Google is finally expanding the reach of its Anthos hybrid-cloud platform into competing clouds with an initial multicloud push into Amazon Web Services (AWS) and plans to tap into Microsoft Azure.

Anthos is a Kubernetes-based platform that is fully managed by Google and allows users to manage their data and applications in an on-premises environment or across cloud platforms from rivals like AWS and Microsoft. It was initially announced at Google’s Cloud Next event in 2018 — when it was labeled Cloud Services Platform — and formally launched at last year’s event.

Jennifer Lin, VP of product management at Google, explained that it has been working with a number of customers using a “very tight feedback loop” on using Anthos to manage workloads running on AWS. She noted that work began with the Anthos 1.0 release last year, and has culminated with the general availability launch today.

“We had many customers at that point tell us that they wanted to start with the hybrid and then they wanted to bring up workloads that currently sit in AWS,” she said.

This cross-cloud management is possible because of the Kubernetes layer that both underpins Anthos and has become a common infrastructure substrate option across nearly all cloud platforms.

“It all works because Kubernetes has built an API surface that's vendor agnostic,” Lin said. “So when we go to AWS we treat them essentially like an infrastructure layer. And many of our customers are either running Kubernetes on (AWS Elastic Compute Cloud) or they're running it you know in on (AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service), but they want a more solid platform.”

And Microsoft Azure is next.

“We have been working with many customers that also have an Azure footprint, and that is not GA yet but it's in preview and we've been continuing to iterate with customers in the Azure environment,” Lin said.

In addition to the direct AWS support, the Anthos update includes deeper support for virtual machines (VMs). This includes the use of the Anthos Config Management for a declarative approach to managing policies of VMs running on Google Cloud that is similar to how containers are managed.

Google is also laying out plans to include the Anthos Service Mesh to support applications running in VMs. This platform will allow for a consistent way to manage security and policy across different workloads in Google Cloud, on premises, or in other clouds.

“This has a fully managed certificate authority so we're managing essentially the credentials and the authentication of services coming into the mesh,” Lin explained.

The Anthos Service Mesh is built on the Istio service mesh APIs. It provides users with uniform policies for enforcing security, including encryption in transit, mutual authentication, and access controls. And it does this through a single administrative interface.

Lin also said that Google was working on an Anthos version that will not require a third-party hypervisor. This will reduce costs and provide for higher performance with specific gains targeted at workloads that require bare metal environments for performance or regulatory reasons.

“Most of our customers had a proprietary hypervisor with something like vSphere, so we initially supported the vSphere environments,” Linn said. “But we're working with many customers who want to get off of a proprietary hypervisor so we're doing work around bare metal.”

Google has also updated its Migrate for Anthos platform to allow for simplified day-two operations. The Migrate platform is designed to allow users to take a VM from on-premises or Google Compute Engine (GCE) and move it directly into containers running in Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE). Those VMs can also be migrated directly from AWS’ EC2 and Microsoft Azure into containers running in GKE.

Google recently announced that its cloud business had hit an annual revenue run rate of $10 billion last year. That was a 53% increase from 2018.

Anthos is a significant push in those efforts. It gives Google a foot in the door to enterprise’s on-premises data centers. Because of regulatory or compliance requirements, or simply because of cost, some workloads remain on premises, so Anthos gives Google access to that piece of the pie.

It also gives Google another entry point into enterprise data centers. For example, Anthos will integrate with hyperconverged infrastructure software stacks and servers from Cisco, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Dell EMC, and VMware, along with SD-WAN from Cisco and VMware, among other vendors. Plus, these vendors’ technologies will also give enterprise customers a direct link to Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

Anthos’ launch has not gone unnoticed.

AWS unveiled its Outposts platform in late 2018, with general availability announced late last year. Outposts is targeted at the same hybrid- and multicloud support. And Microsoft unveiled its own version, dubbed Arc, at its Ignite event last fall.