Google LLC today announced a new partner program for storage providers for its Anthos hybrid cloud management platform.

Google launched Anthos as a rebranding of its Cloud Services Platform last April. It runs on a rising technology called Kubernetes and is designed to host applications that can run unmodified on both existing on-premises hardware and public clouds, giving companies the option to choose the most suitable infrastructure for each one.

Anthos applications are deployed in software containers, which are used to host the individual components of each app and make them easier to work with. The main benefit is that developers get to use a single set of tools to build and deploy their apps, and push through updates as necessary, no matter what infrastructure those apps are hosted on. Kubernetes makes it easier to manage large clusters of containerized apps.

In a blog post, Rayn Veerubhotla, director of partnerships at Google Cloud, and product manager Manu Batra said storage is a key consideration for organizations using the Anthos service to manage data across cloud deployments.

For that reason, the company has created a new qualification for its partner’s storage solutions, called Anthos Ready Storage.

“This qualification recognizes partner solutions that have met a core set of requirements to run optimally with Anthos running on-premises, and helps organizations select storage solutions that are deployed with Anthos,” Veerubhotla and Batra said.

Those requirements include being able to demonstrate core Kubernetes functions such as the dynamic provisioning of storage volumes via open and portable application programming interfaces, as well as the ability to manage storage across cluster scale-up and scale-down scenarios. Certified storage providers can also provide a simplified deployment experience, Google said.

That should be welcome by Anthos users as storage remains a critical capability even in the cloud era, and all the more so when the cloud comes to your own data center, said Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc.

“It makes sense for Google to partner with trusted vendors to provide Anthos storage,” Mueller said. “And it changes enemies into frenemies, as the traditional IT providers can now partner with Google and help influence decisions. A smart move all in all.”

Google Anthos’ initial storage partners include Dell EMC, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Co., NetApp Inc., Portworx Inc., Pure Storage Inc. and Robin Systems Inc.

Photo: Google