CMPs | Technology Comparisons and Reviews https://www.whatmatrix.com/portal No-nonsense technical analysis from the community! Mon, 24 Aug 2020 13:19:05 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.3.17 https://www.whatmatrix.com/portal/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/cropped-light_on_dark_PNG-1-32x32.png CMPs | Technology Comparisons and Reviews https://www.whatmatrix.com/portal 32 32 5 Powerful Tips for Multi-cloud Management You Must Know https://www.whatmatrix.com/portal/5-powerful-tips-for-multi-cloud-management-you-must-know/ https://www.whatmatrix.com/portal/5-powerful-tips-for-multi-cloud-management-you-must-know/#respond Mon, 24 Aug 2020 12:21:11 +0000 https://www.whatmatrix.com/portal/?p=154343 There are endless reasons why your organisation may what to start implementing a multi-cloud strategy, many of which include increased productivity, lower operating costs, and the freedom to benefit from all the cloud options available. However, setting up and using a system like this effectively is no easy feat. To help you along the way, […]

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There are endless reasons why your organisation may what to start implementing a multi-cloud strategy, many of which include increased productivity, lower operating costs, and the freedom to benefit from all the cloud options available. However, setting up and using a system like this effectively is no easy feat.

To help you along the way, regardless of whether you’re just getting started or you’re knee-deep into a multi-cloud setup, here are the five most essential management tips you need to know if you want to be successful in your venture.

1. Always Consider Security

Even if you’re working with a single cloud system, one of your highest priorities, you need to be thinking about is security, even more so when you’re using a multi-cloud setup. Every single point where people can have access to your data, and every point where your cloud networks connect, you need to make sure you’re looking at how protected you are.

You need to be looking into things like how your system authenticates users, how to set management and access roles, multipoint authentication (like two-step logins) and role-based access controls, all of which will help you maximise security; which of course is essential.

2. Work Legally and to Compliance Requirements

When you have auditors come to inspect your business, you need to make sure you’re able to prove that you’re operating within your country’s legal compliance guidelines. There are a ton of laws you need to think about, including data protection acts, and user data privacy laws.

If you’re unable to protect your customer’s and user’s data, among other things, your organisation can be subject to huge fines, court proceedings, and it can seriously damage your reputation as a business, so ensure you’re bearing all this in mind.

“A good example of this is that some compliances state that certain frameworks state that your user data is not allowed to leave the country. This may be followed through with all your cloud services, except one, and if there is recorded proof that the data has been transferred through this, then you’ll find your business is in trouble,” explains Sarah Manby, a business blogger at Brit student and Next coursework.

3. Ensure You’re Training Your Staff

When you’re in the process of introducing and using two or more cloud systems, you need to make sure you’re taking time to train your staff and have them on board with any changes that are made. If your staff are not using your cloud networks properly and are not keeping up with the sometimes very rapid changes that can occur, you’re going to experience problems.

Yes, training your staff in this way is an investment, but it’s a very important one. Since all your cloud networks are connected, one mistake or error on one network could have a ripple effect out to the others, and this should be avoided at all costs.

4. Make Sure You’re Automating Processes

The chances are your business is no stranger to automating processes, and since multicloud setups can have a lot to process, you need to make sure you’re automating things wherever you can (bearing in mind that security still needs to remain a top priority).

“Some examples of tasks you could automate include patching, networking, and scanning your networks for malware and potential vulnerabilities. This will free up a lot of time for your IT workers who can concentrate on more important things and higher tech-based priorities,” shares Nick Anderson, a tech writer at Australia2write and Writemyx.

5. Choosing One Central Interface

When you’re working with multiple cloud systems, it can be incredibly helpful, effective, and productive to choose one main interface where you’ll be able to monitor and manage everything. This will not only simplify any tasks you need to carry out but will also provide real-time monitoring across all networks.

There are several options out there to choose from creating and upheld by companies like Microsoft and IBM, so you can be sure you’ll be in good hands, but it’s definitely worth checking out which interface is best for you. If you’re planning on creating a much more complex network, a singular management interface is the only way to go.

Michael Dehoyos is a tech and business writer and editor at Phd Kingdom and Write my dissertation. He helps businesses understand and see what new tech opportunities are available to them to help make their lives easier. Also, he is a writer at Academic paper help.

 

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Landscape Report Guidance: Cloud Management Platforms https://www.whatmatrix.com/portal/landscape-report-guidance/ https://www.whatmatrix.com/portal/landscape-report-guidance/#respond Wed, 05 Feb 2020 14:35:51 +0000 https://www.whatmatrix.com/portal/?p=111687 Landscape Report (Cloud Management Platforms) – what’s needed? This page is intended for vendors who received “notification of inclusion” for a WhatMatrix Landscape Analysis Report. Please see below for instructions on what’s needed and how to maximize the benefit of inclusion to e.g. generate additional visibility and capture leads. (If you are unfamiliar with the […]

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Landscape Report (Cloud Management Platforms) – what’s needed?

This page is intended for vendors who received “notification of inclusion” for a WhatMatrix Landscape Analysis Report. Please see below for instructions on what’s needed and how to maximize the benefit of inclusion to e.g. generate additional visibility and capture leads. (If you are unfamiliar with the nature of the Landscape Report – see details and example here.)

What are the prereqs?

All products accepted for publication on WhatMatrix are also eligible for free inclusion in our landscape reports. These products have successfully undergone full technical evaluation through an independent WhatMatrix consultant against the category taxonomy and are considered to be industry-leading and influencing solutions.

Where’s the catch?

There is no catch. We are operating under CommTrust guidelines. There is no “pay to play”, inclusion in the report is free. Purpose of the report is to give trusted advise back to the community and highlight interesting vendors.

Whats needed from the vendor?

Not much, please review below options to maximize the benefit of the report

  • Update Your Data: Review the data published for your product. If you are in need of an update work with your category or product consultant to submit the update.
    If you don’t have a contact yet simply request the input template and we’ll get you up-to-date.
  • Provide some additional data for the report:
    • Company abstract (max 100 words)
    • Annual Product Revenue
    • # of employees, Year founded
  •  Verify your vendor Account access: If you already have a “vendor” account on WhatMatrix
    1. Log in to your vendor account
    2. Select “My Listing (Vendors)
    3. Verify (or add) the vendor contact email (this is the email your analytics will be sent to). Note: This email will not be externally visible

    Don’t have this option? Click here to request an upgrade to a “vendor account” (no cost) to be contactable and receive usage stats for your listing

  • Review Marketing Options: All WhatMatrix listings are free – but vendors can enable (optional) features to make their listings more effective e.g.:
    • Generate leads and subscriptions
    • Get your vendor “showcase” page
    • Social media campaign

Interested? Request the Community  Request the sponsorship guide here (we can help you pick the most effective options). Note: The above enhancements will have no influence on product evaluation and rankings.

“Too much hassle? Request a session with us and we’ll talk you through the process and enable options you want.”

Time Line (for CMP)

We will keep vendors up-to-date with the relevant dates

    • “Submit your data” deadline: April 2020
    • Report publication: TBA

All dates are subject to change, vendors will be notified of changes independently.

Any tips?

    1. Try and schedule a chat with us (we want you to maximize the benefits of the report campaign)
    2. Ensure your data is up-to-date and review the evaluations by the dead line
    3. Consider enabling at least the “Essentials” tier to capture interest and increase visibility

We wish all vendors a successful report campaign!
As of publication the following vendors have been accepted and evaluated on WhatMatrix and will therefore be included (free) in the Landscape Study: Cisco, CloudBolt, Embotics, Hypergrid, Jamcracker, Morpheus, Rightscale (Flexera), VMware, Oracle, Platform9, Red Hat. 

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What CMP 2019- Call for updates and submissions! https://www.whatmatrix.com/portal/what-cmp-2019-call-for-updates-and-submissions/ https://www.whatmatrix.com/portal/what-cmp-2019-call-for-updates-and-submissions/#respond Mon, 04 Mar 2019 07:44:48 +0000 https://www.whatmatrix.com/portal/?p=59091 Time for an Update & Report 2019 See the up-to-date comparison of the Top Rated CMPs hereIt’s a truism that with technology, the only constant is change. And in the 3 years since we at WhatMatrix first introduced our comparison for cloud management platforms, the changes have been many. The products and players continue to […]

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Time for an Update & Report 2019

See the up-to-date comparison of the Top Rated CMPs here
It’s a truism that with technology, the only constant is change. And in the 3 years since we at WhatMatrix first introduced our comparison for cloud management platforms, the changes have been many. The products and players continue to evolve. As new technologies like containers and DevOps gain traction, the relative strengths and weaknesses of various vendors with respect to the new paradigm [you have to use words like ‘paradigm’ if you want to be a serious tech pundit] show themselves. As we pointed out in our CMP Landscape Report last year (free download), the “best” CMP depends on your use case.

What CMP features and use cases are most important to you?

This last point is particularly evident to me. You see, when I first joined WhatMatrix as category manager, I was working for a CMP company. This was a fact I made clear in our initial announcement. I felt we had a good product, and I wanted to test just how good it was. What I didn’t want was the seemingly ubiquitous comparison on vendor sites, with their product having all green check-marks and the competition having all red Xs. I also wanted to validate the usefulness of such a comparison with a broader community. Based on your interest and response we know that many have found the comparison useful and worked with us to evolve the taxonomy (“Thank You” to the contributing community consultants).

Will there be a Landscape Analysis Report 2019?

Yes, we will generate a new Landscape report this year and have already started to notify the relevant vendors. Vendors already evaluated on WhatMatrix are eligible for inclusion. There are no subscription or other monetary requirements (i.e. participation is free).
Vendors already accepted and listed on WhatMatrix should get in touch to ensure their listing is up-to-date
Vendors new to WhatMatrix can apply here to get evaluated and listed but publication on WhatMatrix is subject to the result of a successful technical evaluation through independent community consultants. Vendors already listed on WhatMatrix should get in touch to ensure their listing is up-to-date and any auxiliary information provided for the upcoming landscape report (but we will contact each vendor).

A change of perspective

Fast forward a few years, and I am no longer selling a cloud management platform. In fact, I’m now in the market to buy one. This shift in role has been very interesting for me. The features I was most interested in as a product producer are not always the ones that matter to me as a consumer. Again, best depends on your use case. Still, it feels like it’s time to update our rating criteria to better reflect the value users seek and receive from cloud management platforms. pov This isn’t the first time we’ve adjusted our ratings. We’d previously updated our CMP comparison criteria in October 2017. The fact that it’s time for another revamp seems to indicate that an update cycle of ~ 18 months is appropriate.

[block]5[/block]Users (and Vendors!) – here’s where you come in …

WhatMatrix is a comparison site by community members, for community members. As such, I’m looking for user – and provider – help in updating our CMP evaluation criteria (see current version here). To be clear, we at WhatMatrix are focused on providing information on specific product features and functionality. We are not like some analyst firms that attempt to assess more subjective aspects like vendor vision or quality of experience. So between now and the end of March 2019, I’m soliciting input from you, our community. Help us help you by making this comparison more relevant and useful. Send us your thoughts on: • What CMP features, capabilities, and use cases matter most to you? • What about the current comparison misses the mark or could be improved? • Does anything in the current comparison seem unfair or biased towards a particular vendor? • How much do changes in the vendor landscape (e.g., mergers and acquisitions) matter to you? • How are you using or planning to use a CMP? • What is your role? Are you a solutions consultant, or a team member in an organization, or a managed services provider, or …? • What vendors would you like to see added? • Do any of our current vendors seem out of place to you in a CMP comparison? • What else do you want us to know or consider?

So how can you help?

We look forward to hearing from you! Check out the current taxonomy (OneDrive) and submit comments and suggestions or make them in the comment box below … . contact form   Thank you! Ephraim Baron – Category Owner [Cloud Management Platforms]

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The WhatMatrix CMP Landscape Report Q3 2018 is here! https://www.whatmatrix.com/portal/announcing-the-whatmatrix-cmp-landscape-report-q3-2018/ https://www.whatmatrix.com/portal/announcing-the-whatmatrix-cmp-landscape-report-q3-2018/#respond Tue, 11 Sep 2018 05:04:08 +0000 https://www.whatmatrix.com/portal/?p=51707 See the announcement for the Top Rated CMPs 2019 here When we first launched the cloud management platform (CMP) comparison in 2016, we had 5 vendors. Today we have 11. The popularity of the category is clear both in the number of participants and the amount of interest our users have shown.Visiting the CMP category […]

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See the announcement for the Top Rated CMPs 2019 here

When we first launched the cloud management platform (CMP) comparison in 2016, we had 5 vendors. Today we have 11. The popularity of the category is clear both in the number of participants and the amount of interest our users have shown.
Visiting the CMP category on the website is a great way to compare candidate vendors head-to-head. For users who want a comprehensive view of all vendors at once, though, WhatMatrix Landscape Reports are another great tool.

Download the What CMP 2018 Landscape Report now

Like comparison reports from other analyst firms, our reports give overall ratings and rankings. Unlike many others, though, our Landscape Reports focus on current technical capabilities and our criteria are completely transparent. We know that our users have current challenges to meet and problems to solve. While future roadmaps are important, if a feature isn’t available today it’s only a possibility and a promise. Our focus is on reality, not hype. WhatMatrix Landscape Reports are point-in-time snapshots that analyze what’s available now. We’ve heard from our community of users that you value this approach, and we’re happy to be of service. But it’s not always easy. New product releases mean that features change frequently. Keeping our comparisons current is an ongoing challenge. In gathering, compiling, and summarizing the current state of CMP offerings, we worked with vendors and our product consultants to make our evaluations are close to current as possible. That said, we know that some vendor information has already changed between the deadline we set for data submissions and the date of our publication. After all, time, tide, and software release schedules wait for no one.CMP timeline For this reason, we recommend that readers consult our Landscape Reports for – as the name says – an overall view of the CMP landscape. Once you’ve identified qualified candidates, you should then use our website to compare the latest features of those candidates side by side. You can further refine your comparison with use cases – either those predefined by us or ones you create yourself. Use cases let you prioritize what’s important to you, ensuring you get the right product, with the right features, for your organization. So check  out the report, and – as always – let us know what you think!

Ephraim Baron & team [Category Consultant for Cloud Management Platforms] 

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“What Cloud Management 2018?” – last calls for entry https://www.whatmatrix.com/portal/last-call-for-what-cloud-management-2018-community-landscape-report/ https://www.whatmatrix.com/portal/last-call-for-what-cloud-management-2018-community-landscape-report/#respond Mon, 16 Jul 2018 09:17:48 +0000 https://www.whatmatrix.com/portal/?p=51143 Visit the ‘free download’ section to see all available reports After last year’s success of the “What CMP” community report – an in-depth technical evaluation of the most popular Cloud Management platforms – we recently announced this year’s repeat. Due to unexpected demand we are now extending the deadline for updates and (last minute) vendor […]

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Visit the ‘free download’ section to see all available reports
After last year’s success of the “What CMP” community report – an in-depth technical evaluation of the most popular Cloud Management platforms – we recently announced this year’s repeat. Due to unexpected demand we are now extending the deadline for updates and (last minute) vendor submissions to accommodate all requests.

This year’s line-up is already even more impressive with platforms from (alphabetical order) Cisco (CloudCenter), CloudBoltEmbotics (vCommander), MorpheusData, Oracle (Enterprise Manager Cloud Control), Platform9Red Hat (CloudForms), RightScaleVMware (vRealize) with exciting new entries from Scalr, MicroFocus and Jamcracker.

As always, all products will be reviewed and rated using the published 100+ technical evaluation points of the CMP category taxonomy. All evaluations will be performed by the listed independent community consultants. Results and ranking are expected to be announced within 2 weeks of the review period.

The new deadline for vendors to submit updates & new entries are as follows:

  • Accepting new entries: no later than Fri July 20th – use this link 
    • Vendors must submit their product name, vendor contact and commitment to provide any raw data requested by the managing consultant for review and evaluation
      Note: Submissions are subject to approval through the category consultant (based on market-relevance and availability of evaluating consultants)
  • Accepting updates: no later than Fri July 27th (contact your category consultant or use this form)
  • Review and evaluation period (vendors can request consultation sessions with the managing consultants to discuss evaluations): last day July 27th

All vendors will be able to enable additional functionality and show additional information to educate new users during this campaign (free) – vendors: see instructions here

Please note:

  1. Community consultants reserve the deciding vote on all evaluations in order to ensure vendor-independent results
  2. In case of unresolved disagreements WhatMatrix will employ peer reviews and (if required) board review to resolve them
  3. Vendors have the right to withdraw their products at any point if issues can’t be resolved
  4. Once published, all products will be subject to Open Community Curation enabled by WhatMatrix to ensure independent evaluations

We are looking forward to a great “What CMP 2018” campaign!

Ephraim Baron – Category Consultant [CMP}  & contributing consultants

CMP Community Consultants (select “overview” in the comparison to view them

 

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And the Community Award for Best CMP goes to … https://www.whatmatrix.com/portal/and-the-community-award-for-best-cmp-goes-to/ https://www.whatmatrix.com/portal/and-the-community-award-for-best-cmp-goes-to/#respond Wed, 08 Nov 2017 06:30:09 +0000 https://www.whatmatrix.com/blog/?p=4797 CMP Landscape Report 2019 announced – see hereIt’s been a big update to our ‘What CMP’ comparison, a complete review of the evaluation criteria, tied to a re-evaluation of all listed vendors and products through our community consultants. It was a recognition of the quickly evolving CMP landscape and the sheer breadth of use cases […]

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CMP Landscape Report 2019 announced – see here
It’s been a big update to our ‘What CMP’ comparison, a complete review of the evaluation criteria, tied to a re-evaluation of all listed vendors and products through our community consultants. It was a recognition of the quickly evolving CMP landscape and the sheer breadth of use cases that Cloud Management Platforms are expected to cover.

CMP Evaluations and Use Cases (image via Marco Meinardi – Gartner Inc. – thanks!)

Regardless whether you look at it from the aspect of multi-cloud management & automation, DevOps enablement & self-service, cost transparency, centralised configuration and policy control or workload migration & DR requirements … any combination might apply to a specific deployment and management scenario. So who comes out on top after re-evaluations, community reviews and challenges …? We are glad to announce CloudBolt Software as winner of our overall ‘What Cloud Management’ evaluation update 2017. Despite a tight score and an interesting mix of larger and smaller CMP vendors in the top 5, CloudBolt Software managed to achieve the highest score in our community evaluation – check out the detailed evaluation (with no less than 100 technical checkpoints) here! CoudBolt convinced with its support for a wide range of cloud technologies (from on-premise virtualisation and private cloud to a good range of hybrid and public cloud technologies) and CloudBolt’s focus on enabling the best execution venue in order to optimize workload placements. Make sure to review the “Multi-Cloud” section in comparison to the other listed vendors. CloudBolt recognized the challenge shadow IT introduced in many organizations driven by the “ease of acquisition” of public cloud resources. CloudBolt counters this with a self-service interface  that allows users to (easily) manage and provision resources on demand based on their job roles even in intricate environments – ultimately eliminating the need to utilise shadow IT. The software has proven to be simple to deploy, without the need to rip and replace environments in brownfield scenarios through its ability to import, sync, and manage legacy deployments. Another key strengths is Cloudbolt’s extensibility, that is its ability to integrate with various peripheral systems, whether legacy or emerging. For that CloudBolt uses a plug-in architecture that allows users to create relevant plug-ins in the form of Python scripts, remote shell scripts, web hooks, and email notifications. Just have a look at the range of supported Dev-Ops technologies in our comparison. Another interesting example is the ability to perform “cloud bursting” (introduced with version 6- clearly a challenge if expected to be supported for a wide range of applications across a wide range of infrastructure technologies). To make this feasible CloudBolt supports a large number of resource handlers (AWS, Azure, OpenStack, GCE, RHEV, IBM Cloud, Oracle Compute Cloud etc), various load balancers, configuration manger, IPAMs, CMDBs and orchestration frameworks. Whith this open plugin approach CloudBolt allows for flexible extension of the management system into existing and future technologies and this flexibility provides CloudBolt currently the edge over its rivals. Visit the CMP comparison to explore and compare CloudBolt and other CMP solutions maintained by our community. Your WhatMatrix Community Since publishing the result we received:

CloudBolt is honored to be recognized as the best cloud management platform by WhatMatrix. We focus on our customers’ multi cloud needs every day, and the new features we’re constantly rolling out are providing them with the agility, cost-savings and freedom of choice to make them successful’ Brian Kelly, CEO, CloudBolt

PS Also thanks to Marco Meinardi (Gartner Inc.) for the great pic visualising  functional and operational management aspects!

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VMware launches vRealize Suite 2017 – how does it fare? https://www.whatmatrix.com/portal/vmware-launches-vrealize-suite-2017-fare/ https://www.whatmatrix.com/portal/vmware-launches-vrealize-suite-2017-fare/#respond Thu, 02 Nov 2017 06:30:46 +0000 https://www.whatmatrix.com/blog/?p=4772 With new evaluation criteria added to our Cloud Management Platform (CMP) comparison at WhatMatrix, it was time to (re)evaluate the latest versions of the different CMP solutions that are included in the comparision. Recently VMware released vRealize Suite 2017, that includes the latest version of the four products that make up this suite. vRealize Suite 2017 […]

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With new evaluation criteria added to our Cloud Management Platform (CMP) comparison at WhatMatrix, it was time to (re)evaluate the latest versions of the different CMP solutions that are included in the comparision. Recently VMware released vRealize Suite 2017, that includes the latest version of the four products that make up this suite. vRealize Suite 2017 is now included in the CMP comparison and ranked at #2! In this article I will have a closer look at vRealize Suite and I will look into some of the latest updates to the suite in more detail.

vRealize Suite, more than a CMP?

VMware vRealize Suite is not just one product but a suite of products that make up VMware’s Cloud Management Platform. vRealize Suite 2017 consists of:

If we look at the evaluation critera in our comparison, I think around 90% of the CMP functionality is provided by vRealize Automation, Orchestrator and Business. The remaining 10% is filled by vRealize Operations and LogInsight.

vRealize Operations and LogInsight are more focussed on operations management. vRealize Operations provides extensive, customizable dashboards that display insight information on the different facets of your private- and/or public cloud. LogInsight is a Splunk like solution and capable to do intelligent log analysis and correlation.

The licensing model reflects the different use-cases for VMware’s vRealize Suite. The suite comes in three versions, that are Standard, Advanced and Enterprise. The Standard version is focussed on operations management (with vRealize Operations and LogInsight), Advanced and Enterprise include all four products that make up the CMP. Only vRealize Suite Advanced and Enterprise are currently in the WhatMatrix CMP comparison. The difference between these two is that Advanced is focussed on managing, automating and monitoring everything in the infrastructure layer. vRealize Suite Enterprise adds management, automation and monitoring for the application layer to the suite. If you want to learn more about licensing I suggest you to read a blogpost that I recently posted on my personal blog: Claifying vRealize Suite licensing.

vRealize Suite 2017 – What’s new?

vRealize Suite 2017 contains the latest versions of all the products that are in the suite. Let’s have a closer look on what’s new in vRealize Suite 2017.

Improved container support

vRealize Suite comes with improved container support based on VMware’s Admiral engine. Admiral is a scalable and lightweight container management platform and integral part of vRealize Automation. Currently Admiral only supports the Docker engine. Other container management platforms like Kubernetes are currently not supported by Admiral and/or vRealize Automation.

Improved Azure support

Microsoft Azure is supported as a native endpoint since vRealize Automation 7.2. A shortcoming of this endpoint was the lack of support for automated application deployment leveraging application services. With the latest update to vRealize Automation/Suite application deployment is now supported for virtual machines deployed through the Azure endpoint.

vRealize Operations now uses the clarity interface

With version 6.6 vRealize Operations now supports the Clarity interface. Project Clarity is an open source design system that brings together UX guidelines, an HTML/CSS framework, and Angular components. Most of VMware’s management interfaces are based on clarity, since 6.6 vRealize Operations also leverages this design system.

Improved NSX support

The integration options for NSX, VMware’s Software Defined Networking solution, with the vRealize Suite improved in the 2017 version. More (almost all) NSX components can now be managed, configured and inserted into blueprint in the vRealize Automation design canvas.

vRealize Suite, only for managing VMware solutions?

Certainly not! But, from my personal experience…Most customers have a VMware vSphere installed base and choose for vRealize Suite as a next step in their cloud/virtualization journey. Next to VMware vSphere, vRealize Automation for example supports Microsoft Hyper-V/SCVMM, Amazon EC2, Azure Virtual Machines, OpenStack deployments and more. For a full overview check the vRealize Automation Support Matrix.

On top of this vRealize Automation & Orchestration, the core solutions for the CMP functionality, offer integrations for a broad variety of solutions. Some integrations are available OOTB (for example with InfoBlox or Active Directory), others require a plugin or in some cases some (custom) workflow development. Plugins are provided by VMware, 3rd party companies or the community. Plugins are sometimes available for free and sometimes paid. All different options are included in the comparison, however we choose to evaluate a certain feature as “not supported” if a paid plugin is required. At the end, the functionality is not supported by the product without extra cost. For an overview of available plugins for vRealize Automation and Orchestrator check VMware’s marketplace at marketplace.vmware.com. The marketplace is also the resource where your find management packs and content packs for vRealize Operations and LogInsight. With these packs you can extent these solutions with support for a variety of 3rd party platforms and solutions.

For now I hope I’ve provided you with some background info on vRealize Suite 2017! Don’t wait now, and go straight to the Cloud Management Platform comparison to see how vRealize Suite and the other solutions compare.

Viktor van den Berg – WhatMatrix Community Consultant (CMP) 

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Embotics Introduces Enhanced Cloud Governance and Cost Optimization Capabilities https://www.whatmatrix.com/portal/embotics-introduces-enhanced-cloud-governance-cost-optimization-capabilities/ https://www.whatmatrix.com/portal/embotics-introduces-enhanced-cloud-governance-cost-optimization-capabilities/#respond Wed, 18 Oct 2017 18:25:23 +0000 https://www.whatmatrix.com/blog/?p=4722 Embotics vCommander has been updated to version 6.1 and it went straight into the top 3 of our CMP comparison after being evaluated by our CMP team.  vCommander leverages a set of multi-hypervisor virtualization and cloud management capabilities to allow organizations build and implement the framework, DevOps processes, automation, policies, and cloud governance that can result in […]

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Embotics vCommander has been updated to version 6.1 and it went straight into the top 3 of our CMP comparison after being evaluated by our CMP team.  vCommander leverages a set of multi-hypervisor virtualization and cloud management capabilities to allow organizations build and implement the framework, DevOps processes, automation, policies, and cloud governance that can result in an optimized hybrid cloud environment.

 

 

Each vendor solution is a unique blend of features and focus.  At WhatMatrix, our comparisons exist to help users sort through product differences to find the product that is right for them.
With Cloud Management Platforms, the use cases range from managing public and private clouds, tracking costs, enabling user self-service, security and governance, and more.
For the ones less familiar with vCommander it is worth pointing out that Embotics historically focused on operational simplicity when comparing it against competitive products like VMware vRealize (which arguably can be a “handful” when it comes to implementation and configuration effort). 
With vCommander 6.x Embotics retained simplicity but significantly enhanced orchestration, governance and cost management capabilities of its flagship product. It provides customers with enhanced hybrid cloud orchestration combined with an easy-to-use portal for end user self-service allowing organizations, to intelligently select and provision cloud resources and track and report on spending. 

CMP 2.0

In addition Embotics started to articulate their vision of managing hybrid clouds, containers and DevOps referred to as CMP 2.0.  Recognizing that containers and microservices are bringing more flexibility and agility to infrastructure provisioning, they are focussed on “making containers first class citizens”. This infrastructure-as-code approach has helped them move into the top of our CMP rankings.

Check out our updated rating criteria and the wide range of vendor solutions in our latest cloud management platform comparison and find the CMP solution that’s right for you.

What’s New with vCommander 6.1

The move toward cloud-centric business applications requires easy access to cloud resources with consistent governance and cost optimization irrespective of the underlying cloud technology. vCommander 6.1 aims to provide this easy access, while at the same time ensuring that IT maintains control and enforce company policies.

Here are the top new vCommander features:

  • Improved Cloud Governance and Cost Optimization: This includes AWS Reserved Instance purchase recommendations; policy-based AWS tag enforcement to ensure public cloud instances are properly tracked; power scheduling recommendations for VMs and instances based on custom attributes or AWS tags; consolidated cost visibility across an enterprise’s private and public cloud consumption, and more.
  • Enhanced Waste Identification Capabilities: Built on the foundation of Embotics’ existing cost analysis, reporting, and rightsizing capabilities, vCommander 6.1 adds innovative new capabilities that help organizations better identify network waste by streamlining collaboration between different stakeholders and implementing changes through automated action. By allowing for existing consumption models to continue, vCommander provides immediate value to IT, Engineering, and DevOps organizations, while also providing overlay value in existing brownfield environments.

 

  • New Cloud Administrator Capabilities & Updated HTML5 End-User Interface: Within minutes, IT administrators can have a hybrid cloud single pane-of-glass and rapidly create a catalog of services on top of VMware, Hyper-V, AWS and/or Microsoft Azure. Users can procure cross-vendor IaaS and PaaS resources through an easy-to-use self-service portal that automates and orchestrates behind the scenes lifecycle processes for fast delivery, while enforcing corporate policies and governance.

 

  • Updated User Experience: vCommander 6.1 provides a fully updated and modern self-service user experience, and adds support for Azure ARM template deployments, furthering vCommander’s capabilities to support infrastructure-as-code and modern application deployment methods.

Check out the vCommander release notes for all product details and check out additional resources around the CMP 2.0 vision HERE

Access the online CMP comparison HERE

Ephraim Baron – Category Consultant Cloud Management Platforms 

 

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Red Hat CloudForms – Powerful Cloud Automation (Not Just for Developers) https://www.whatmatrix.com/portal/red-hat-cloudforms-powerful-cloud-automation-not-just-developers/ https://www.whatmatrix.com/portal/red-hat-cloudforms-powerful-cloud-automation-not-just-developers/#respond Wed, 18 Oct 2017 16:45:57 +0000 https://www.whatmatrix.com/blog/?p=4695 Looking back at the various releases of virtualization and cloud management applications that we have evaluated, we believe Red Hat has come a long way. As a company they have focused on adjusting to evolving market demands and changing perception of “open-source” in the industry. From our recent evaluations of our Red Hat’s virtualization platform capabilities and Red Hat’s Cloud Management […]

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Looking back at the various releases of virtualization and cloud management applications that we have evaluated, we believe Red Hat has come a long way. As a company they have focused on adjusting to evolving market demands and changing perception of “open-source” in the industry. From our recent evaluations of our Red Hat’s virtualization platform capabilities and Red Hat’s Cloud Management Suite we believe the company is headed in the right direction.

Based on the open source ManageIQ project, CloudForms is Red Hat’s multi-cloud management platform. It enables policy-controlled self-service for consumers of IT services, designed to address the usual aspects of resource management, governance / compliance, financial controls, capacity planning and more.
With its 4.5 release, CloudForms has jumped 3 places in our evaluation and breaks into the top tier of CMP solutions, tying for the 4th spot! 
Access the online CMP comparison (with 100+ evaluation points) HERE

What’s New?

Arguably the key enhancements with the 4.5 release is the introduction of ‘Ansible Automation Inside’, providing the simple but powerful ‘human readable’ automation language now directly from within CloudForms. This is designed to make CloudForms more easily deployable across an organization in various scenarios and provide users with simple integration points for the automation of their service management.

The release also features several enhancements to its multi-cloud management capability, including a new storage provider for Amazon Web Services, Synchronization of AWS and CloudForms tags, AWS CloudWatch event collection, as well as enhancements to OpenStack management (details below). 

Providing additional management capabilities for the OpenShift Container Platform was another focus area for the release. The product now offers visualization of live ad hoc metrics, relationships between containers and persistent storage, and new management roles for container operators and platform storage.

[block]5[/block]Ansible Automation Inside

Ansible Automation is leveraged within Red Hat CloudForms to provide automation Playbooks for Service, Policy and Alert actions. 

  • Services allow a Playbook to back a CloudForms service catalog item.
  • Control Actions mean that CloudForms policies can execute Playbooks as actions based on events from providers.
  • Control Alerts set a Playbook to launch prompted by a CloudForms alert. 

Amazon AWS

Red Hat CloudForms adds Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) persistent block storage volumes for use with Amazon EC2 instances to CloudForms. This includes breaking out AWS storage as its own provider, with the following capabilities:

  • Inventory: Add a new Amazon EBS provider as part of an Amazon EC2 account with the ability to see the inventory, including all volumes associated to the Amazon EC2 account
  • Provisioning: Ability to provision EBS volumes in an Amazon EC2 account.

This release also adds AWS CloudWatch event integration, with the ability to react to CloudWatch events from Red Hat CloudForms.

OpenShift Container Platform

  • Live ad-hoc metrics: CloudForms can query Heapster metrics from the user interface, and graph metrics from the last Hawkular collection.
  • Inventory update: CloudForms shows relationships between containers and persistent volumes.
  • Roles: Operator and Administrator roles have been added for container management.
  • Dashboard widgets and reporting: CloudForms includes OpenShift Container Platform dashboard widgets, and enhanced reporting out of the box.
  • SSL support is included to enable connecting to OpenShift Container Platform providers more securely. 

OpenStack Cloud

  • Tenant and user mapping: Tenant to object relationships (network and storage) are retained when syncing tenants between OpenStack and CloudForms.
  • Tasks and notifications: OpenStack day two operations tasks are shown in the Tasks area of the user interface, while asynchronous tasks use notifications.
  • Replacement of Ceilometer: Ceilometer’s eventing technology is replaced by Panko.
  • Networking: The inventory of OpenStack floating IPs are now collected and updated in the VMDB.

Middleware Management

  • Ability to limit Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform server operations
  • Ability to show an event when a new JBoss EAP server is connected
  • Ability to show relationships in JBoss EAP server summary page and in Topology view, if CloudForms is monitoring OpenShift and JBoss EAP servers.
  • SSL support included to connect the middleware provider.

Red Hat Virtualization

  • SSL/TLS support is included to enable connecting to Red Hat Virtualization providers more securely.

You can find all details in the Red Hat CloudForms 4.5 release notes here. You can also check out the detailed evaluation and print your free report in our updated CMP comparison.

We believe that with CloudForms 4.5, Red Hat has improved the flexibility and functionality of its multi-cloud management, helping to provide end users with a more effective policy-controlled lifecycle management solution for their IT resources. We’re looking forward to the 4.6 release!

WhatMatrix CMP Category Consultant – Ephraim Baron

Comments, suggestions and contributions to this independent CMP comparison are as always welcome – simply drop us a mail or get in touch via twitter or linkedin

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Cisco CloudCenter Solidifies Place as leading CMP Solution https://www.whatmatrix.com/portal/cisco-cloudcenter-solidifies-place-leading-cmp-solution/ https://www.whatmatrix.com/portal/cisco-cloudcenter-solidifies-place-leading-cmp-solution/#respond Wed, 18 Oct 2017 07:24:34 +0000 https://www.whatmatrix.com/blog/?p=4667 Today we have published the latest updates to the Cisco CloudCenter evaluation, reflecting the most recent capabilities of its 4.8.x release. It is also the first product evaluation that we publicly disclose after our CMP taxonomy update documented in detail here. Cisco CloudCenter has made significant progress since the acquisition of CliQr almost exactly 18 […]

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Today we have published the latest updates to the Cisco CloudCenter evaluation, reflecting the most recent capabilities of its 4.8.x release. It is also the first product evaluation that we publicly disclose after our CMP taxonomy update documented in detail here.
Cisco CloudCenter has made significant progress since the acquisition of CliQr almost exactly 18 months ago – broadening the scope of workloads that can be managed by CloudCenter, extending what users can do via self-service actions, improving both user self-service capabilities and central IT control.

Cisco managed to decrease the gap to the the highest scoring product to a 10% window in our latest evaluation, underlining the increase in capability as well as the increasing maturity of CMP market itself.
In order to reflect the evolving capabilities of the CMP landscape the WhatMatrix team reviewed and incorporated extensive community feedback from various sources and updated the entire taxonomy for the CMP evaluation structure. We want to thank all involved for their help (users, consultants and vendors alike!) – you can review all changes to the agnostic evaluation criteria in detail here.

Looking ahead … what’s to come in 4.8.2?

One forward-looking ‘nugget’ for our curious readers – Cisco is about to release version 4.8.2. of CloudCenter … what can you look forward to?
The new version will support IPv6, has capacity management features, a new ServiceNow integration (which includes updating the CMDB), and the ability to create a policy to automatically suspend applications during non-working hours, then turn them back on before working hours – nice!

In addition, Cisco has just concluded some massive scalability and performance testing in their private clouds and in AWS where they:

1. were able to successfully deploy massive deployments (1000 workload nodes) in under an hour
2. run over 18,000 creation/destruction runs in 15 hours, through a churn test–with Zero failed deployments

Impressive …

What’s New with 4.8.1

This is a list of of added capabilities in 4.8.1 – if you haven’t reviewed the updates with 4.8 check this article out first.

  • vCD & Google Cloud
    • Brownfield VMs can now be imported from VMware vCD to for management from the CloudCenter platform.
    • Additional support for VM Actions Attach Volume and Detach Volume.
    • Support for the vmnaming and ipam callouts
    • Multiple NIC support allows you to specify the number of NICs to assign to the VM by adding the number in the image definition.

      (Google Cloud only): Google cloud instances display one of the following values for the volume Type attribute: Standard Persistent Disk, SSD Persistent Disk, and Local SSD Scratch disk. See Multiple Volumes for additional context.

  • Azure RM:
    • Additional support for Microsoft Azure Government regions (US Gov Iowa/Virginia)
    • The CloudCenter platform does not support managed disk and custom images for these regions.
  • New Images provided by Cisco: Application VM (worker) images:
    • Windows 2016 support for AWS, VMware, AzureRM, OpenStack and SoftLayer.
    • Ubuntu 14 support for VMware and OpenStack.

Above are only the major enhancements (Cloud interoperability and functionality), see all details in the release notes here magyargenerikus.com.
There was also a 4.8.1.1 maintenance update released in Sep (no significant new functionality enhancements)

We also want to take the opportunity to give a specific shout-out to Zack Kielich from Cisco for not only challenging us in various places but engaging in discussions that ultimately helped us to harden our evaluation criteria and fine-tune our agnostic evaluation method! Outstanding – thank you!

Want to see the new functionality added in 4.8 in action? Check out Zack’s demo highlights video here:

WhatMatrix Product Consultant – Ronald Van Vugt

WhatMatrix Category Consultant – Ephraim Baron

 

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