As enterprises increase their use of cloud and physical infrastructures to support a digital business, they require tools that enable easy, efficient, and consistent management of all environments. As such, hybrid cloud management platforms have evolved to provide common functionality across infrastructures, architectures, and vendors. The ability to manage edge locations has emerged as an essential requirement for hybrid platforms. Businesses want to extend the same security, governance, and access policies from their core premises to any edge locations they deploy. This is increasingly important as cyber threats—particularly ransomware—escalate.

As businesses progress down the path of digital transformation, they seek increased automation of routine tasks such as infrastructure management and functions “up the stack”, which includes tasks such as data management, cost management and optimization, security, and network management. Automation is evolving to incorporate AI to create what the market calls “hyperautomation”.

Author: Karyn Price