Using services from multiple cloud providers simultaneously works best with a multi-cloud management platform. Morpheus is quick to install and offers a wide range of integrations with popular cloud and infrastructure providers.
The Challenge of Multi-Cloud Management
Companies implementing a multi-cloud strategy often face the challenge of efficiently managing the services and resources provided in the cloud. Over the past few years, the portfolio of services requiring management has steadily expanded. While the focus used to be primarily on managing virtual machines, networks, and storage, today’s scenarios are much more complex, such as those found in big data/analytics, DevOps, or IoT environments.
Associated services include container orchestration platforms like Docker Swarm or Kubernetes, DNS services, load balancers, SQL and NoSQL databases, identity management, continuous integration and delivery, logging, monitoring, backup, and automation tools like Ansible, Chef, or Puppet.
A cloud management platform should offer the widest possible range of these capabilities, particularly for major public cloud providers such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud. Integration with private clouds is also crucial, as many companies successfully operate internal services based on VMware, Microsoft, OpenStack, or other private cloud platforms.
Features of a Cloud Management Platform
Cloud management platforms provide users with a unified interface, regardless of the actual service provider. They also include a self-service catalog that allows users to independently provision resources. However, this does not mean users have unrestricted freedom in their choices.
About Morpheus
Morpheus is a relatively new cloud management platform. Morpheus Data, the company behind it, emerged in 2014 from an internal project of the U.S. venture capital firm Bertram Capital. The project, which has been in use since 2010, was created to support DevOps initiatives for around twenty start-ups in the firm’s portfolio.
Today, Morpheus Data employs about fifty people and competes with platforms like Flexera, VMware, or ServiceNow. In Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Cloud Management Platforms, published in December 2018, Morpheus Data was positioned as a leading company.
Morpheus is designed as an on-premises product and is not yet available as a SaaS offering. However, service providers can license it and provide it to their customers as a hosted environment. Morpheus integrates various public cloud providers and traditional virtualization infrastructures—reason enough to take a closer look at the product.
