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Google Introduces Anthos in a Bid to Embrace Hybridity

Google has rebranded its Cloud Services Platform as Anthos and announced compatibility across platforms. Users will be able to manage hybrid cloud deployments in Azure and AWS, along with Google Cloud. This is an acknowledgement from Google that the cloud’s future is hybrid, and that the major players aren’t going anywhere any time soon.

The Cloud Services Platform was Google’s platform for managing hybrid Kubernetes deployments (a container orchestration tool). Users of Google’s cloud could employ the services platform to manage instances that live in both the on-premises datacenter and the public cloud, allowing enterprises to move the workloads easily between the two. Until Anthos, however, the only public cloud solution supported was Google’s own.

Sundar Pichai describes Google’s vision for Anthos as allowing developers to “write once, run anywhere.” This includes Google’s direct competitors. According to the executive responsible for the new service, Google will provide “one way to manage their application and that one way works across their [on-premises] environments and all other clouds.” Automation and simple operation are two other features that Google highlighted in the Anthos announcement.

Our Take

Google’s bet on Anthos is a bet on the truly hybrid cloud, and an acknowledgement that the major cloud players have a stranglehold on the market. (IBM has been on about this for a while.) Anthos might not be the hybrid cloud platform of choice for most enterprises, especially since Google is running a distant third in the public cloud market, but its efforts indicate the role that Google hopes to play in a changing cloud marketplace. Google is betting big on the multi-cloud and on containers. For those organizations building and deploying applications in containers, Google’s Kubernetes-first approach to hybridity is certainly attractive.


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