Google Cloud Next 2019 Reveals Anthos Hybrid Platform and Open-Source Partnerships
Google unveils Anthos, a new hybrid cloud platform that manages applications across Google Cloud, AWS, and Azure from a single dashboard. The company also integrates major open-source databases directly into its cloud console.
Google hosts its annual Cloud Next developer conference in San Francisco this week, unveiling a wave of new tools and services. The biggest announcement is Anthos, a rebranded and expanded version of the Google Cloud Services Platform that allows enterprises to run applications across Google Cloud, AWS, and Azure. Powered by containers and Kubernetes, Anthos gives businesses a single dashboard and a single bill to manage workloads no matter where they reside.
This multi-cloud approach is highly unusual in the industry, as competitors typically try to lock customers into their own infrastructure. Google argues that Anthos solves a real customer problem while helping the company differentiate itself from larger rivals. It remains to be seen whether AWS and Microsoft will respond with similar cross-cloud management tools.
In addition to Anthos, Google reveals deep integrations with several major open-source companies, including Confluent, MongoDB, Neo4j, and Redis Labs. These partnerships make popular open-source databases available as first-party services within the Google Cloud Console, providing users with unified billing and support. This strategy also highlights a sharp contrast with AWS, as many of these open-source vendors openly criticize Amazon's treatment of their projects.