Cloud Management

Platform Buyer’s Guide

A U T H O R : M A R I E B U R K E , C L O U D H E A LT H B Y V M W A R E

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

3 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

4 INTRODUCTION TO CLOUD MANAGEMENT

5 GENERAL REQUIREMENTS

5 FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS

9 SERVICES AND SUPPORT REQUREMENTS

9 SECURIT Y REQUIREMENTS

10 PRICING STRUCTURE

10 CONCLUSION

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Public cloud adoption—and more specifically multicloud

adoption—is ramping up as enterprises seek improved
agility, faster time to market, and decreased risk. Gartner
Research Inc. predicts that by 2022, about 75% of enterprise
customers using cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS)
will adopt a deliberate multicloud strategy, up from 49% in
2017.1 Conversely, many businesses unexpectedly discover
that their environment is multicloud, and must then face
the challenge of retrofitting a strategy that accommodates
multiple public clouds.

As a result, there’s an increasing need for enterprises to

leverage a cloud management platform to optimize, secure,
and govern their public cloud or multicloud infrastructure.
Prospective buyers often focus on platform functionality
and pricing when making purchasing decisions, but we
recommend buyers also consider how stable a vendor is in
the market and if they have an account team dedicated to
their success before investing in a platform.

1 Source: Gartner, Comparing Multicloud Management and Governance Approaches, Alan White, 6 March 2019.

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INTRODUCTION TO CLOUD MANAGEMENT

Enterprises worldwide are making increasingly large investments in public

cloud infrastructure to benefit from the promises of improved agility,
faster time to market, and decreased risk. Over the past decade, a new
market was formed to help customers better manage, optimize, and
govern their cloud environments across the public, private, and hybrid
clouds. Cloud Management Platforms (CMPs) help enterprises optimize,
secure, and govern their cloud infrastructure.

The CMP market is comprised of cloud service provider’s native tools,

in-house and custom-built solutions, as well as third-party management
solutions. Each of these offerings has their pros and cons, which buyers
need to weigh in their decision making process. Cloud service provider’s
native tools are commonly provided for free or bundled as part of a
support package. These tools can be sufficient for a single business unit
or team, but they commonly don’t scale well across a large number of
accounts or business units, and typically have a limited functionality set.
In-house solutions are often designed to support business-specific use
cases and are ideal for a single business unit or team. The downside is
these tools are expensive to build and maintain from a cost and personnel
resource perspective, and they often cannot accommodate for rapid
growth. Third-party solutions are considered to be the most trusted
and robust solutions, especially for enterprises that have a multicloud
environment, because they’re not solely influenced by or focused on one
cloud provider. The number of third-party solutions in the market however
can make choosing a CMP more difficult, as there are born-in-the-cloud
solutions as well as traditional on-premises solutions that are expanding
into the space.

As the market continues to evolve and consolidate, prospective buyers

need to thoroughly evaluate vendors to make informed purchasing
decisions. In this buyer’s guide, we’ll breakdown the key requirements that
enterprises need to look for when buying a cloud management platform.

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GENERAL REQUIREMENTS Sample General
Requirements:
When evaluating prospective cloud management platforms, many
enterprises want to gather background information on the company
• Include (3) publicly
providing the product or service in addition to how the solution can meet referenceable customers
their technical needs. Common questions are related to the number of using your solution with links
to case studies.
customers, financial stability of the company, product vision, market
share, and partner ecosystem. Enterprises are also becoming increasingly • List your top (3) competitors
interested in an organization’s cultural values, such as their diversity and and how you differentiate
from them.
sustainability initiatives. Mainly, the purpose of these general requirements
is to not only help verify the stability of the product, but to find a company • Describe your company’s
that prizes the same values as your own. profitability and financial
position?

FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS

Functional Requirements, also referred to as Technical Requirements,

are the core focus when buying a product. Categories within functional
requirements will vary based on each organization’s unique business
needs, however the ones included in this buyer’s guide are functional
requirements that most organizations need in order to meet their business
objectives.
Sample Cloud
Environments
CLOUD E NVIRONME NTS SUPPORTE D Supported:

• Cloud Provider Agnostic:

Does the cloud management
There are several reasons you may be interested in multicloud or hybrid solution support multiple
cloud support, including the ability to avoid vendor lock-in, take advantage public clouds, or just one?
To what depth does it
of the best and most cost effective services from each cloud provider, or support each of the cloud
because your business units are already using different clouds and are environments?

then forced into a multicloud environment.

• Migration: Does the solution
assist with on-premises to
cloud migrations?

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ADMINISTR ATION

Sample Administrative
The administration category focuses on access control and reporting Requirements
capabilities. Enterprises want to be able to limit the visibility and access
• Role-Based Access Control:
employees have to different areas of the cloud management platform that Does the product allow
fall outside of their specific job requirements.. Being able to distinguish enterprises to limit the
visibility and access to
read-only users from administrators (and any role in between) is an different areas of the
important security measure. It’s recommended that buyers look for a cloud platform?

management platform that has out-of-the-box user roles with the ability
• Business Groupings: Can
to further customize those roles, such as toggling specific functionality you visualize information by
on and off, to ensure user permissions fit the unique usage needs of your business unit, application,
environment, etc.?
teams.
• Reporting and Analytics:
Are reports and dashboards
customizable?
From there,organizations need to be able to visualize data by business
groups such as cost center, environment, or line of business. This can be
done through tagging, naming conventions, resource groups, or leveraging
other metadata. It’s important to note that in many cases the cloud
management platforms will have unique business grouping systems that
Sample Financial
won’t be restricted to the data from the cloud provider. These business Management and
groups should be pervasive to give users the ability to customize reporting Cost Optimization
and dashboards. Requirements

• Budget Alerting and

Forecasting: Does the solution
FINANCIAL MANAG E ME NT AND COST OP TIMI Z ATION provide the ability to monitor
your budget and create
forecast projections?

Visibility into cost is the initial phase of cloud management, in which

• Reservation Management:
organization’s are looking to understand their cloud spend, forecast based Can the product manage
on historical data, and make budgets more accurate and predictable. Reserved Instance (RI)
purchases and recommend
Many organizations are performing chargeback and showback to map modifications?
actual charges by line of business or groupings as specified for cost
and billing validation. Once organization’s begin driving accountability
throughout the business, they can extend beyond cost management
to cost optimization. For cost optimization, the CMP should be able to
identify opportunities to reduce cloud spend, by managing cloud provider
pricing discounts such as Reserved Instances. Look for a solution that
supports reservation offerings across the leading cloud providers as well
as assists with reservation purchase planning, monitor ongoing utilization,
and automate modifications or exchanges.

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RESOURCE UTILI Z ATION

Sample Resource
Many organizations are deploying resources so quickly that it can be easy Utilization Requirements
for cloud cost and usage to spin out of control. The best way to eliminate • Does the solution let you
costs associated with underutilized cloud resources and improve efficiency create custom scoring
mechanisms to alter the
is for organizations to implement rightsizing into their cloud management rightsizing recommendations?
practices. In order to rightsize, organizations must analyze utilization and
performance against key metrics, determine if the resources meet the • Does the solution support
rightsizing for both
requirements for the workload, and then take the appropriate actions Infrastructure-as-a-Service
based on their business knowledge. Look for a CMP that offers actionable (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-
Service (PaaS).
rightsizing recommendations to help you maximize asset utilization while
maintaining performance and availability.

G OVE RNANCE AND AUTOMATION

Sample Governance and

Automation Requirements
To effectively manage a scaling cloud environment, it’s essential to
• Does the solution have the
implement governance policies to drive consistent best practices across ability to create policies based
your organization. Cloud management platforms should allow you on custom criteria?
to configure customizable policies across cost, usage, performance,
• Does the solution have
configuration, and more. Not only will these policies drive consistency, the ability to execute
but they’ll also help your staff reclaim time to work on more critical tasks. actions automatically? Can
authorizers be configured to
Look for a CMP that lets you enable automated actions such as starting, approve actions?
stopping, and terminating infrastructure. In some cases, organizations are
hesitant to automate infrastructure changes—and that’s okay. Find a CMP • Can the policies be used
to identify anomalies (cost
that can set approval workflows with authorizers for the policies. spikes, missing tags, etc.)?

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S ECURIT Y AND COMPLIANCE

Sample Security and

Improving security is a major driver for many organizations moving to the Compliance Requirements
cloud, but in a rapidly evolving multicloud environment, you must keep up
with changes that might impact your security posture. When it comes to
• Can the platform alert on
security, the faster you know about a threat, the faster you can mitigate inactive users (e.g. IAM user
it, which often means less damage. This is why you need a CMP that with access keys that are not
being used)
can proactively alert on potential security issues and give you real-time
visibility. Look for a platform that assesses your multicloud environment • Can the platform identify
against industry best practices and frameworks, such as the Center for relationships between cloud
objects and services?
Internet Security (CIS) Benchmarks. to ensure security and compliance
across identity and access management, logging and monitoring, • Are violations ranked
networking, and more. according to severity?
Can this be customized?

API AND INTEG R ATION S

Your cloud management platform should provide programmatic access

to platform functionality using REST-based arguments, in addition to Sample API and
the web-based UI. Access to the API and supporting documentation Integration Requirements
should also be made available to users of the platform. Bonus points if the
solution can integrate with tools that you already use to obtain additional
• Can the tool support 3rd party
information on workloads. This includes performance management, integrations? Are supported
configuration management, and security management tools. integrations available out-of-
the-box or for an additional
fee?

• What functionality is available

via API? Provide a link to your
API documentation.

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SERVICES AND SUPPORT REQUIREMENTS Sample Services and
Support Requirements
While the functional requirements are the core focus area for buyers, services
• How often do you release
and support cannot be overlooked. This area can often be a game changer, as new or updated product
some enterprises may require strict SLAs or be interested in dedicated personnel enhancements? How are
these communicated?
resources for implementation and training.
• Do you provide a dedicated
account team for ongoing
IMPLE ME NTATION support?

Purchasing a platform or solution without a documented onboarding process

is risky. What if you commit to an annual contract for a solution and then never
learn how to use it? That means you’re wasting money that could have been spent
elsewhere. During your evaluation process, look for a solution that provides a
comprehensive onboarding process and access to a dedicated customer success
team. A built-out onboarding process will have documentation, quarterly touch
points, and more.

TR AINING

Everyone learns in different ways, and we’re sure the prospective users of a
cloud management platform at your organization will inquire about training
opportunities. Look for a solution with a variety of training options tailored to
specific types of users, such as on-demand videos, instructor-led training, help
documentation, and product certification opportunities.

S L AS

Sample Security
What happens if a problem occurs outside of regular business hours? If your Requirements
organization requires dedicated SLAs, you should communicate this information
with vendors to see if they can meet your requirements. Look for a solution that • Can you demonstrate
compliance with security
provides phone and email support with guaranteed response times for issues regulations, laws and
based on severity. legislation, as applicable (e.g.
SOX, HIPPA, GDPR, etc.)?

• How long is customer

data stored on the vendor
system(s)?

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SECURITY REQUIREMENTS

Security Requirements in this section are not to be confused with Security

and Compliance found within Functional Requirements. In this case,
enterprises are interested in the security architecture of the company
and product, rather than how the cloud management platform can
monitor the organization’s security posture. This is where enterprises may
inquire about business continuity and disaster recovery, the flow of data,
encryption, access privileges, third-party attestations such as SOC2,
and so forth. Here you must thoroughly evaluate the CMP and validate
whether or not they meet your organization’s security requirements.

PRICING STRUCTURE

Pricing structures can be complex and will most likely vary by each
cloud management platform. Some may be priced per module, based
on percentage of cloud spend, or at a flat rate. Some vendors require a
12-month upfront prepay while others give you the option to pay as you
go, month by month. If the vendor has pricing packages that only includes
certain features, which features are included? We recommend looking for
a simple variable rate based on a percentage of your cloud spend, with all
core features included.

CONCLUSION

Most cloud management platforms make claims about cost management,

governance, and security, but not all can deliver functionality of the same
caliber. Done properly, cloud management platforms offer a way for
businesses to be even more effective, strategic, and efficient in their use
of cloud computing—regardless of size or industry. For would-be buyers,
the decision hinges on how well the product ties into your broader cloud
strategy and fits the needs of your business.

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