Why Google’s Anthos Multi-Cloud and Hybrid Platform is a Game-Changer

At the recent Cloud Next ‘19 conference, Google Cloud introduced the Anthos hybrid- and multi-cloud platform that lets customers build, run and manage applications across cloud and on-premise environments. Anthos represents Google’s first entry into the enterprise data center and even allows for the management of applications in Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. Below we outline why the Anthos multi-cloud capabilities are such a big deal, what the benefits and challenges are, and how Maven Wave can help you take advantage of this groundbreaking new technology.

What is Anthos?

Anthos is a comprehensive cloud platform architecture that lets you build, deploy and manage hybrid applications across multiple environments. It allows enterprises to run containerized workloads in Google Cloud Platform, on-premise, or even in other cloud platforms, enabling a seamless hybrid-cloud environment for the first time ever. The underlying technologies that make up Anthos include:

• Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE): at the heart of Anthos is GKE, which is a powerful cluster manager and orchestration system for running containers.
• GKE On-Prem: allows you to take advantage of Kubernetes and cloud technology in your own data center, all managed from Google Cloud Console.
• Istio: the service mesh used to connect, monitor and secure microservices
• Velostrata: The industry’s first VM-to-Kubernetes (V2K) migration tool, enabling one-step migration from on-premise VMware to GKE.
• Anthos Config Management: automates configuration management, including deployment artifacts, configuration settings, network policies, secrets and passwords, across a hybrid Kubernetes deployment.
• Stackdriver: centralized monitoring, logging, tracing, and observability for services and containers.
• GCP Cloud Interconnect: delivers high-speed low-latency connectivity between the enterprise data center and Google Cloud.
• GCP Marketplace: a curated list of ISV and open source applications that can run on Kubernetes.

Why is it a big deal?

For any enterprise with a diverse network set-up, Anthos’ multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud management can streamline operations in completely new ways. Anthos enables you to develop, manage, and deploy containerized applications on-premise or with different public cloud providers, all managed from a single control panel. Before the launch of Anthos, building multi-cloud strategies required substantial custom development, while Anthos works “out-of-the-box” with very little configuration required. Anthos transforms your architectural approach, so you can focus on innovation and move faster than ever without compromising security or increasing complexity.

What are the benefits for customers?

1. Simplified operations, with a single view and insights across all environments, both on-prem and in the cloud.
2. Spend less time managing your applications and get greater awareness, consistency, and control.
3. Modernizes applications that will increase business agility, gets products to market faster, and maximizes resource utilization.
4. Future-proofs technology investments by building on top of a platform that is designed to run where you need it to with consistent controls across environments.

What are the challenges to implementation?

There are some important design decisions that need to be made with Anthos. For example, how will you provision data access? How will you provision network connectivity to your environments? And how will you maintain a robust security posture? Maven Wave can help by providing a design and implementation strategy.

How can Maven Wave help?

Maven Wave can help you take advantage of the benefits of Anthos in several ways:

1. We help clients plan where and how to take advantage of hybrid-cloud and multi-cloud environments.
2. Maven Wave works with you to develop an infrastructure that allows you to securely deploy Anthos and connect various data sources to your applications running on Kubernetes.
3. We can migrate your applications to containers that allow them to work in this new environment.

What are the next steps?

Let’s discuss how your IT operations could be improved by Anthos. Contact the Maven Wave team and we can discuss:

• Anthos Readiness Assessment
• Anthos Foundations Engagement
• Anthos Migration Services, including identification of an application or microservice(s) use case to evaluate Anthos in your environment

Are you interested in learning more about how you can enhance your multi or hybrid-cloud strategy with Anthos? Stream our free, pre-recorded webinar “Accelerate Your Multi-Cloud Strategy With Anthos” on-demand now.