integrity of their information.

2. Morpheus

Morpheus stands out as a leading no-code multi-cloud management tool. It offers a unified and simplified approach to managing and organizing resources across diverse cloud environments. With its intuitive user interface and pre-built blueprints, Morpheus empowers users to provision, configure, and govern cloud resources without writing a single line of code. 

It helps organizations take advantage of cloud-native services in AWS, Microsoft Azure, and GCP. It also simplifies the provisioning of VMs, bare metal, containers (IaaS/CaaS), and full application stacks (PaaS) using virtually any public cloud, including Kubernetes, VMware, HPE OneView, OpenStack, and Cisco UCS, without requiring IT teams to learn each public cloud platform. 

The platform enables exposing cloud-native PaaS, IaaS, Kubernetes, and infrastructure-as-code (IaC) blueprints using a unified API and console, with a single public cloud account accessible to all. Morpheus then manages governance and reporting, providing comprehensive automation and governance capabilities to streamline operations, enforce policies, and ensure compliance across the multi-cloud footprint.

Additionally, Morpheus offers granular cost analytics and reporting features, allowing for optimized resource utilization and informed decision-making to maximize cloud investments. By seamlessly integrating with a wide range of tools and technologies, Morpheus fosters long-term scalability and flexibility. Making it an ideal choice for organizations seeking a no-code solution to simplify and streamline their multi-cloud management strategies.

3. Flexera

Flexera is a comprehensive multi-cloud management platform that simplifies and optimizes the entire cloud lifecycle across diverse environments. It offers a unified console to manage and orchestrate resources across multiple public clouds like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, as well as private cloud platforms like VMware and OpenStack. This centralized approach streamlines cloud operations, enabling consistent governance and policy enforcement across the entire cloud footprint. 

Flexera’s robust automation capabilities allow organizations to define and implement complex workflows, automate provisioning and configuration processes, and ensure compliance with established policies and best practices. 

By providing a comprehensive cloud cost management platform, Flexera empowers organizations to streamline their governance processes, ensure regulatory compliance, and optimize their cloud expenditures. This robust solution features advanced cost forecasting, resource management, and policy enforcement capabilities. It gives users a unified view of their cloud costs and the tools needed to make informed decisions. 

It streamlines expenses by consolidating invoices, uncovering areas for cost reduction, and leveraging automation to maximize resource allocation efficiency. Strong governance and security are ensured through integration with Identity and Access Management (IAM) systems, strategic resource tagging, and compliance tools. 

Flexera seamlessly integrates with a wide range of cloud environments. It provides extensive support across multi-cloud and hybrid infrastructures, while facilitating seamless collaboration between development and operations teams through native connections with CI/CD platforms.

4.CloudBolt

CloudBolt is a comprehensive multi-cloud and hypervisor management platform that simplifies and streamlines the provisioning, organizing, and governance of hybrid cloud environments. Acting as a multi-cloud management abstraction layer, CloudBolt enables organizations to utilize different solutions together within a unified catalog. 

It provides a centralized control plane to manage and organize resources across multiple public clouds like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. As well as private cloud platforms such as VMware, OpenStack, and Kubernetes clusters. With its pluggable architecture, CloudBolt supports integrating over 20 resource handlers, including Hyper-V, vCenter, IBM Cloud, and SCVMM, facilitating seamless provisioning and orchestration across diverse environments.

CloudBolt offers robust automation capabilities that allow organizations to define and implement complex workflows, automate provisioning and configuration processes. And ensures compliance with established policies and best practices. 

It provides advanced cost analytics and reporting features, offering granular visibility into cloud spend and resource utilization across different environments. This empowers organizations to identify cost-saving opportunities, optimize resource allocation, and make informed decisions to maximize the value of their cloud investments.

Additionally, CloudBolt seamlessly integrates with a wide range of tools and technologies, including configuration management, monitoring, and service catalog solutions. It fosterers long-term scalability and flexibility while enabling organizations to leverage their existing investments and processes.

5. Nutanix

Nutanix Cloud Manager is a comprehensive hybrid multicloud platform that simplifies and streamlines the management of diverse cloud environments. It provides a unified control plane to organize and manage resources across multiple public clouds, such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. As well as private cloud platforms like Nutanix’s own hyper converged infrastructure (HCI) solutions. This centralized approach enables consistent governance, policy enforcement, and seamless application mobility across an organization’s entire hybrid and multi-cloud footprint. 

Nutanix’s Cloud Platform combines hybrid cloud infrastructure with multi-cloud management. As well as unified storage, desktop, database, and desktop services, supporting any application and workload across private, public, hybrid, or multi-cloud deployments.

Nutanix Cloud Manager offers robust automation capabilities, allowing organizations to define and implement complex workflows, automate provisioning and configuration processes. And ensures compliance with established policies and best practices. 

It provides advanced cost analytics and reporting features, offering granular visibility into cloud spend and resource utilization across different environments. This empowers organizations to identify cost-saving opportunities, optimize resource allocation, and make informed decisions to maximize the value of their cloud investments. 

With a unified and self-service cloud control plane delivering AI-powered app automation, cost governance, and security governance, Nutanix Cloud Manager seamlessly integrates with a wide range of tools and technologies. It fosters long-term scalability and flexibility while enabling organizations to leverage their existing investments and processes.

Comparison Table: Top 5 Multi Cloud Management Tools

Feature	Blimp	Morphus	Flexera	CloudBolt	Nutanix
Robust Decentralized Security	Proxy re-encryption, advanced encryption methods, and immutability for data protection	No	No	No	No
Private Cloud	Enterprises have the option to utilize a private cloud solution, either by leveraging dedicated servers or by integrating their own existing infrastructure.	No	No	No	No
Zero Downtime & Instant Recovery	Guaranteed uninterrupted access to data with instant recovery	No	No	No	No
Availability	Data distributed across multiple providers for added security	No	No	No	No
Free Egress	Yes	No	No	No	No
Performance Storage Optimization	Yes, you can customize data redundancy, access speed, and cost optimization through sharding.	No	No	Yes	No
Seamless S3 Migration	No code modifications required for migrating from S3	No	No	No	No
Efficient File Sharing	Unparalleled privacy for file sharing via proxy re-encryption	No	No	No	No
AI/ML Friendly	Optimized for AI data lakes and sensitive data handling	No	No	No	No
Full Transparency of Providers	Full transparency and flexibility	No	No	No	No
Sustainable and Eco-friendly	Smaller carbon footprint than traditional cloud	No	No	No	No
User Flexible Design	Has the ability to add/remove providers, configurable security, availability, and performance.	No	No	Yes	No
Add Redundancy on the fly	Yes	No	No	No	No
S3 Endpoint	Custom and dedicated for each enterprise	No	No	No	No

What Makes Blimp Stand Out?

With Blimp, users can tap into the power of Züs, a versatile multi-cloud platform that enables the creation of customized, distributed storage infrastructures across multiple clouds and providers. By leveraging Züs, individuals can join the network and offer a range of cloud services, from private and hybrid to traditional, tailored to their specific needs. Moreover, users have the freedom to select storage servers from any datacenter, region, or location. They can utilize Chimney to establish a private cloud, or rely on Züs to provide managed services that meet their exact specifications. Notably, Blimp streamlines the process of designing and implementing a multi-cloud storage solution. It condenses a task that typically takes IT teams months into a matter of minutes, thereby significantly reducing the time and effort required.

Conclusion

In today’s dynamic digital environment, businesses must adapt to stay agile. A key factor in achieving this agility is the effective management of multi-cloud strategies, which can be a complex and daunting task. To maximize returns on cloud investments, streamline operations, and maintain a competitive edge, it is essential to harness the power of sophisticated management tools such as Blimp.

Ready to optimize your multi-cloud strategy? Discover how Blimp can enhance your cloud management with seamless S3 storage integration and robust security features. Check it out now!

FAQs

What are cloud management tools?

Cloud management tools are software applications designed to provide organizations with visibility, control, and flexibility over their cloud computing resources and data across multiple cloud platforms. One example of a cloud management tool is Blimp. It offers a transparent view of data location across multiple clouds, user control over design through customizable performance, uptime, security, data integrity and transparency via sharding, and the flexibility to create private, hybrid or public multi-cloud solutions tailored to specific organizational needs.

What is a multi-cloud platform?

In a single, unified architecture, a business can leverage multiple public cloud services from diverse vendors, thereby creating a multi-cloud platform.  Blimp provides a multi-cloud storage strategy.