Thanks to the rise of multi-cloud computing, the challenges associated with managing DevOps are becoming exponentially greater. Most IT organizations are not likely to be 100 percent sure at any given time which application workload is running where.
To address that issue, Morpheus Data has added a Cross-Platform Discovery module to its Unified Ops Orchestration platform that employs machine learning algorithms to determine not only what applications, virtual machines and containers have been deployed on-premises or in a public cloud, but also how much capacity, memory usage and power consumption each is using and their and overall performance.
At the same time, Morpheus Data is adding integration with Github and Jenkins continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) environments as well as support for both Docker Swarm and Kubernetes clusters.
Finally, Morpheus Data has added connectors to IBM Cloud, Upcloud and HPE OneView services and been certified as a ServiceNow partner. The Unified Ops Orchestration platform already supports Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform.
Brad Parks, vice president of marketing and business development for Morpheus Data, notes that as IT environments become more distributed in the age of the cloud, new approaches to change management will be required. The Unified Ops Platform provides an opportunity to consolidate change management processes within the context of a single control plane.
While more IT organizations are making use of multiple cloud services, most are managing each IT environment in isolation. Over time, the lack of unification of the control planes for each of those environments conspires to increase the total cost of ownership for IT. Morpheus Data is making a case of for unifying the management of multiple platforms running on-premises or in public cloud instead of requiring IT staff to master multiple management tools.
That single management plane, Parks says, also makes it much easier for IT organizations to take dynamically employ multiple cloud environments. Price points for cloud services are liable to change at any moment, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that the same type of workload will continue to be deployed on the same cloud. At the same time, the characteristics of a workload may have evolved to the point where it doesn’t make financial sense to deploy it on a public cloud. A common management platform makes it possible to move that workload with the least amount of disruption possible.
Most IT organizations today are concerned about getting locked into a cloud service provider. Being able to demonstrate an ability to switch between cloud service providers gives IT organizations an opportunity to negotiate cloud service contracts from a position of strength. Most cloud service providers are counting on the fact that the cost of switching from one provider to another is simply too high. Integrated DevOps processes wrapped around a common management plane, however, will make it clear to all concerned that the platform provider serves at the pleasure of the internal IT department, not the other way around.
