Google is finally expanding the reach of its Anthos hybrid-cloud platform into competing clouds with an initial multi-cloud push into Amazon Web Services (AWS) and plans to tap into Microsoft Azure.
Anthos is a Kubernetes-based platform that is fully managed by Google and allows users to manage their data and applications in an on-premises environment or across cloud platforms from rivals like AWS and Microsoft. It was initially announced at Google’s Cloud Next event in 2018 — when it was labeled Cloud Services Platform — and formally launched at last year’s event.
Jennifer Lin, VP of product management at Google, explained that it has been working with a number of customers using a “very tight feedback loop” on using Anthos to manage workloads running on AWS. She noted that work began with the Anthos 1.0 release last year, and has culminated with the general availability launch today.
“We had many customers at that point tell us that they wanted to start with the hybrid and then they wanted to bring up workloads that currently sit in AWS,” she said.
This cross-cloud management is possible because of the Kubernetes layer that both underpins Anthos and has become a common infrastructure substrate option across nearly all cloud platforms.
“It all works because Kubernetes has built an API surface that’s vendor agnostic,” Lin said. “So when we go to AWS we treat them essentially like an infrastructure layer. And many of our customers are either running Kubernetes on (AWS Elastic Compute Cloud) or they’re running it you know in on (AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service), but they want a more solid platform.”
And Microsoft Azure is next.
“We have been working with many customers that also have an Azure footprint, and that is not GA yet but it’s in preview and we’ve been continuing to iterate with customers in the Azure environment,” Lin said.
