Google rebrands Cloud Services Platform as Anthos, rolls it out to rival clouds

Google has rebranded Cloud Services Platform, a management service introduced last year for on-premise data centres and Google Cloud, as Anthos. The company has also broadened the service’s scope such that Anthos works not just with Google Cloud Platform but other cloud providers as well, including Amazon Web Services and Microsoft’s Azure.

To make Anthos work, Google has partnered firms including Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Cisco Systems Inc., which will provide tech components to the service. In addition, Google has partnered infotech vendors to spread Anthos. These vendors include Accenture, Atos, Cognizant, Deloitte, HCL Technologies, NTT Communications, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Wipro.

The ability to run applications across multiple platforms gives firms the confidence to overcome the fear of being locked into one wrong provider, said a blog post jointly written by Urs Hölzle, senior vice-president for technical infrastructure, and Eyal Manor, vice-president for engineering at Google Cloud.

In order to provide enterprise customers with a consistent experience across public cloud and on-premise data centres, Google Cloud’s Anthos will get two designs from enterprise infotech firm HPE.

Google said that Anthos gives customers the freedom to deploy, run and manage applications on a cloud of their choice, without requiring administrators and developers to learn different environments. It added that Anthos Migrate will help customers migrate to any cloud platform automatically.

The blog said, "This unique migration technology lets you migrate and modernise your infrastructure in one streamlined motion, without upfront modifications to the original virtual machines or applications. Through this transformation, the infotech team is free from managing infrastructure tasks like virtual-machine maintenance, so it can focus on managing and developing applications."

Anthos will also get network gear maker Cisco’s data centre, networking, and security technologies. Kip Compton, senior vice-president for cloud platforms and solutions at Cisco, said, “Our customers want to develop and deploy their applications anywhere — on-premise, in the public cloud, or in multiple public clouds — seamlessly and securely.”