3 min readAnthos, an enterprise hybrid and multi-cloud platform from Google, has recently become generally available. The new offering is one of the first official hybrid and multi-cloud platforms from a mainstream public cloud provider. Anthos marks Google’s arrival into the enterprise data center space. Many other vendors have tried to enter this space previously, with limited success.
This leaves many people wondering if Anthos will succeed when others may have not.
All of Anthos’ predecessors entered the market, focusing on one or two keys areas. From governance and security to a simple deployment process, unifying the hardware/laaS layer, container orchestration or visually constructed repeatable deployments, no solution had it all. Many solutions previous to Google Cloud Platform (GCP) worked to create a hybrid story around other solutions, such as VMWare, Rackspace Cloud, Red Hat OpenShift, HP Cloud, or AWS. As many of these engines are no longer supported or less mature than GCP, any solution built on these stacks will have little or no growth opportunities.
The Anthos difference
Adoption success for Anthos will depend primarily on how solid and simple Google can make the Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) on-prem installation. Many operation teams have previously experienced failures or systems becoming obsolete, only after an extended installation period. Anthos and its corresponding components have already proven to be a straightforward solution, with a deployed container on GKE often taking only a few minutes with four or five short commands.
From the initial release, users can deploy a group of containers where they choose, with unified authentication. Completely secure, with the networking ability to control traffic routing in between private or cloud zones, Anthos can handle a client’s current and future needs, in a repeatable and secure manner. The solution integrates with Istio out of the box and contains other exciting features such as a centralized config manager, VM to container migration, Kubernetes applications marketplace, a centralized UI, and more.
Anthos’ umbrella of services
With all these differences, Anthos is more than just a product, but an umbrella for multiple services focused on application modernization, cloud migration, hybrid cloud, and multi-cloud management. The core of Anthos includes GKE, GKE On-Prem, Istio, Anthos Migrate, Anthos Config Management, Stackdriver, GCP Cloud Interconnect, and GCP Marketplace.
Other benefits of Anthos are:
- The solution was created and enterprise-tested by Google
- The combination of GKE on-prem, managed by Istio and Anthos config management, delivers agility with reliability in an on-prem environment exactly as it does in Google’s cloud
- This platform ingrates with Google Cloud for management of both Istio and Kubernetes
- This integration enables access to the Kubernetes marketplace, cloud-based monitoring and logging, and a wide variety of serverless solutions, such as Cloud Run, CI/CD, ML, and many more to satisfy the needs of IT organizations
Although many cloud platform options are available, none of them have been able to deliver on all fronts, required by businesses today. Anthos by Google has quickly become the leader for hybrid and multi-cloud platforms. Ready to learn more and begin your cloud journey? Contact SoftServe today.