The best cloud orchestration software platforms make it simple and easy to automate tasks and workflows across your clouds and on-premises application stacks.
1. Best overall
2. Best for Azure users
3. Best for multicloud
4. Best free orchestrator
5. Best for enterprises
6. FAQs
7. How we test
Cloud computing is one of the most impactful innovations of the 21st century. It is what spurred the rapid and massive development of online platforms to a point where we can do things on the internet that were unimaginable a few decades ago. Building and hosting apps was much more difficult before the advent of cloud computing. Companies had to buy and maintain their own servers or sign long-term contracts with data center operators. In contrast, anyone can now rent servers on-demand and spin up an app in a few hours.
Popular cloud computing providers, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), have massive data centers that they rent to customers across the globe. They are called public clouds because they are available to anyone who wishes to purchase their services. There are also private clouds, wherein all the cloud infrastructure serves a single client.
Public clouds use shared infrastructure, while private clouds use a company’s own infrastructure, usually firewalled to prevent security breaches. Many companies combine private and public clouds, which requires a lot of integration. Cloud orchestration software is what manages the interconnections and interactions between public and private cloud infrastructure.
We tested different cloud orchestration tools to identify the best ones. We narrowed our list based on important factors like pricing, features, ease of use, performance, customer support, etc.
We've also highlighted the best cloud backup services.
The best cloud orchestration software of 2024 in full:
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Best overall
AWS is the world’s biggest cloud provider, with over 100 massive data centers spread across the globe. It offers a cloud orchestration tool called CloudFormation that enables users to model, provision, and manage their AWS or non-AWS cloud resources.
You can model your cloud infrastructure in text files. This platform supports declarative languages, e.g., JSON and YAML, for describing how to create and configure AWS resources. It also gives you access to pre-made templates to help you build your cloud infrastructure.
This platform works with AWS resources and third-party resources integrated with AWS, e.g., FireEye for cybersecurity and Datadog for cloud monitoring. You can even build your own resource using the CloudFormation command line interface.
CloudFormation lets you automate and manage your public and private cloud resources in an orderly manner. There's little room for error because of the automation, and this platform automatically rolls back settings if it encounters any errors with your cloud provisioning. Before deploying any change, you can preview how it'll affect your cloud infrastructure.
There's no extra charge for using CloudFormation on AWS resources that you have already paid for. However, there are extra charges for using it to orchestrate non-AWS resources; $0.0009 per handler operation.
Best for Azure users
Azure is the cloud computing service offered by Microsoft, the tech giant best known for its Windows operating system. Azure has a native cloud orchestration system called Azure Automation. This system enables you to integrate your Azure infrastructure with third-party services and products. It also makes it easy to manage your cloud instances and diagnose issues.
You can create different types of automation on this platform. For example, you can orchestrate the automatic installation of updates for your servers. This feature ensures that your servers have the latest operating systems with the latest security patches and fixes. If you don’t want automatic updates on a particular virtual machine, you can exclude it from the automation.
This platform lets you manage virtual machines on your public and private clouds easily. For instance, you can write scripts to automatically turn on certain virtual machines at night and turn them back on during the day. You can write scripts to execute maintenance tasks at certain intervals, e.g., purging old data or re-indexing a database.
This platform lets you automate a great deal of your cloud infrastructure whether you’re using the Azure public cloud, private cloud, or both.
Best for multicloud
IBM Cloud is another popular cloud computing provider, although nowhere as popular as the two aforementioned rivals. It offers an orchestrator tool that helps users manage their cloud infrastructure and automate a lot of tasks.
This platform comes with Content Packs, a set of pre-made orchestrations that you can choose from. It also provides sample processes to demonstrate these orchestrations. You can choose a pre-made orchestration or write a custom one using code.
This orchestrator includes an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) component responsible for managing access to cloud resources. This component performs all requests to provision your cloud resources. It is based on OpenStack, a popular open-source cloud infrastructure management tool.
There's also a Workflow Orchestration component, a graphical editor that lets users customize the procedures that take place when a certain request is initiated.
This platform works with public and private clouds. Pricing depends on your custom cloud infrastructure, so you’ll have to contact the sales team for a quote.
The main drawback with this platform is that it’s difficult to set up and integrate with your infrastructure at the initial stage.
Best free orchestrator
Puppet Bolt is a cloud orchestrator that’s open source and free to use, unlike other competitors on this list. You can download it for free and integrate it with popular cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services, Azure, VMware, and Google Cloud.
Puppet Bolt enables you to automate many cloud infrastructure management tasks. For example, you can write scripts to automatically patch and update systems at specific intervals, or stop and restart services at specific times. You can install this app on your workstation and connect to remote servers via SSH and WinRM, so there's no need to install any agent software on your cloud platform.
A good thing we observed on this platform is its extensive documentation. You can find meticulous details about every feature on the official Puppet website. This extensive documentation guides users as they start using the platform and helps them become experts.
Another good thing about Puppet Bolt is that it has an intuitive interface that’s easy to navigate. It’s free to use and customizable, but there’s also a paid version for enterprise customers that adds more advanced features and dedicated support.
Best for enterprises
BMC Software is a well-known enterprise software vendor. It offers a multi-cloud management tool that enables you to integrate and manage multiple cloud environments effectively.
First of all, this platform makes it easy to migrate from on-premise infrastructure to a cloud-based one. You can simulate migrations and forecast costs before doing the real job. If you're satisfied with the simulation, you can create and execute a cloud migration plan.
This platform gives you deep visibility into your cloud resources across different providers. This way, you can easily monitor every resource and ensure they’re working as intended. You can perform audits and identify underutilized assets. You can prioritize fixes according to the severity of problems you detect.
You can write scripts to automatically configure, patch, and maintain your servers via this platform. You can coordinate workloads on different cloud platforms and manage them from a single platform.
Pricing depends on your custom infrastructure, so you’ll have to contact the sales team for a quote. This tool is famously expensive, which makes it suitable for large organizations with sizeable software budgets.
We've also featured the best cloud log management software.
FAQs
Essential features of cloud orchestration software
Multi-cloud support
Every cloud orchestration tool must work with multiple cloud computing platforms because many businesses have a hybrid cloud setup. You should be able to integrate tools from different cloud providers to create a smooth workflow. The integrations should come out of the box, although you can still order some proprietary integrations.
Access control
Cloud platforms usually contain sensitive records that businesses can’t stand being leaked, especially in private cloud environments. Hence, cloud orchestration tools should have effective access control. It should allow you to choose who can access what data within your organization. This way, you’ll prevent unauthorized personnel from snooping in on any data.
Unified dashboard
A good cloud orchestration software should let you monitor and manage all your interconnected cloud resources from a single dashboard. You should get a bird's eye view of your cloud resources to ensure they're functioning as needed. A unified dashboard lets you keep accurate tabs on every cloud instance and identify underutilized resources. It significantly reduces your manual work.
How we test
We test by evaluating numerous factors. To start with, we look at the feature set, the range of tools available, and what size of businesses this would be ideal for. We consider how easy the setup is, the simplicity of the interface, and whether there's sufficient documentation and tutorials for users to utilize necessary options optimally.
We assess how well the service integrates with other relevant apps, and check the overall scalability of the service. We also analyze whether there are collaboration features for multiple users, and lastly, we judge the quality of the customer service and the different pricing plans available.
Read more on how we test, rate, and review products on TechRadar.
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