Cloudify Ltd. today upgraded its infrastructure orchestration platform with features designed to make it easier to manage the large number of different components that make up an enterprise’s technology environment. 

Cloudify Ltd. is a Tel Aviv-based startup that spun out of in-memory computing company GigaSpaces Technologies Inc. in 2017. Since then, it has raised at least $7 million in funding from investors that include Intel Ventures and amassed a customer base that includes the likes of Palo Alto Networks Inc. and Accenture Plc.

The large enterprises Cloudify targets often use multiple infrastructure management platforms. A company might use VMware Inc.’s virtualization platform to manage its on-premises servers while relying on Kubernetes to support its public cloud deployment. Cloudify’s software ties together a company’s different management platforms with an overarching orchestration layer that lets administrators manage all their infrastructure, both on- and off-premises, from one place.

The update announced today will allow Cloudify to manage more of the components in its customers’ environments. There’s support for vSphere 7, the latest version of VMware’s virtualization platform, as well as its NSX-T software-defined networking platform, plus “native” Kubernetes integration. The latter addition allows Cloudify’s software to manage workloads deployed on Amazon Managed Kubernetes Service, Azure Kubernetes Service, Google Kubernetes Engine and Red Hat OpenShift. 

One level of abstraction higher, Cloudify now works with several of the automation tools that enterprises use to handle the day-to-day maintenance of their infrastructure. There’s compatibility for the widely adopted Helm tool for managing Kubernetes clusters. Cloudify has also added support for Jenkins, CircleCI and GitActions, three popular tools used by software teams to orchestrate the logistics involved in releasing code to production.

The startup says its platform effectively functions as an “orchestrator of orchestrators” for the different platforms on which companies deploy it. 

Cloudify argues that the newly added integrations will ultimately serve to ease cloud adoption for customers. The reasoning is that centralizing management tasks which previously had to be done separately lowers the technical barriers involved in moving to the cloud. “By integrating with existing automation and management frameworks we were able to dramatically increase cloud migration and management processes,” said Cloudify Chief Executive Ariel Dan. 

Beyond strengthening external product integrations, the startup is making it easier to manage infrastructure powered by its platform. Administrators in charge of enterprise hybrid clouds periodically have to decommission resources that are no longer in use. Cloudify is introducing a new feature with today’s update that warns administrators if any services depend on a resource they’re about to decommission, which should reduce the risk of outages.

Another task today’s update simplifies is provisioning resources for users. A new self-service portal allows employees to spin up resources such as cloud instances without help from the information technology team, thereby freeing up time for administrators.

Other enhancements include a ServiceNow integration and tweaks to the Cloudify management console designed to improve navigation. 

Photo: Cloudify