12 Best Multi-Cloud Management Tools that Help Reduce Costs
Multi-cloud management tools can help businesses regain control over their cloud spending. We will explore the hidden costs of multi-cloud strategies and shed light on the role of multi-cloud management tools in reducing business expenses.
When it comes to the cloud, businesses always want the best of all worlds. That’s why multi-cloud strategies have gained immense popularity in recent years. By leveraging multiple cloud service providers, companies can benefit from increased flexibility, improved performance, and enhanced resilience. However, the allure of multi-cloud environments can quickly give way to unexpected challenges.
In pursuing agility and innovation, many organizations adopt multi-cloud architectures without fully realizing their potential cost implications. The complexity of managing multiple cloud providers can lead to inefficiencies, redundant resources, and unnecessary expenses. It is estimated that 30% of all cloud spending goes to waste.
That’s where multi-cloud management tools come into play, helping businesses regain control over their cloud spending. In this article, we will explore the hidden costs of multi-cloud strategies and shed light on the role of multi-cloud management tools in reducing expenses.
The Cost Challenges of Implementing a Multi-Cloud Strategy
Some standard hidden costs organizations may need to pay more attention to include the following:
- Underutilized resources: With multiple cloud providers, it becomes difficult to optimize resource allocation. Idle or underutilized resources across different clouds can accumulate costs without delivering value.
- Data egress fees: Transferring data between cloud providers or moving data out of the cloud can incur additional charges, known as data egress fees. These fees can quickly add up and impact overall cost management.
- Downtime: Multi-cloud environments introduce higher complexity, increasing the risk of system downtime. Unplanned downtime not only affects business continuity but also results in financial losses.
What is a Multi-Cloud Management Tool?
A multi-cloud management tool is a software solution designed to simplify and streamline the management of multiple cloud environments. It provides a centralized platform to monitor, optimize, and control cloud resources across various providers.
The tool typically offers the following benefits:
- Cost optimization: Multi-cloud management tools help identify underutilized resources, optimize resource allocation, and provide insights to reduce cloud costs.
- Simplified governance: These tools enable consistent governance policies and security measures across cloud providers, ensuring regulatory compliance and data protection.
Key Features to Look for in a Multi-Cloud Management Tool
When choosing a multi-cloud management tool, key features can impact your ability to manage costs and optimize your multi-cloud environment. Here are some critical factors to look for:
- Scalability: Ensure the tool offers on-demand scalability to accommodate your organization’s growth and changing needs.
- Cost reduction: Look for a tool that allows you to pay for your consumption, optimizing cost efficiency and eliminating unnecessary expenses.
- Multi-region availability: Consider tools like Control Plane that provide ultra-low latency and 99.999% availability in all regions, connecting users to their nearest servers for optimal performance.
- Cloud providers: Determine whether the tool supports all cloud providers or only a limited selection, depending on your multi-cloud strategy.
- Security and regulatory compliance: Ensure the tool provides robust security features and helps you maintain regulatory compliance across all cloud environments.
- Ease of use: Look for an intuitive, user-friendly interface that simplifies managing and monitoring your multi-cloud infrastructure.
12 Top Multi-Cloud Management Tools that Help Reduce Costs
1. Nutanix NCM Cost Governance
Nutanix NCM Cost Governance provides comprehensive visibility into cloud consumption, offering cloud consumption reports that include cost optimization recommendations and enabling you to set budget alerts so you won’t overspend. Its machine-learning technology is also used to identify unusual spending patterns automatically. It supports Google Cloud, Azure, and AWS.
Best for companies focused solely on cost savings.
“Nutanix is very super easy to configure. Stability has also been key for us, as many other HCI players are unpredictable regarding stability. The console is not the most user-friendly, so it can sometimes be difficult to understand the underlying data.”
2. Control Plane
Control Plane is a robust platform that enables cost reduction through its serverless mode and cloud repatriation. Aside from allowing users to benefit from any AWS, GCP, and Azure cloud services, it automatically scales containerized applications based on demand, and users only pay for the computing they use, saving them up to 70% of cloud computing costs. Plus, with its cloud repatriation function, users can move their workloads anywhere (off-cloud and on-premises) to save more money and still be able to consume any cloud service they want.
Best for cloud-based companies looking to simplify their software production and reduce costs.
“We’ve reduced our AWS spend by 75% using Control Plane. We spend less for compute because we can scale to zero with Capacity AI, but the big savings is that with Control Plane, many of the extras we had to pay for in AWS are built in for free.”
3. Flexera
Flexera offers a cost optimization dashboard that lets users get a complete picture of all their cloud costs. With its robust feature set, including cost forecasting, resource management, and policy enforcement, Flexera equips organizations with the tools to optimize cloud expenses, streamline governance procedures, and ensure compliance with industry regulations.
Best for businesses of all sizes looking to streamline governance practices.
“Discovery-wise, the product does a good job with asset discovery pulling the data from the beacons and the agents installed or by getting the data from importing it. The SaaS manager is not mature yet; many features still need more development, especially the dashboards and the customization of the metrics and filters.”
4. OpenStack
OpenStack is an open-source platform that enables self-service infrastructure and resource management in a multi-cloud environment. It encompasses essential functionalities such as orchestration, networking, and storage management, providing users with a flexible and scalable solution for deploying and managing cloud resources.
Best for companies looking for a versatile and scalable platform
“OpenStack is a great open-source platform for cloud solutions. Its open source way gives more options for a customized service. Although, it has other great features like database management.”
5. CloudZero
CloudZero offers real-time cost intelligence and optimization recommendations. With a focus on eliminating wasteful spending, this platform helps businesses identify cost drivers and take proactive measures to optimize their cloud expenses. You can allocate your spending using different tags, metadata, and telemetry to track it more efficiently, and your engineers are updated with a rundown of their projects’ costs.
Best for companies looking to enhance financial visibility across providers.
“Monthly cost reviews with the CloudZero team have helped us optimize cost across our AWS account. We also utilize the Cost anomaly alerts directly in Slack, giving more clarity when something has changed our engineering team. The ability to tag cost more directly to projects allows us to determine the ROI of specific projects much easier and more accurately than what AWS offers.”
6. CloudSphere
CloudSphere enables improved visibility of your IT infrastructure, giving you a complete picture of your cyber assets. Its robust visualization capabilities serve various use cases. They can help businesses migrate to the cloud more efficiently while keeping track of the costs and optimizing cloud usage. Plus, it can help teams spot security vulnerabilities and understand and mitigate their risks in real time.
Best for enterprises migrating to the cloud.
Cloudsphare may be deployed easily on a cloud-based platform that delivers optimal performance, internal software security, and improved sustainability. For Cloud Migration, we mainly use this program. A health analysis of the whole Information portfolio, which reveals how your hardware, apps, and workloads are integrated, is crucial in any cloud migration.
7. Morpheus Data
Morpheus Data offers cost analytics, provisioning automation, and resource optimization to enhance cloud infrastructure management. With workload orchestration capabilities, Morpheus Data allows users to deploy and manage workloads across multiple cloud environments efficiently. Additionally, Morpheus Data offers policy-driven governance, allowing users to enforce compliance and security policies across their multi-cloud infrastructure.
Best for companies looking to improve compliance.
“We utilize Morpheus Data as our go-to CMP to manage our instances deployed in the Amazon Web Services platform. It provides plenty of functionalities, making it too easy to cope with the servers behind Elastic Load Balancers & Network Load Balancers.”
8. IBM MultiCloud Manager
IBM MultiCloud Manager streamlines the management of multi-cloud environments. With its workload placement capabilities, organizations can efficiently distribute workloads across multiple cloud platforms based on specific requirements and performance considerations.
Best for organizations seeking a unified platform to manage multi-cloud environments.
“The cloud manager is a very useful tool for daily use. It has many features that make handling and managing cloud services easier. It was easy to integrate into our company, and the management and maintenance were satisfactory.”
9. Cloudify
Cloudify is an open-source multi-cloud orchestration platform that provides automated provisioning, resource optimization, and cost-tracking capabilities. The platform streamlines and simplifies complex cloud management tasks. Its notable features include workflow automation, policy-based governance, and multi-cloud visibility.
Best for companies looking for automated provisioning.
“I really enjoyed the possibility of automating the deployment of IT appliances so easily. It is also a great way to scale up IT environments in a fast way. It is also one of the few platforms that supports TOSCA templates. One more thing that I liked of Cloudify is that it is open source! Cloudify’s Community Edition is a great tool to start automating IT services.”
10. Snow Software
Snow Software enables you to efficiently manage your IT environment, including all software assets and cloud infrastructure. This cloud-native platform helps enterprises unify their costs across domains into a single, easy-to-use dashboard. It also offers automated monitoring and alerting capabilities to improve performance and minimize downtime.
Best for companies that work on-prem and in the cloud.
“Snow’s powerful reporting helped us be always aware of our compliance for years and perform many audits. We gained visibility of used licenses and saved much money by redistributing unused licenses.”
11. VMware CloudHealth
VMware CloudHealth serves three main use cases: improved financial visibility, operational efficiency in the cloud, and enhanced security and regulatory compliance. With this platform, enterprises can create custom policies for their cloud operations, gain visibility into how each department drives what cloud costs and how they use resources and analyze consumption trends.
Best for companies looking to improve their cloud management strategy.
“Overall, it is an amazing platform. In addition to streamlining and automating regular cloud operations, CloudHeath has made it easy for us to build unique policies for the cloud. As a result, our decision-making process is streamlined, and risk is reduced, while CloudHealth’s detailed visibility enables continuous cloud consumption monitoring and performance monitoring, leading to more precise capacity planning.”
12. CloudBolt
CloudBolt enables businesses to streamline cloud management, optimize costs, and enhance self-service capabilities. With CloudBolt, users gain access to cost optimization tools that allow them to track and control cloud expenditures effectively. The platform also offers resource orchestration capabilities, allowing for seamless management of workloads across different cloud environments.
Best for companies looking to centralize their cloud management processes.
“The CloudBolt Cost and Security Management Platform is an effective, customizable, multi-cloud capable that enables cloud estate governance. This platform allows for flexible cost control and management, cost optimization recommendations, and security/compliance management.”
Unlock cost savings and efficiency
Without the proper tools, multi-cloud strategies can quickly lead to hidden costs and complexity that impact your bottom line. And as your business expands, you can’t do everything yourself. For instance, gaining complete visibility into your cloud activity is a great starting point to understand where your cloud costs are coming from.
Plus, choosing a tool that enables you to move your workloads anywhere and still benefit from the cloud resources you want gives you the flexibility you need to save costs when you need it the most.
Sign up to Control Plane to see how you can reduce cloud computing costs and boost your performance and time to market.