# Best Cloud Management Platforms - Page 2

  *By [Rachana Hasyagar](https://research.g2.com/insights/author/rachana-hasyagar)*

   Cloud management platforms (CMPs) are toolsets that help companies monitor and control cloud environments, resources, and services. These solutions manage two or more dynamic cloud environments—private, public, multi, or hybrid cloud. CMPs provide insights into and control over a variety of cloud-related functions, such as optimization, orchestration, security, monitoring, and costs. IT administrators, security analysts, server engineers, and others can leverage cloud resources effectively due to the diversity of available insights.

Cloud management platforms offer the administrative visibility and capability of [cloud cost management software](https://www.g2.com/categories/cloud-cost-management), [cloud infrastructure monitoring software](https://www.g2.com/categories/cloud-infrastructure-monitoring), [cloud infrastructure automation software](https://www.g2.com/categories/cloud-infrastructure-automation), and more. They also include open-source software modules that provide a framework to create and manage both public and private cloud infrastructure. CMPs are designed to integrate with a variety of [infrastructure as a service (IaaS)](https://www.g2.com/categories/infrastructure-as-a-service-iaas) offerings as well.

To qualify for inclusion in the Cloud Management Platforms category, a product must:

- Monitor and optimize cloud computing resources in multi-cloud environments
- Provide self-service capabilities, analytics, and insights into organization consumption patterns within cloud deployments
- Provide managerial capabilities over cloud functions and security





## Category Overview

**Total Products under this Category:** 181


## Trust & Credibility Stats

**Why You Can Trust G2's Software Rankings:**

- 30 Analysts and Data Experts
- 6,400+ Authentic Reviews
- 181+ Products
- Unbiased Rankings

G2's software rankings are built on verified user reviews, rigorous moderation, and a consistent research methodology maintained by a team of analysts and data experts. Each product is measured using the same transparent criteria, with no paid placement or vendor influence. While reviews reflect real user experiences, which can be subjective, they offer valuable insight into how software performs in the hands of professionals. Together, these inputs power the G2 Score, a standardized way to compare tools within every category.


## Best Cloud Management Platforms At A Glance

- **Leader:** [Google Compute Engine](https://www.g2.com/products/google-compute-engine/reviews)
- **Highest Performer:** [CloudKeeper](https://www.g2.com/products/cloudkeeper/reviews)
- **Easiest to Use:** [CloudKeeper](https://www.g2.com/products/cloudkeeper/reviews)
- **Top Trending:** [CloudKeeper](https://www.g2.com/products/cloudkeeper/reviews)
- **Best Free Software:** [Ubuntu](https://www.g2.com/products/ubuntu/reviews)


---

**Sponsored**

### Cast AI

Cast AI is an automation platform for operating cloud-native and AI infrastructure at scale. It keeps applications fast and stable by continuously optimizing production systems and eliminating manual operations as environments scale.



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---

## Top-Rated Products (Ranked by G2 Score)
  ### 1. [Zesty](https://www.g2.com/products/zesty-zesty/reviews)
  Zesty helps organizations accelerate innovation with its cloud infrastructure optimization platform. Powered by machine learning, Zesty provides FinOps and DevOps teams with prescriptive insights and automation to achieve the ideal utilization of cloud resources and enables CIOs to balance operational excellence and costs. Zesty’s optimization platform helps companies efficiently allocate resources for applications, with solutions for containers, compute, storage, databases, and more, saving time and money. Founded in 2019, Zesty was built with the vision of making the cloud more affordable and accessible while reducing waste. Zesty supports thousands of organizations, helping them get maximum value out of their cloud infrastructure. To learn more, visit https://zesty.co/.


  **Average Rating:** 4.8/5.0
  **Total Reviews:** 80

**User Satisfaction Scores:**

- **Cloud Optimization:** 9.8/10 (Category avg: 9.1/10)
- **Cloud Orchestration:** 7.1/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)
- **Quality of Support:** 9.6/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)
- **Cloud Resource Management:** 8.3/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)


**Seller Details:**

- **Seller:** [Zesty](https://www.g2.com/sellers/zesty)
- **Year Founded:** 2019
- **HQ Location:** San Mateo, California
- **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/zestyco/about (138 employees on LinkedIn®)

**Reviewer Demographics:**
  - **Top Industries:** Computer Software, Information Technology and Services
  - **Company Size:** 65% Mid-Market, 28% Small-Business


  ### 2. [Snow Commander](https://www.g2.com/products/snow-commander/reviews)
  Snow Software is changing the way organizations understand and manage their technology consumption. Our technology intelligence platform provides comprehensive visibility and contextual insight across software, SaaS, hardware and cloud. With Snow, IT leaders can effectively optimize resources, enhance performance and enable operational agility in a hybrid world.


  **Average Rating:** 4.2/5.0
  **Total Reviews:** 21

**User Satisfaction Scores:**

- **Cloud Optimization:** 10.0/10 (Category avg: 9.1/10)
- **Cloud Orchestration:** 7.5/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)
- **Quality of Support:** 8.6/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)
- **Cloud Resource Management:** 9.2/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)


**Seller Details:**

- **Seller:** [Flexera](https://www.g2.com/sellers/flexera)
- **Year Founded:** 2008
- **HQ Location:** Itasca, IL
- **Twitter:** @flexera (4,728 Twitter followers)
- **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/574962/ (2,045 employees on LinkedIn®)

**Reviewer Demographics:**
  - **Top Industries:** Information Technology and Services
  - **Company Size:** 57% Enterprise, 35% Mid-Market


#### Pros & Cons

**Pros:**

- Automation (3 reviews)
- Compliance Management (3 reviews)
- Control (3 reviews)
- Ease of Use (3 reviews)
- Efficiency (3 reviews)

**Cons:**

- Complexity (3 reviews)
- Learning Curve (3 reviews)
- Time-Consumption (3 reviews)
- Complex Configuration (2 reviews)
- Complex Reporting (2 reviews)

  ### 3. [nOps](https://www.g2.com/products/nops/reviews)
  With nOps, ensure every dollar you spend on the cloud delivers maximum value. nOps provides automated cloud cost optimization that delivers industry-leading cloud savings and visibility without operational overhead or long-term commitment risk. nOps platform includes: Commitment Management: autonomous rate optimization for AWS, Azure and GCP to maximize savings and flexibility Cloud Cost Visibility: comprehensive cost and usage reporting and analysis, enabling 100% cost allocation across your unified Multicloud, SaaS, Kubernetes & AI spend FinOps Agent: AI trained on your cost data to answer questions & automate FinOps tasks like forecasting, anomaly detection, waste reduction, budgets, reports, etc. The time to value is 30 minutes to get started and receive a free Savings Analysis.


  **Average Rating:** 4.8/5.0
  **Total Reviews:** 129

**User Satisfaction Scores:**

- **Cloud Optimization:** 8.9/10 (Category avg: 9.1/10)
- **Cloud Orchestration:** 8.8/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)
- **Quality of Support:** 9.5/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)
- **Cloud Resource Management:** 9.2/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)


**Seller Details:**

- **Seller:** [nOps](https://www.g2.com/sellers/nops)
- **Company Website:** https://www.nops.io/
- **Year Founded:** 2017
- **HQ Location:** San Francisco, California
- **Twitter:** @nopsio (1,528 Twitter followers)
- **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/7602157 (177 employees on LinkedIn®)

**Reviewer Demographics:**
  - **Who Uses This:** CTO
  - **Top Industries:** Computer Software, Information Technology and Services
  - **Company Size:** 52% Small-Business, 41% Mid-Market


#### Pros & Cons

**Pros:**

- Savings (6 reviews)
- Cost Saving (5 reviews)
- Cost Management (4 reviews)
- Ease of Use (4 reviews)
- Time-saving (4 reviews)

**Cons:**

- Complexity (1 reviews)
- Dashboard Issues (1 reviews)
- Difficult Navigation (1 reviews)
- Inadequate Reporting (1 reviews)
- Insufficient Documentation (1 reviews)

  ### 4. [Pepperdata Capacity Optimizer](https://www.g2.com/products/pepperdata-capacity-optimizer/reviews)
  Pepperdata Capacity Optimizer is the only real-time, automated cost optimization solution for Spark workloads that can immediately save you up to 47%. By instructing the scheduler to consider the actual resource utilization instead of allocated resources, Capacity Optimizer reclaims waste, maximizes resources utilization, and optimizes autoscaling in the cloud. It operates autonomously, continuously, and in real time to reclaim application waste.


  **Average Rating:** 4.6/5.0
  **Total Reviews:** 39

**User Satisfaction Scores:**

- **Cloud Optimization:** 9.4/10 (Category avg: 9.1/10)
- **Cloud Orchestration:** 9.4/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)
- **Quality of Support:** 9.3/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)
- **Cloud Resource Management:** 9.2/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)


**Seller Details:**

- **Seller:** [Pepperdata](https://www.g2.com/sellers/pepperdata)
- **Year Founded:** 2012
- **HQ Location:** Sunnyvale, US
- **Twitter:** @pepperdata (700 Twitter followers)
- **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/2703086/ (32 employees on LinkedIn®)

**Reviewer Demographics:**
  - **Top Industries:** Computer Software, Banking
  - **Company Size:** 72% Enterprise, 15% Mid-Market


#### Pros & Cons

**Pros:**

- Performance (4 reviews)
- Cost Saving (2 reviews)
- Resource Management (2 reviews)
- Savings (2 reviews)
- Analytics (1 reviews)

**Cons:**

- Lack of Automation (1 reviews)
- Learning Curve (1 reviews)
- Learning Difficulty (1 reviews)
- Limited Availability (1 reviews)
- Limited Functionality (1 reviews)

  ### 5. [Oomnitza](https://www.g2.com/products/oomnitza/reviews)
  Oomnitza is an IT asset management platform that helps companies get complete visibility and control over all their technology—laptops, servers, SaaS apps, cloud infrastructure, and more—without the heavy lift. Most ITAM tools only track hardware or require multiple systems to manage assets. Oomnitza gives you everything you need in one place, so you can stop managing spreadsheets and chasing data across tools. With 1,500+ pre-built connectors, agentless deployment, and no-code automation, Oomnitza makes it easy to track assets, automate key workflows, and stay audit-ready, all without custom scripts or professional services. Why IT teams choose Oomnitza: - Everything in one place: Manage devices, software, and cloud assets from a single dashboard. - No more spreadsheet cleanup: Asset data is pulled automatically from all your systems and kept accurate. - Automation that saves hours: Streamline tasks like onboarding, offboarding, access reviews, and audits—no tickets or manual handoffs. - Works with your tools: Connects to the systems you already use—Jamf, Intune, Okta, SCCM, Zendesk, and more. - Fast deployment: No agents to install. No rebuild required. You’ll see value in weeks—not months. Oomnitza helps IT, security, and finance teams work from the same playbook so you can reduce risk, improve compliance, and save time every day.


  **Average Rating:** 4.6/5.0
  **Total Reviews:** 135

**User Satisfaction Scores:**

- **Cloud Optimization:** 8.3/10 (Category avg: 9.1/10)
- **Quality of Support:** 9.5/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)
- **Cloud Resource Management:** 8.3/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)


**Seller Details:**

- **Seller:** [Oomnitza](https://www.g2.com/sellers/oomnitza)
- **Company Website:** https://www.oomnitza.com
- **Year Founded:** 2012
- **HQ Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Twitter:** @Oomnitza (372 Twitter followers)
- **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/2518359/ (108 employees on LinkedIn®)

**Reviewer Demographics:**
  - **Top Industries:** Information Technology and Services, Computer Software
  - **Company Size:** 51% Enterprise, 38% Mid-Market


#### Pros & Cons

**Pros:**

- Customizability (2 reviews)
- Automation (1 reviews)
- Ease of Use (1 reviews)
- Flexibility (1 reviews)
- Helpful (1 reviews)

**Cons:**

- Complexity (2 reviews)
- Poor Interface Design (2 reviews)
- Complex Configuration (1 reviews)
- Difficult Learning (1 reviews)
- Difficult Navigation (1 reviews)

  ### 6. [Spot Cloud Analyzer](https://www.g2.com/products/spot-cloud-analyzer/reviews)
  With cloud spend analytics and recommendations just as our starting point, Spot actively optimizes AWS, Azure and Google Cloud deployments with SLA-backed availability, fully automated infrastructure management and up to 90% cost reduction. With Spot, cloud consumers can effortlessly and affordably scale any workload, from stateful, single instances, to cloud-native clusters made up of thousands of nodes.


  **Average Rating:** 4.4/5.0
  **Total Reviews:** 31

**User Satisfaction Scores:**

- **Cloud Optimization:** 9.2/10 (Category avg: 9.1/10)
- **Cloud Orchestration:** 9.2/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)
- **Quality of Support:** 9.4/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)
- **Cloud Resource Management:** 8.3/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)


**Seller Details:**

- **Seller:** [Flexera](https://www.g2.com/sellers/flexera)
- **Year Founded:** 2008
- **HQ Location:** Itasca, IL
- **Twitter:** @flexera (4,728 Twitter followers)
- **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/574962/ (2,045 employees on LinkedIn®)

**Reviewer Demographics:**
  - **Top Industries:** Information Technology and Services, Computer Software
  - **Company Size:** 56% Mid-Market, 28% Small-Business


#### Pros & Cons

**Pros:**

- Automation (1 reviews)
- Cost Reduction (1 reviews)
- Customer Support (1 reviews)
- Dashboards (1 reviews)
- Ease of Use (1 reviews)

**Cons:**

- Complex Configuration (1 reviews)
- Complexity (1 reviews)
- Difficult Learning (1 reviews)
- Difficult Setup (1 reviews)
- Learning Curve (1 reviews)

  ### 7. [IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps](https://www.g2.com/products/ibm-cloud-pak-for-aiops/reviews)
  IBM Cloud Pak® for Watson AIOps is an AIOps solution that deploys advanced, explainable AI across the ITOps toolchain so you can confidently assess, diagnose and resolve incidents across mission-critical workloads.


  **Average Rating:** 4.2/5.0
  **Total Reviews:** 57

**User Satisfaction Scores:**

- **Cloud Optimization:** 8.8/10 (Category avg: 9.1/10)
- **Cloud Orchestration:** 8.3/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)
- **Quality of Support:** 8.4/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)
- **Cloud Resource Management:** 7.7/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)


**Seller Details:**

- **Seller:** [IBM](https://www.g2.com/sellers/ibm)
- **Year Founded:** 1911
- **HQ Location:** Armonk, NY
- **Twitter:** @IBM (709,023 Twitter followers)
- **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/1009/ (324,553 employees on LinkedIn®)
- **Ownership:** SWX:IBM

**Reviewer Demographics:**
  - **Top Industries:** Computer Software, Information Technology and Services
  - **Company Size:** 43% Enterprise, 35% Mid-Market


  ### 8. [Morpheus Data](https://www.g2.com/products/morpheus-data/reviews)
  Morpheus is the DevOps for Enterprise IT, allowing IT and technology leaders to save time, money and sanity by providing automatic logging, monitoring, alerts, one-click provisioning and more. Morpheus also solves common IT headaches like Shadow IT, cloud-lock, and impossible cloud migration.


  **Average Rating:** 4.7/5.0
  **Total Reviews:** 14

**User Satisfaction Scores:**

- **Cloud Optimization:** 10.0/10 (Category avg: 9.1/10)
- **Cloud Orchestration:** 8.9/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)
- **Quality of Support:** 9.0/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)
- **Cloud Resource Management:** 9.4/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)


**Seller Details:**

- **Seller:** [Morpheus Data](https://www.g2.com/sellers/morpheus-data-06c17c27-c454-4c86-a625-9ee59e768f5d)
- **Year Founded:** 2010
- **HQ Location:** Denver, CO
- **Twitter:** @MorpheusData (3,154 Twitter followers)
- **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/3735434/ (36 employees on LinkedIn®)

**Reviewer Demographics:**
  - **Top Industries:** Information Technology and Services
  - **Company Size:** 43% Enterprise, 36% Small-Business


  ### 9. [Kion](https://www.g2.com/products/kion/reviews)
  Kion offers FinOps+, an approach that unifies automated governance, AI-driven insights, and beyond public cloud cost management into a single platform. With FinOps+, teams can proactively eliminate waste before it happens, extend visibility and optimization beyond public cloud to SaaS, AI, licensing, and private cloud, and leverage AI for smarter forecasting and faster decision-making. FinOps+ moves beyond simply tracking costs -- it accelerates value, serving as the bridge between FinOps and operational excellence to help orgs do more with less while ensuring long-term efficiency. Kion serves leading commercial, higher education, and government agencies.


  **Average Rating:** 4.6/5.0
  **Total Reviews:** 19

**User Satisfaction Scores:**

- **Cloud Optimization:** 9.3/10 (Category avg: 9.1/10)
- **Cloud Orchestration:** 9.2/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)
- **Quality of Support:** 9.7/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)
- **Cloud Resource Management:** 9.3/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)


**Seller Details:**

- **Seller:** [Kion](https://www.g2.com/sellers/kion)
- **HQ Location:** Columbia, MD
- **Twitter:** @kionsoftware (275 Twitter followers)
- **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/kionsoftware (67 employees on LinkedIn®)

**Reviewer Demographics:**
  - **Top Industries:** Information Technology and Services
  - **Company Size:** 37% Enterprise, 37% Small-Business


  ### 10. [Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud](https://www.g2.com/products/informatica-informatica-intelligent-data-management-cloud/reviews)
  Informatica's Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC is a comprehensive, AI-powered platform designed to manage, integrate, and govern enterprise data across multi-cloud and hybrid environments. By leveraging advanced automation and metadata intelligence, IDMC enables organizations to transform fragmented data into valuable business insights, fostering innovation and operational efficiency. Key Features and Functionality: - Data Catalog: Intelligently scans and catalogs metadata to help users discover and understand enterprise data assets. - Data Integration & Engineering: Facilitates scalable data access and integration using elastic and serverless computing resources. - API & Application Integration: Connects various applications and automates end-to-end business processes seamlessly. - Data Quality & Observability: Ensures consistent, trusted, and governed data across the enterprise. - Master Data Management (MDM & 360 Applications: Provides comprehensive views of business data, delivering trusted insights for informed decision-making. - Governance, Access & Privacy: Offers data intelligence tools to govern, protect, and democratize data usage. - Data Marketplace: Enables secure and efficient data sharing through a cloud-native, AI-powered solution. Primary Value and Solutions Provided: IDMC addresses the challenges of data fragmentation and complexity by offering a unified platform that simplifies data management tasks. Its AI-driven automation reduces manual efforts, accelerates data processing, and enhances data quality. By providing scalable and secure data integration across diverse environments, IDMC empowers organizations to make data-driven decisions, optimize operations, and drive digital transformation initiatives effectively.


  **Average Rating:** 4.2/5.0
  **Total Reviews:** 14

**User Satisfaction Scores:**

- **Quality of Support:** 7.3/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)


**Seller Details:**

- **Seller:** [Informatica](https://www.g2.com/sellers/informatica)
- **Year Founded:** 1993
- **HQ Location:** Redwood City, CA
- **Twitter:** @Informatica (99,880 Twitter followers)
- **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/3858/ (5,337 employees on LinkedIn®)
- **Ownership:** NYSE: INFA

**Reviewer Demographics:**
  - **Company Size:** 50% Small-Business, 29% Enterprise


  ### 11. [Mist](https://www.g2.com/products/mist-io-mist/reviews)
  Mist is an open source multicloud management platform. Our goal is to make multicloud simple and offer a single interface from where you can manage everything. Mist supports all popular infrastructure technologies including public clouds, private clouds, hypervisors, containers and bare metal servers. It provides a unified interface for performing common management tasks like provisioning, orchestration, monitoring, automation and cost analysis. It comes with a RESTful API and CLI so you can easily integrate it into your existing workflows. Our customers include large organizations like the European Parliament, Red Hat, National Bank of Greece, SevOne, Shoprite and more. Our customers report 40%-60% reductions in server bills and management overheads, four times faster roll outs and twice as fast incident response times. Mist comes in three editions. Mist Enterprise Edition (on-prem) is ideal for large teams with advanced needs around orchestration and access controls. Mist Hosted Service (SaaS) is easy to get started with and is ideal for highly dynamic infrastructures. Mist Community Edition is our open source version, for teams with a DIY approach.


  **Average Rating:** 4.8/5.0
  **Total Reviews:** 12

**User Satisfaction Scores:**

- **Cloud Optimization:** 9.6/10 (Category avg: 9.1/10)
- **Cloud Orchestration:** 9.6/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)
- **Quality of Support:** 9.8/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)
- **Cloud Resource Management:** 9.4/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)


**Seller Details:**

- **Seller:** [Mist.io](https://www.g2.com/sellers/mist-io)
- **Year Founded:** 2013
- **HQ Location:** Hercules, California
- **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/No-Linkedin-Presence-Added-Intentionally-By-DataOps (1 employees on LinkedIn®)

**Reviewer Demographics:**
  - **Company Size:** 58% Small-Business, 42% Mid-Market


  ### 12. [OpenStack](https://www.g2.com/products/openstack/reviews)
  OpenStack is an open-source cloud operating system that enables the management and orchestration of large pools of compute, storage, and networking resources throughout a data center. It provides a unified platform for deploying both public and private clouds, offering users and administrators a comprehensive suite of tools to control and provision resources efficiently. With its modular architecture, OpenStack supports a wide range of workloads, from traditional virtual machines to containerized applications, making it a versatile solution for organizations seeking scalable and flexible cloud infrastructure. Key Features and Functionality: - Compute Management: OpenStack's Nova component allows for the provisioning and management of large networks of virtual machines, supporting various hypervisors and container technologies. - Networking: Through the Neutron module, OpenStack offers pluggable, scalable, and API-driven network and IP management, facilitating complex networking configurations and services. - Storage Solutions: OpenStack provides both object storage (Swift) and block storage (Cinder) services, catering to diverse storage needs and ensuring data availability and redundancy. - Dashboard Interface: The Horizon dashboard offers a web-based interface for administrators and users to manage and provision cloud resources, enhancing usability and accessibility. - Orchestration and Automation: With components like Heat and Mistral, OpenStack enables orchestration of cloud applications and workflows, automating resource management and deployment processes. Primary Value and Solutions Provided: OpenStack addresses the need for a flexible and scalable cloud infrastructure by offering an open-source platform that integrates seamlessly with existing IT environments. It empowers organizations to accelerate innovation by providing self-service portals and API-driven platforms for developing cloud-aware applications. By supporting a wide range of technologies and offering a modular design, OpenStack allows enterprises to customize their cloud solutions to meet specific requirements, ensuring high availability and performance of applications. Additionally, OpenStack's commitment to open standards and interoperability provides businesses with the freedom to choose from a diverse ecosystem of vendors and avoid vendor lock-in, ultimately leading to cost savings and increased agility in responding to market demands.


  **Average Rating:** 4.2/5.0
  **Total Reviews:** 52

**User Satisfaction Scores:**

- **Cloud Optimization:** 9.0/10 (Category avg: 9.1/10)
- **Cloud Orchestration:** 9.0/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)
- **Quality of Support:** 7.0/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)
- **Cloud Resource Management:** 8.6/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)


**Seller Details:**

- **Seller:** [OpenStack](https://www.g2.com/sellers/openstack)
- **Year Founded:** 2012
- **HQ Location:** United States
- **Twitter:** @OpenStack (146,232 Twitter followers)
- **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/1126781/ (138 employees on LinkedIn®)

**Reviewer Demographics:**
  - **Top Industries:** Information Technology and Services, Computer Software
  - **Company Size:** 49% Enterprise, 32% Mid-Market


  ### 13. [ServiceNow Cloud Management](https://www.g2.com/products/servicenow-cloud-management/reviews)
  ServiceNow Cloud Management is a comprehensive solution designed to automate and streamline the provisioning, lifecycle, and cost management of both public and private cloud resources. By integrating cloud operations into a unified platform, it enhances operational efficiency, ensures compliance, and provides real-time visibility across cloud environments. Key Features and Functionality: - Automated Cloud Provisioning: Facilitates the rapid deployment of cloud services, including fully configured virtual networks, through a user-friendly interface. - Cloud Governance: Automates governance workflows for cloud accounts, ensuring adherence to compliance and security policies. - Cost Management: Provides tools to monitor and control cloud expenditures, offering insights into spending patterns and enabling proactive budget management. - Cloud Observability: Combines operational monitoring and observability data for cloud and cloud-native applications, bringing critical telemetry data together to improve security, workflows, collaboration, and ROI. - Integration with Major Cloud Providers: Supports seamless integration with leading cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, GCP, and IBM, ensuring a consistent management framework across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Primary Value and User Solutions: ServiceNow Cloud Management addresses the complexities of managing diverse cloud environments by providing a centralized platform that automates routine tasks, enforces governance policies, and optimizes costs. This solution empowers organizations to accelerate their cloud transformation journeys, enhance operational agility, and align cloud operations with broader business objectives. By offering real-time visibility and control, it enables IT teams to proactively manage resources, mitigate risks, and deliver reliable services to end-users.


  **Average Rating:** 4.5/5.0
  **Total Reviews:** 22

**User Satisfaction Scores:**

- **Cloud Optimization:** 8.1/10 (Category avg: 9.1/10)
- **Cloud Orchestration:** 7.2/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)
- **Quality of Support:** 7.6/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)
- **Cloud Resource Management:** 8.1/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)


**Seller Details:**

- **Seller:** [ServiceNow](https://www.g2.com/sellers/servicenow)
- **Year Founded:** 2004
- **HQ Location:** Santa Clara, CA
- **Twitter:** @servicenow (54,113 Twitter followers)
- **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/29352/ (32,701 employees on LinkedIn®)
- **Ownership:** NYSE:NOW

**Reviewer Demographics:**
  - **Top Industries:** Information Technology and Services
  - **Company Size:** 55% Enterprise, 27% Small-Business


#### Pros & Cons

**Pros:**

- Ease of Use (4 reviews)
- Customer Support (3 reviews)
- Integrations (3 reviews)
- Features (2 reviews)
- Learning (2 reviews)

**Cons:**

- Complexity Issues (3 reviews)
- Poor Interface Design (3 reviews)
- Complexity (2 reviews)
- Complex Setup (2 reviews)
- Implementation Difficulty (2 reviews)

  ### 14. [ServerView Resource Orchestrator](https://www.g2.com/products/serverview-resource-orchestrator/reviews)
  Resource Orchestrator is a private cloud framework that provides customers with their own “infrastructure as a service” (IaaS) capability.


  **Average Rating:** 3.8/5.0
  **Total Reviews:** 10

**User Satisfaction Scores:**

- **Cloud Optimization:** 5.0/10 (Category avg: 9.1/10)
- **Cloud Orchestration:** 5.3/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)
- **Quality of Support:** 6.4/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)
- **Cloud Resource Management:** 5.7/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)


**Seller Details:**

- **Seller:** [Fujitsu](https://www.g2.com/sellers/fujitsu)
- **Year Founded:** 2007
- **HQ Location:** Paris, France
- **Twitter:** @Fujitsu_Global (65,438 Twitter followers)
- **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/fujitsu/ (59,698 employees on LinkedIn®)
- **Ownership:** TYO:6702

**Reviewer Demographics:**
  - **Company Size:** 55% Enterprise, 27% Small-Business


  ### 15. [CoreStack](https://www.g2.com/products/corestack/reviews)
  CoreStack is a NextGen Cloud Governance solution that empowers enterprises to rapidly achieve continuous and autonomous cloud governance at scale. CoreStack helps 500+ global enterprises govern more than $2B in annual cloud consumption. The company is a Microsoft Azure Gold Partner, Amazon AWS Advanced Technology Competency Partner, Oracle Cloud Build Partner, and Google Cloud Build Partner.


  **Average Rating:** 4.6/5.0
  **Total Reviews:** 21

**User Satisfaction Scores:**

- **Cloud Optimization:** 8.3/10 (Category avg: 9.1/10)
- **Cloud Orchestration:** 8.3/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)
- **Quality of Support:** 9.7/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)
- **Cloud Resource Management:** 8.5/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)


**Seller Details:**

- **Seller:** [CORESTACK](https://www.g2.com/sellers/corestack)
- **Year Founded:** 2016
- **HQ Location:** Bellevue, WA
- **Twitter:** @corestack (1,020 Twitter followers)
- **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/corestack (208 employees on LinkedIn®)

**Reviewer Demographics:**
  - **Top Industries:** Computer Software, Information Technology and Services
  - **Company Size:** 48% Enterprise, 43% Mid-Market


  ### 16. [Apache CloudStack](https://www.g2.com/products/apache-cloudstack/reviews)
  Apache CloudStack is open source software designed to deploy and manage large networks of virtual machines on scalable Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud computing platform.


  **Average Rating:** 4.4/5.0
  **Total Reviews:** 25

**User Satisfaction Scores:**

- **Quality of Support:** 7.2/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)


**Seller Details:**

- **Seller:** [The Apache Software Foundation](https://www.g2.com/sellers/the-apache-software-foundation)
- **Year Founded:** 1999
- **HQ Location:** Wakefield, MA
- **Twitter:** @TheASF (66,116 Twitter followers)
- **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/215982/ (2,408 employees on LinkedIn®)

**Reviewer Demographics:**
  - **Top Industries:** Information Technology and Services
  - **Company Size:** 37% Enterprise, 37% Small-Business


  ### 17. [Pump](https://www.g2.com/products/pump-pump/reviews)
  Pump saves up to 60% off AWS compute spend without any engineering effort or financial risk to you. Using AI, we mirror your AWS commitments to your AWS consumption in real time, thus saving costs. Additionally, we apply a group buying volume discount to all customers in our free collective.


  **Average Rating:** 4.3/5.0
  **Total Reviews:** 45

**User Satisfaction Scores:**

- **Cloud Optimization:** 9.0/10 (Category avg: 9.1/10)
- **Cloud Orchestration:** 9.0/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)
- **Quality of Support:** 8.5/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)
- **Cloud Resource Management:** 9.4/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)


**Seller Details:**

- **Seller:** [Pump](https://www.g2.com/sellers/pump)
- **Year Founded:** 2022
- **HQ Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/pumpbilling/ (91 employees on LinkedIn®)

**Reviewer Demographics:**
  - **Top Industries:** Computer Software, Information Technology and Services
  - **Company Size:** 77% Small-Business, 15% Mid-Market


#### Pros & Cons

**Pros:**

- Ease of Use (10 reviews)
- Cost Saving (9 reviews)
- Savings (7 reviews)
- Cost Reduction (5 reviews)
- User Interface (5 reviews)

**Cons:**

- Billing Issues (3 reviews)
- Poor Customer Support (3 reviews)
- Update Issues (3 reviews)
- Confusion (2 reviews)
- Cost Management (2 reviews)

  ### 18. [CloudWize](https://www.g2.com/products/cloudwize-cloudwize/reviews)
  CloudWize is a no-code Cloud Security Center of Excellence that gives you maximum cloud compliance & security. Get 360° Protection from Architecture Design to Runtime. CludWize enforces cloud regulations with over 1K rules running continuously, scans your cloud vulnerabilities, and remediates them automatically. With our unique investigation graph engine, you can detect and fix cloud issues in minutes instead of days and weeks. This holistic solution offers a blackbox web app penetration test, evolved IAM (identity access management), IaC (infrastructure as code) risk scanning, Data Security Posture Management, and more. Why deal with many tools when you can have everything in one place? CNAPP + WAAP + KSPM – CSPM + CWPP + CIEM + CASB + DSPM + CNSP = CloudWize (CSCoE)


  **Average Rating:** 4.7/5.0
  **Total Reviews:** 11

**User Satisfaction Scores:**

- **Cloud Optimization:** 10.0/10 (Category avg: 9.1/10)
- **Quality of Support:** 9.6/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)
- **Cloud Resource Management:** 10.0/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)


**Seller Details:**

- **Seller:** [CloudWize](https://www.g2.com/sellers/cloudwize)
- **Year Founded:** 2019
- **HQ Location:** Netanya, IL
- **Twitter:** @cloud_wize (94 Twitter followers)
- **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/cloudwize-io/about (5 employees on LinkedIn®)

**Reviewer Demographics:**
  - **Company Size:** 50% Small-Business, 33% Mid-Market


#### Pros & Cons

**Pros:**

- Security (7 reviews)
- Ease of Use (6 reviews)
- Cloud Integration (5 reviews)
- Cloud Management (5 reviews)
- Cloud Services (5 reviews)

**Cons:**

- Complex Implementation (1 reviews)
- Complex Setup (1 reviews)
- Customization Difficulty (1 reviews)
- Difficult Navigation (1 reviews)
- Excessive Customization (1 reviews)

  ### 19. [Stacklet Platform](https://www.g2.com/products/stacklet-platform/reviews)
  Stacklet Platform is a Governance as Code solution that accelerates cloud adoption with intelligent guardrails and actionable insights for security, compliance, cost, and operations. The Stacklet platform empowers cloud and security engineering teams to codify, automate, visualize, and collaborate on policies in a standard, easy-to-use, declarative language. Stacklet Platform extends Cloud Custodian open source project with intelligent management capabilities, including governance insights, real-time asset inventory, out-of-the-box policy packs, and advanced communications to help businesses innovate securely and efficiently in the cloud at scale.


  **Average Rating:** 4.5/5.0
  **Total Reviews:** 11

**User Satisfaction Scores:**

- **Quality of Support:** 9.3/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)


**Seller Details:**

- **Seller:** [Stacklet](https://www.g2.com/sellers/stacklet)
- **Company Website:** https://stacklet.io
- **HQ Location:** Everywhere, OO
- **Twitter:** @stackletio (347 Twitter followers)
- **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/stacklet/ (38 employees on LinkedIn®)

**Reviewer Demographics:**
  - **Company Size:** 55% Enterprise, 36% Mid-Market


#### Pros & Cons

**Pros:**

- Centralized Management (1 reviews)
- Cloud Services (1 reviews)
- Dashboard Usability (1 reviews)
- Data Centralization (1 reviews)
- Ease of Use (1 reviews)

**Cons:**

- Insufficient Information (1 reviews)
- Missing Features (1 reviews)

  ### 20. [Firefly Cloud Infrastructure Automation](https://www.g2.com/products/firefly-cloud-infrastructure-automation/reviews)
  Firefly is a cloud infrastructure automation platform that empowers Platform and DevOps teams to simplify, secure, and scale their cloud operations. Built to address the challenges of managing sprawling, dynamic cloud environments, Firefly enables seamless automation, Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) adoption, and governance. By combining continuous cloud scanning, AI-assisted remediation, and orchestration, Firefly provides unified visibility and control across your entire cloud footprint. What sets Firefly apart is its ability to bridge the gap between live cloud environments and IaC, ensuring your infrastructure is always optimized, compliant, and in sync. From scaling startups to global enterprises like Paramount, Cisco and 2K Games, Firefly helps organizations finally uncomplicate their cloud while accelerating cloud innovation and maintaining security and performance at scale.


  **Average Rating:** 4.8/5.0
  **Total Reviews:** 13

**User Satisfaction Scores:**

- **Cloud Optimization:** 8.9/10 (Category avg: 9.1/10)
- **Cloud Orchestration:** 9.2/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)
- **Quality of Support:** 9.7/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)
- **Cloud Resource Management:** 10.0/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)


**Seller Details:**

- **Seller:** [Firefly](https://www.g2.com/sellers/firefly)
- **Year Founded:** 2021
- **HQ Location:** Tel Aviv, Israel
- **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/gofireflyio/ (106 employees on LinkedIn®)

**Reviewer Demographics:**
  - **Company Size:** 38% Mid-Market, 38% Small-Business


#### Pros & Cons

**Pros:**

- Ease of Use (3 reviews)
- Automation Efficiency (2 reviews)
- Easy Integrations (2 reviews)
- Efficiency (2 reviews)
- Infrastructure Automation (2 reviews)

**Cons:**

- Difficult Learning (2 reviews)
- Expensive (2 reviews)
- Learning Difficulty (2 reviews)
- Pricing Issues (2 reviews)
- Steep Learning Curve (2 reviews)

  ### 21. [Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Tagging](https://www.g2.com/products/oracle-cloud-infrastructure-tagging/reviews)
  Script bulk actions on exactly the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure resources you want, identified by tags


  **Average Rating:** 4.3/5.0
  **Total Reviews:** 9

**User Satisfaction Scores:**

- **Quality of Support:** 9.2/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)


**Seller Details:**

- **Seller:** [Oracle](https://www.g2.com/sellers/oracle)
- **Year Founded:** 1977
- **HQ Location:** Austin, TX
- **Twitter:** @Oracle (827,310 Twitter followers)
- **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/1028/ (199,301 employees on LinkedIn®)
- **Ownership:** NYSE:ORCL

**Reviewer Demographics:**
  - **Top Industries:** Information Technology and Services
  - **Company Size:** 50% Small-Business, 30% Mid-Market


  ### 22. [zCompute](https://www.g2.com/products/zcompute/reviews)
  Zadara’s zCompute is a fully managed, AWS‑compatible IaaS platform providing an elastic environment suitable to run both cloud-native as well as a custom hypervisor environments that are ideal for deploying Virtual Machines and Kubernetes workloads. zCompute offers advanced virtual networking and security features in a multi-tenant environment, all over enterprise storage — deployable on-premises, at the edge, or in public cloud—with consumption-based pricing, and global availability.


  **Average Rating:** 5.0/5.0
  **Total Reviews:** 9

**User Satisfaction Scores:**

- **Cloud Optimization:** 9.3/10 (Category avg: 9.1/10)
- **Cloud Orchestration:** 9.1/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)
- **Quality of Support:** 9.4/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)
- **Cloud Resource Management:** 8.9/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)


**Seller Details:**

- **Seller:** [ZADARA](https://www.g2.com/sellers/zadara-af93d36d-6162-424a-a78e-3f9008d79731)
- **Year Founded:** 2011
- **HQ Location:** Irvine, California
- **Twitter:** @Zadara (2,488 Twitter followers)
- **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/zadarastorage/about (213 employees on LinkedIn®)

**Reviewer Demographics:**
  - **Company Size:** 60% Small-Business, 40% Mid-Market


#### Pros & Cons

**Pros:**

- Ease of Use (5 reviews)
- Flexibility (3 reviews)
- Helpful (2 reviews)
- Scalability (2 reviews)
- Virtual Machines (2 reviews)

**Cons:**

- Resource Limitations (1 reviews)

  ### 23. [Xosphere Instance Orchestrator](https://www.g2.com/products/xosphere-instance-orchestrator/reviews)
  Xosphere's super power is reducing AWS EC2 expense by up to 80%. Xosphere is the world's only intelligent cloud orchestration company empowering enterprises to seamlessly move applications to the right place at the right time to reduce cloud expense and increase reliability. Xosphere's intelligent cloud software transforms unreliable Spot instances into robust resources that have the same reliability as On-Demand but at a fraction of the cost, yielding unparalleled savings. For enterprises that want to reduce cloud costs, Xosphere's optimization engine maximizes savings with the fastest speed of implementation in the industry. Xosphere Instance Orchestrator is a cloud-native, self-hosted subscription software application. It installs into your Amazon Web Services (AWS) account using either a CloudFormation stack or a Terraform module and runs using Lambda functions. Instance Orchestrator uses an opt-in design; it only executes on Auto-Scaling groups or individual instances that have explicitly been enabled via an AWS tag. Tags can be applied using any method or tool that is used within the organization to manage tags (for example, AWS Console, AWS CLI, AWS APIs, infrastructure-as-code platforms such as CloudFormation or Terraform, cloud management platforms, etc.). Once this enabling tag has been applied, Instance Orchestrator will automatically perform its management duties on an ongoing basis.


  **Average Rating:** 5.0/5.0
  **Total Reviews:** 17

**User Satisfaction Scores:**

- **Cloud Optimization:** 10.0/10 (Category avg: 9.1/10)
- **Cloud Orchestration:** 10.0/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)
- **Quality of Support:** 9.8/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)


**Seller Details:**

- **Seller:** [Xosphere](https://www.g2.com/sellers/xosphere)
- **Year Founded:** 2017
- **HQ Location:** Woodland Hills, US
- **Twitter:** @XosphereInc (74 Twitter followers)
- **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/xosphereinc/ (6 employees on LinkedIn®)

**Reviewer Demographics:**
  - **Company Size:** 41% Enterprise, 24% Mid-Market


  ### 24. [F5 BIG-IQ Centralized Management](https://www.g2.com/products/f5-big-iq-centralized-management/reviews)
  F5® BIG-IQ® Centralized Management provides an application-centric and unified point of visibility and control for F5 BIG-IP products and features. BIG-IQ Centralized Management significantly eases the burden of managing the BIG-IP system and offers value to NetOps, DevOps, and SecOps users with automated workflows, intelligent device management, role- and user-specific GUIs and dashboards, and tight third-party integrations. In short, BIG-IQ Centralized Management enables you to gain insight into and keep tight control of every BIG-IP application service and device in on-premises, public, and private cloud environments.


  **Average Rating:** 4.4/5.0
  **Total Reviews:** 11

**User Satisfaction Scores:**

- **Cloud Optimization:** 8.3/10 (Category avg: 9.1/10)
- **Cloud Orchestration:** 9.4/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)
- **Quality of Support:** 8.1/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)
- **Cloud Resource Management:** 9.4/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)


**Seller Details:**

- **Seller:** [F5](https://www.g2.com/sellers/f5-f6451ada-8c47-43f5-b017-58663a045bc5)
- **HQ Location:** Seattle, Washington
- **Twitter:** @F5Networks (1,385 Twitter followers)
- **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/4841/ (6,133 employees on LinkedIn®)

**Reviewer Demographics:**
  - **Company Size:** 55% Small-Business, 27% Enterprise


  ### 25. [NX1](https://www.g2.com/products/nx1/reviews)
  About ; Citadel is a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution for managing your Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud infrastructure. It sits within your AWS account, and is procured on a monthly SaaS license agreement, with no limits on environments or users. How it works ; It easily plugs into existing accounts, to determine your AWS security posture quickly, and offers auto-remediation for non-compliance. Alternatively, you can also setup a brand new environment, provisioning a best-in-class AWS infrastructure with the highest AWS security controls from day 1 using Citadel also. Native compliance modules, provided out of the box - at no additional charge, provide continuous control monitoring, and the ability to remediate when non-compliance arises.


  **Average Rating:** 4.8/5.0
  **Total Reviews:** 10

**User Satisfaction Scores:**

- **Cloud Optimization:** 9.7/10 (Category avg: 9.1/10)
- **Cloud Orchestration:** 10.0/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)
- **Quality of Support:** 9.6/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)
- **Cloud Resource Management:** 9.7/10 (Category avg: 9.0/10)


**Seller Details:**

- **Seller:** [Citadel One](https://www.g2.com/sellers/citadel-one)
- **Year Founded:** 2021
- **HQ Location:** Sydney, New South Wales
- **Twitter:** @runcitadel (4,784 Twitter followers)
- **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/No-Linkedin-Presence-Added-Intentionally-By-DataOps (1 employees on LinkedIn®)

**Reviewer Demographics:**
  - **Company Size:** 80% Small-Business, 20% Mid-Market




## Parent Category

[IT Management Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/it-management)



## Related Categories

- [Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Providers](https://www.g2.com/categories/infrastructure-as-a-service-iaas)
- [Cloud Cost Management Tools](https://www.g2.com/categories/cloud-cost-management)
- [Cloud Compliance Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/cloud-compliance)



---

## Buyer Guide

### What You Should Know About Cloud Management Platforms

### What are Cloud Management Platforms?

A cloud management platform (CMP) is a set of unified software tools which help companies monitor and control cloud computing resources. While these tools can be deployed by an enterprise exclusively for a public or private cloud arrangement, CMPs commonly focus on the management of hybrid and multi-cloud models to help optimize control of various cloud-based infrastructures. CMPs also include open-source software modules that provide a framework to create and manage both public and private cloud infrastructure. This aids cost management, backup and disaster recovery, and enhancement of performance and security.

Cloud management platforms offer the administrative visibility and capability of [cloud cost management software](https://www.g2.com/categories/cloud-cost-management), [cloud infrastructure monitoring software](https://www.g2.com/categories/cloud-infrastructure-monitoring), [cloud infrastructure automation software](https://www.g2.com/categories/cloud-infrastructure-automation), and more. CMPs are designed to integrate with a variety of [infrastructure as a service (IaaS)](https://www.g2.com/categories/infrastructure-as-a-service-iaas) tools as well.

#### What Types of Cloud Management Platforms Exist?

**Focused platforms**

Platforms that offer only one type of cloud problem solving, say, cloud security to protect data, applications, and infrastructure from threats, and automation of tasks to reduce manual intervention, or cost optimization to increase business efficiency. These products will generally focus on a specific task.

**Multi-cloud platforms**

In multi-cloud infrastructure, cloud assets, software, and applications are distributed across several cloud environments. With a typical multi-cloud architecture involving two or more public and private clouds, a multi-cloud environment aims to eradicate the dependency on any single provider or instance. Multicloud management is the set of tools and procedures that allows a business to monitor and secure applications and workloads across multiple public or private clouds or a combination of both. By offering simplified, centralized management, a multi-cloud management solution allows IT teams to more effectively manage applications and workloads across multiple clouds.

**Hybrid cloud and hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) **

Platforms that support hybrid clouds as well as on-premise infrastructure fit into this category. Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) is a software-defined, unified system that combines all the elements of a traditional data center—storage, computing, networking, and management. Hybrid cloud solutions combine a private cloud with one or more public cloud services, with proprietary software enabling communication between each distinct service. Hybrid cloud computing is powerful because it gives businesses greater control over their private data. An organization can store sensitive data on a private cloud or local data center and simultaneously leverage the robust computational resources of a managed public cloud. Due to complexities such as migration of services, compatibility issues between different cloud service providers, etc., in the management of such an infrastructure, these tools rely heavily on custom implementation. 

### What are the Common Features of Cloud Management Platforms?

The following are a few essential features that a cloud management platform should have to help organizations gain visibility into their cloud deployments and take necessary actions.

**Cost control:** A good cloud management tool should provide insights to the user to help them visualize the utilization and cost of current infrastructure and track cost consumption across all cloud resources. Insights will help the user to reduce overall costs. A cloud management platform is a software solution whose main attribute is a vast and extensive set of APIs that allow it to extract data from every area of the IT infrastructure. The tools should be able to provide cost savings by giving one the capability to hibernate their unutilized resources and provide insights into each service with estimated savings. 

**Logs monitoring:** What makes a cloud management tool unique is its ability to integrate monitoring processes by providing logs from all the major resources. CMPs are purpose-built to draw humongous volumes of data from the user’s application stack in the form of automatically generated computer logs. Log files contain information about every event that occurs in the user’s cloud environment. Analyzing those files can yield information about errors, vulnerabilities, compliance, security, and more. 

**Compliance:** Cloud compliance is the principle that cloud-delivered systems must be in accordance with the standards their customers require. It ensures that cloud computing services meet the compliance requirements of enterprise customers. Maintaining compliance takes effort on the part of both the cloud service provider and the enterprise; without that effort, the organization's data could be at risk of not adhering to mandatory rules and regulations.

**Optimizing the overall workload:** CPM implementation in the IT market makes workflow better, optimizing the best practice and managing the resources to get better outcomes without losing out on either money or time. Features of the cloud management tools are connected internally and work together. This means that the tool can automatically control the infrastructure and make adjustments when necessary. The platform also helps in decision making. It can also play a role in managing and creating policy frameworks.

**Billing and metering:** This is another crucial feature provided by a cloud management platform. CPM accounts for an organization’s unique cloud architecture and finds ways to manage billing and chargebacks effectively. Metering refers to the methods and tools used to track the usage of infrastructure and software delivered via the cloud. IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS vendors have a variety of options for metering the usage of the solutions they provide to clients, including per-user metering, per-account metering, and per-transaction metering.

### What are the Benefits of Cloud Management Platforms?

**Self-service management:** Most CMP solutions support self-service cloud resource management. Enterprises can provision resources for their cloud environment themselves rather than having a set amount of resources delivered. A CMP can help enterprises determine if they are using the optimal amount of resources for their business needs. That can help in determining the correct amount of resources to request from the cloud provider in the future.

**Cloud cost management:** Enterprises want to manage their resource usage to reduce costs. Resources that aren't being used will just be a drain on the company’s finances. By managing operations to ensure that every resource is being used, cloud cost optimization can reduce the wastage of resources. 

**Automated management policies:** CMPs deliver automated cloud management policies and tasks to help utilize resources using automatic orchestration. For example, it automates the process of finding spare resources on the network whenever one needs them. Rather than waiting until the IT team discovers wasted resources, the CMP automatically fixes resource usage problems.

**Cloud compliance and governance:** Usage of cloud services requires the integration of traditional IT governance best practices, such as compliance and chargebacks. Therefore, to govern the cloud for operational excellence, it is important to implement cloud management tools for compliance, incident, and transparent financial management. By doing this, the IT team will run responsible, compliant operations—with tight fiscal controls and transparency. As a result, an organization can benefit from economies of scale, lower individual usage costs, and centralize infrastructure costs while extending or improving current governance capabilities.

### Who Uses Cloud Management Platforms?

**IT industry:** CMPs help IT teams secure and optimize cloud infrastructure, including the applications and data residing on it. Administrators can manage compliance, set up real-time monitoring, and prevent cyberattacks and data breaches. Today organizations have dozens of diverse applications running in the cloud. Cloud management gives visibility and control over this otherwise uncoordinated ecosystem, integrating operating systems, applications, storage frameworks, provisioning, cloud security, and anything else hosted on the enterprise’s cloud. Administrators gain access and control over the enterprise cloud through a web-based interface that they can access remotely. 

**Finance industry:** Cloud services enable the digital transformation of the finance industry while cloud management platforms offer a dramatically improved experience for this industry using the platform. Due to the increase in mobile consumerization and mass digitization, financial services institutions are transforming data and automating core processes and workflows. The banking sector now provides customized solutions to meet the needs of their diverse customer base with the help of enterprise cloud managed services that support a multitude of enterprise applications. Since cloud offerings and adoption of cloud services are growing, a CMP solution aids in streamlining operations, enabling managed service providers (MSPs) to deliver financial governance, security and compliance governance, and identity and access governance across multiple public clouds. By implementing a CMP solution, the BFSI sector can lower infrastructure costs and increase asset utilization, thereby improving agility and operational efficiency.

**Media and entertainment industry:** A global consumer base with a growing demand for “bingeable” content is pushing the M&E industry to provide content that is not only available in a variety of formats, but also tailored for diverse audiences in disparate geographies. Implementation of a cloud management platform helps media enterprises streamline access to media from any location. It enables the management of huge quantities of digital content in a faster, dynamic, and cost-effective manner. 

**E-commerce industry:** The scalability of the cloud complements the needs of the retail sector. Provisioning more servers on its own or obtaining funds to build a bigger IT infrastructure will slow down an enterprise's growth. Cloud management solutions provide a business the ability to view and search for non-compliant servers across environments. CMP provides superior stability for online retail and ensures cost efficiency. Cloud management provides advanced data security which has been a rising concern for e-commerce platforms.

**Automotive industry:** The automotive industry needs to be up-to-date with its supply chain as this allows them to interact effectively with customers and cater to their needs. Cloud management platforms help this industry as they can have a common environment for both automotive suppliers and manufacturers to share data to ensure that both sides have supply chain visibility. Cloud management platforms are useful for moving, storing, securing, and indexing massive volumes of data generated from connected vehicles. 

**Healthcare industry:** Cloud healthcare solutions help doctors to easily stay connected to their patients which improves collaboration with each other. Cloud solutions for the healthcare sector enhance patient engagement, empower health team collaboration, and improve clinical and operational data insights to improve decision making and operational efficiencies. Implementing a cloud management platform by the healthcare industry makes it faster and easier to provide more efficient services to patients and helps ensure the end-to-end security, compliance, and interoperability of health data.

#### Software Related to Cloud Management Platforms

[Cloud cost management software](https://www.g2.com/categories/cloud-cost-management) **:** Cloud cost management software allows an enterprise to understand and manage the costs and needs associated with its cloud technology. In particular, this means finding cost-effective ways to maximize cloud usage and efficiency. These tools are typically paired with an [infrastructure as a service (IaaS) provider](https://www.g2.com/categories/infrastructure-as-a-service-iaas) offering to minimize the costs of their pay-as-you-go model. Cloud cost management software helps companies reduce waste by alerting users of low demand or automatically scaling usage to optimal rates. Companies also use these tools to increase the efficiency of their cloud service usage—these solutions often provide reporting features to outline waste and redundancies. Cloud cost management software has some overlap with [SaaS spend management software](https://www.g2.com/categories/saas-spend-management), but the latter is used to monitor and manage spending on cloud applications rather than infrastructure.

[Cloud infrastructure monitoring software](https://www.g2.com/categories/cloud-infrastructure-monitoring) **:** Cloud infrastructure monitoring software allows companies to visualize and track the performance of their applications or services. These tools aggregate data in real time to display information related to a company’s cloud-based resources. These tools can track application performance, network availability, and resource allocation, among other factors. Cloud infrastructure monitoring is a process that makes sure an application both remains available and responds to user requests within an acceptable amount of time. It can also involve goals such as optimizing code or reducing infrastructure costs. Cloud infrastructure monitoring tools may have overlapping features with either [cloud workload protection platforms](https://www.g2.com/categories/cloud-workload-protection-platforms) or [cloud cost management software](https://www.g2.com/categories/cloud-cost-management). Those tools, however, perform more individualized and specific management capabilities and may not provide adequate or necessary monitoring capabilities.

[Cloud infrastructure automation software](https://www.g2.com/categories/cloud-infrastructure-automation) **:** Cloud infrastructure automation technology is used to provision servers and computer data centers through metadata files, as opposed to physical configuration. The concept in practice can also be referred to as implementing "infrastructure as code" or performing continuous configuration automation. Developers will create templated infrastructure to run their application code, review, and integrate it. These templates can then be reused and generated automatically, minimizing a developer’s need to reconfigure infrastructure. Companies use cloud infrastructure automation technology in DevOps practices to reuse pre-configured infrastructure and ensure configuration visibility at all times. These tools can save developers time in configuring infrastructure as well as reduce downtime. These tools have a strong tie to the continuous delivery process. Many DevOps-focused [configuration management software](https://www.g2.com/categories/configuration-management) tools will have the ability to automate cloud infrastructure, but that capability is not inherent in all configuration management tools.

Other Software Related to Cloud Management Platforms: [AWS management](https://www.g2.com/categories/cloud-management-platforms/f/aws-management), [Azure management](https://www.g2.com/categories/cloud-management-platforms/f/azure-management), [Google Cloud Platform (GCP) management](https://www.g2.com/categories/cloud-management-platforms/f/google-cloud-platform-gcp-management), [Others](https://www.g2.com/categories/cloud-management-platforms/f/others),

### Challenges with Cloud Management Platforms

**Security and privacy:** Keeping confidential data safe and secure is among the topmost priorities for organizations. Earlier, most companies used corporate firewalls to safeguard their sensitive data. Now with migration to the cloud becoming increasingly common, the challenge of keeping the data secure makes businesses extremely cautious. Where the cloud provider provides the first layer of security, the customer must provide the second. The challenge here is that customers must know what is required by each cloud service provider so that they can properly secure data across their various providers.

**Interoperability:** Another common challenge that businesses face while using cloud infrastructure is how to avoid the prospect of being locked into a service. Cloud environments are typically built around an organization’s requirements, which means that switching can be hard. Every business should expect the freedom of portability that allows them to move in and out of the cloud, and between clouds without any hassles. When that is not possible due to lock-in periods and other similar problems, the benefits can be lessened. 

**Cloud costs:** Costing is a significant challenge in the adoption, operation, and migration of cloud computing services, especially for small and mid-sized businesses. 

**Cloud migration:** Cloud migration refers to the process of moving all the applications and data from on-premises storage to the cloud. Moving business operations to a cloud service provider can be very challenging and may impact the functioning of connected systems. Among the other challenges involved with migration are security configurations, other software investments, time-consuming preparatory work, slow data migrations, extensive troubleshooting, and application downtime.

**Limitations on cloud reporting structure:** Rather than using a single cloud, organizations today are using multiple public and private clouds. Enterprises tend to receive reporting metrics from different cloud service providers. This can be challenging when not only trying to correlate between reports from each of these providers but with the organizational reporting structure itself. This imposes limitations on one’s cloud reporting structure.

### How to Buy Cloud Management Platforms

#### Requirements Gathering (RFI/RFP) for Cloud Management Platforms

If a company is just starting and looking to purchase its first CMP, or maybe an organization needs to update a legacy system--wherever a business is in its buying process, [g2.com](https://www.g2.com/) can help select the best cloud management platform for the business.

Finding the right cloud management platform for a business can be difficult due to numerous potential vendors and seemingly similar offerings. Without digging deeper to uncover the details, enterprises run the risk of selecting a solution that can result in unexpected costs, vendor lock-in, difficult-to-agree service level agreements (SLAs), or simply a lack of fit to requirements. 

The functional or technical requirements are a core part of the purchase process. Functional requirements usually vary from one organization to the next. Organizations must determine the end goal of purchasing a CMP, whether it is for optimizing costs, requirements around data retention, security, performance, or specific functional requirements. Depending on the scope of the deployment, it might be helpful to produce an RFI, a one-page list with a few bullet points describing what is needed from the platform.

#### Compare Cloud Management Platform Products 

**Create a long list**

As more and more organizations build internal private clouds or enter the service provider market with public clouds, choosing the right vendor and platform for managing today’s hybrid and multi-cloud environments boils down to more than just technical capabilities.

Long lists are created by eliminating the options that do not align with the organization’s cloud strategy. Vendor evaluation is an essential part of the CMP buying process, it helps to prepare a consistent list of questions regarding specific needs and concerns to ask each vendor.

Whether embarking on a proof-of-concept/pilot or a full enterprise-level deployment of the CMP, the following considerations should enable the establishment of realistic and achievable goals:

**Business requirements:** It is important to take into consideration which departments and clients will benefit from the platform deployment and the extent of disruption during the implementation. A business must also take into account the period within which implementation of the CMP will start generating ROI.

**Product requirements**** :** The enterprise willing to adopt a CMP should determine the consistency of the platform with its existing cloud strategy. The tool helps in the management of the various cloud platforms and cloud services. Achieving the full value of this investment also requires integration with other tools in the infrastructure that support functions such as service management, DevOps, configuration management, and financial management. A CMP should allow for seamless integration with the organization’s existing services to generate customized and actionable insights.

Depending on whether a SaaS or on-premises deployment solution is selected, there may be an impact on the existing connectivity and service level commitments. It is crucial to understand the management functions covered by the CMP in terms of resources, spend, and security and how fast it can detect usage of resources and determine their necessity. 

**Support requirements:** The enterprise should be aware of the extent to which it will be dependent on the vendor after the full implementation of the platform. Additionally, vendor patch releases are an important consideration when evaluating cloud management vendors. The user must find out about the release cycles and frequency of the releases in their development cycles. Vendors should provide regular fixes and functional enhancements. If an organization is using a CMP with a SaaS model, it can usually minimize the impact of software releases. The process is usually more seamless than an on-premises deployment.

**Create a short list**

From the long list of vendors, it is pragmatic to narrow down the list of contenders. Enterprises must select solutions that are aligned with the enterprise’s goals. With this list, businesses can compare the features offered by different vendors and the pricing structure of various solutions.

**Conduct demos**

Demos provide an opportunity to buyers to see how a cloud management platform works. While pre-recorded demonstrations and slide decks are available online, it is lucrative to request the vendor for a live demo of the CMP platform using the system to dive deep into their technical capabilities. 

Additionally, mapping out a draft deployment plan or proof of concept (POC) is highly recommended before making a selection as it provides a roadmap for subsequent activities and defines the resources that are required in each phase. A PoC should prove (or disprove) whether the technology matches the organization’s requirements. 

#### Selection of a Cloud Management Platform

**Choose a selection team**

It is important to recognize that project success is based on a team’s effort including the vendor that will support the CMP deployment with their training and professional services staff as well as the tenant and end-user community. Forming the team and establishing a common vision is imperative. The partnerships for deployment must extend into the enterprise itself. 

**Final decision**

Cloud services and CMPs are still evolving, it is unlikely that any one platform can serve as a “one size fits all” solution. However, selecting a vendor that has a strategy aligned with the enterprise’s directions and objectives will accelerate growth as the product matures. Rapid developments have pushed providers to innovate and develop mature solutions that work with top public cloud providers as well as on-premises virtual stacks. 

Here are few factors to consider while making the final decision:

**Total cost of ownership and cost associated with day-to-day data transfers:** One way to evaluate a cloud management vendor is to establish the total cost of ownership (TCO) of its CMP. This involves calculating the cost of acquisition and the recurring operational costs for the service. If there are any additional integrations required, it’s best to include the anticipated costs into the TCO estimate. Some cloud providers offer a low base price but charge extra fees to transfer data. This could lock the user into their product by making it a costly affair to transfer to another provider, hampering the user’s ability to use their data in a way that best suits their requirements. Many cloud service providers encourage customers to move data into their respective clouds by not charging for data ingress. However, data transfer fees do exist for data egress—or moving data out of a cloud data center—not just from the cloud to on-premises, but also between data centers within the same provider, or another cloud provider. The data transfer fees can add up over time. It is crucial to keep data transfer fees in mind when choosing a cloud management solution. 

**Product licensing or service subscription model:** A CMP is either a vendor SaaS offering, open-source or a licensed on-premises product. Acquisition and recurring costs will vary widely based on the model an enterprise opts for. It is imperative to scrutinize the terms and conditions of the product support and licensing agreements or SaaS SLAs to achieve enterprise goals within the defined OPEX (operating expense) and CAPEX (capital expenditure) budgets. 

**Identifying risks and opportunities early:** Whether a commitment to a given CMP product has been made, or early evaluation is underway, it is important to capture and monitor deployment and operations risks, and improvement opportunities early so that it is possible to leverage the lessons learned, contain cost overruns, and modify plans when needed. Whenever a new technology is leveraged, it is good to devise back-out plans or alternatives when assumptions and outcomes change. It must be ensured that the solution chosen will be adaptable to the organization’s future requirements.

### Cloud Management Platforms Trends

**Multi and hybrid cloud environments will continue to grow**

Enterprises recognize that cloud management isn’t about having one specific platform or infrastructure, it’s about choosing the solution that’s fit for the job at hand. The emerging trend is that enterprises are becoming less worried about sticking with one vendor and embracing a multi-cloud or hybrid-cloud offering to get the best out of each solution.

**Solution-focused partners**

As businesses continue to move their infrastructure using SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS, there will be a continuous requirement for third-party vendors who specialize in meeting specific use cases and problem-solving. While one’s cloud service provider will be responsible for infrastructure needs such as storage, outsources will be taking care of computing and networking, specific needs such as data, visibility, AI and ML technology, or IoT.

**Continuous shift to tech on demand**

As cloud costs are controlled, businesses will have more revenue at their disposal to take advantage of solutions that beat their specific industry challenges. In turn, providers will look to push out innovation that is easily accessible to a wide audience, has a low learning curve, low-code interface, and is more democratized overall, so that anyone can reap the rewards.