Businesses in all industry verticals are now taking advantage of the opportunities offered by the cloud, whether for IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS.
The cloud allows businesses to develop software and applications much more quickly and gain a technical edge over competitors. Over the past 12 months, Infrastructure-as-a-Service has seen tremendous growth, with the InformationWeek 2017 State of the Cloud survey indicating IaaS use has risen from 30% to 57% over the past two years.
While businesses were initially content just to use one cloud platform, there is a growing trend for mixing and matching of cloud services from the likes of AWS, Azure, the Google Cloud Platform, and other cloud providers. The InformationWeek survey showed 72% of businesses are now using between 2 and 5 different cloud providers and 14% are using 6 or more. Only 15% have stuck with a single provider.
This mixing and matching of cloud providers allows businesses to create an infrastructure that matches the exact needs of their business and shave off unnecessary cloud spending. However, while there is a myriad of benefits that come with this mix and match approach, there are some disadvantages. Managing multiple cloud services is a headache and there is a shortage of cloud management products that can provide visibility and control across multiple platforms.
Without access to essential information it is difficult for organizations to determine how their cloud resources are performing, areas where changes need to be made, and where spending can be reduced.
The demand for multi-platform environments has led to the development of solutions that can help businesses manage cloud spending, monitor usage, ensure security, and identify configuration issues.
InformationWeek has assessed various cloud vendors offering multi-provider solutions and has created a list of cloud vendors to watch in 2018 – Vendors that are likely to experience strong growth thanks to their innovative cloud solutions.
One of the main issues with multi-platform cloud environments is an inability to carefully monitor usage and control costs. There are several new startups and established companies that offer solutions in this area. InformationWeek has selected Cloudability, CloudCheckr, CloudHealth Technologies, Cloud Cruiser, and RightScale as the key cloud vendors to watch in 2018 that provide cost monitoring and control for AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and other cloud providers.
