Multi-cloud is here to stay, but why should your organization care about a consistent multi-cloud strategy? Many want the flexibility to run their workloads in whatever public or private cloud they choose, regardless of vendor. Other organizations struggle to both modernize applications, while adopting an agile app development platform that allows for true DevOps. Everyone is clambering for your attention and business—so why should yet another multi-cloud strategy and platform called Google Anthos be enticing to your organization?
What is Anthos?
Anthos is an open application modernization platform that enables you to update your existing applications, build new ones, and run them anywhere—without the hassle, complications or the expense of “lifting and shifting” to the cloud. Because Anthos enables consistency between on-premises and cloud environments, you can move to whatever cloud you choose at your own pace, while accelerating application development and strategically transforming your business using an open-source platform to avoid vendor-lock in.
Why Anthos?
First, the Anthos platform is built on open source technologies pioneered by Google—including Kubernetes, Istio, and Knative—giving you a solid base for your DevOps that is supported by all major hardware, software, and cloud vendors today. Athos is being supported on branded hardware by Cisco, Dell EMC, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Intel, Lenovo, and NetApp, just to name a few. But also from a software and technology perspective: Cisco, Citrix, f5, Palo Alto, Splunk, VMware and others are integrating their offerings with Athos’ unique capabilities. All in all, you are getting an open-sourced platform supported by some of the industry’s heaviest hitters from both a hardware, software and cloud perspective. It means you can adopt a hybrid, application modernization platform that you know will be around for decades as a solid foundation to build on.
Reason 1: Cost-effective Application Modernization
If your organization is like most, you have aging, mission-critical applications that either have requirements to remain on-premises, or are stuck there because there’s no easy way to move them to the cloud. You know you must modernize those aging applications, but the expense of rebuilding from scratch is daunting or unrealistic. Luckily, using the open-sourced containerization built into Anthos gives you the best of both worlds: the ability to modernize your applications on-premises or in the cloud. With Anthos, you can increase your business agility, get your products to market faster, and maximize resource utilization with Kubernetes services managed by Google.
Reason 2: Multi-Cloud Portability
Right now, most organizations operate in about five public clouds on average according to the RightScale 2019 State of the Cloud Report™. But many organizations are finding that having multiple clouds doesn’t necessarily mean true workload portability across the clouds of their choice. In many ways, choosing a cloud for an app to run creates vendor lock-in because of proprietary cloud platforms. When you modernize, you need to think about adopting a platform, not a specific cloud. Luckily, Anthos has an answer. Migrate for Anthos can move and convert workloads running anywhere directly to containers and migrate those to any cloud. And for workloads not suited for containers, you can use Migrate for Cloud Engine to accelerate the safe migration of those workloads to Google Cloud.
Reason 3: Fast, Transformational Application Development
Adopting the Anthos platform is more than just modernizing your aging applications or giving you true multi-cloud portability. It’s about adopting an agile, DevOps stance that’s needed in today’s fast-paced world. With Anthos, you can accelerate building, deploying and managing cloud-native apps with Google’s developer-first Kubernetes platform and tooling. Kubernetes applications are enterprise-ready containerized solutions with prebuilt deployment templates, featuring portability, simplified licensing and consolidated billing for truly agile DevOps and application development. Kubernetes applications are not just container images, but open-source, Google-built, and commercial applications that increase developer productivity.
If you’re one of the 84% of organizations adopting a multi-cloud strategy, you need to consider a true multi-cloud, application modernization and development platform like Google Anthos. And the good news is, you don’t have to figure it out all on your own. IGNW is a full stack professional services company helping with strategy, planning and assessments as well as engineering services to execute on your entire multi-cloud plan or pieces of it. Don't go at it alone—leverage our team of experts that have been helping others modernize their applications, build a true multi-cloud platform, and adopt agile DevOps for transformational results.