Google’s Anthos software promises a single, consistent way of managing Kubernetes workloads across on-prem and public cloud environments

Google Cloud launched the Anthos platform in April 2019, promising customers a way to run Kubernetes workloads on-premises, in the Google Cloud, and, crucially, in other major public clouds including Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure.

That crucial last part has taken Google Cloud some time to achieve. The company finally announced Anthos support for AWS in April 2020, while Azure support remains in preview with a select batch of customers for now.

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Speaking at Google Cloud Next in San Francisco in 2019, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the idea behind Anthos is to allow developers to “write once and run anywhere”—a promise to simplify the development, deployment, and operation of applications across hybrid and multiple public clouds by bridging incompatible cloud architectures.

The previously released Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and GKE On-Prem allowed for hybrid Kubernetes deployments, yet customers continued to demand a platform that made it simple to span multiple, rival cloud providers as well.

By providing a single platform for the management of all Kubernetes workloads, Google Cloud Anthos allows customers to focus their skills on a single technology, rather than relying on certified experts in a multitude of proprietary cloud technologies.

Similarly, Anthos provides operational consistency across hybrid and public clouds, with the ability to apply common configurations across infrastructures, as well as custom security policies linked to certain workloads and namespaces, regardless of where those workloads are running.

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