Google Cloud Adds Service Mesh to Anthos

NEW YORK -- Google Cloud today announced updates to its Anthos platform that promise to help organizations deploy container applications and serverless functions more quickly and easily.

Anthos is Google's integrated platform for deploying cloud applications in public or on-premise environments. It now includes Anthos Service Mesh, a managed version of the open source Istio service mesh that enables container visibility, policy management and security.

Google also announced the beta of Cloud Run for Anthos. Cloud Run, introduced in alpha mode at the Next conference in April, is another managed service that enables developers to use Kubernetes to deliver serverless functions.

The news also includes Binary Authorization, a new tool for Anthos that validates container images before they enter the development pipeline. In addition, Anthos Config Management adds new automation and policy management features. 

The updates seek to add more automation to the difficult task of deploying Kubernetes and all of the accompanying pieces of a cloud platform, such as Istio, while enabling developers to be more productive. "Not everyone has the engineering bandwidth to be able to integrate Istio service mesh themselves," said Eyal Manor, VP Engineering for Google Cloud, at an Anthos customer event here.

One early adopter of Anthos is OpenText. The document management company is using Anthos to deliver cloud versions of its products to customers, and also manage its own internal DevOps and application integration. The latter is a big challenge considering the many companies OpenText has acquired over the past decade to build out its platform, said Savinay Berry, Senior Vice President, Cloud Service Delivery for OpenText. 

“Anthos gives us the common architectural framework that takes out dependencies,” Berry said. “Anthos also gives us a catalyst to reach a whole new set of customers that we wouldn't have been able to reach as quickly as we can now to provide solutions in the cloud.”

Kubernetes has come a long way, first from Google’s internal infrastructure, then to hot open source technology, now to what Manor said was an “application modernization platform for any environment.”

That is one effect of the new customer-focused Google Cloud under Thomas Kurian, the former Oracle executive who joined Google late last year: To make Kubernetes more business-friendly and easier to consume.

Many businesses are still trying to figure out what to do with the cloud and containers, but Google sees the new development paradigms not as a matter of technology, but choice. Customers may not be shuttling containers back and forth across clouds, but they may need to run an application in one cloud while keeping data on premise, while keeping all the stakeholders of the application on the same page.

“Anthos is about the journey of a customer’s digital transformation—a managed application innovation platform,” said Chen Goldberg, Anthos Director of Engineering at Google. “Yes, it’s not easy to learn Kubernetes, but it’s also not easy to have five teams running five sets of technology.”

Scot Petersen is a technology analyst at Ziff Brothers Investments, a private investment firm. He has an extensive background in the technology field. Prior to joining Ziff Brothers, Scot was the editorial director, Business Applications & Architecture, at TechTarget. Before that, he was the director, Editorial Operations, at Ziff Davis Enterprise. While at Ziff Davis Media, he was a writer and editor at eWEEK. No investment advice is offered in his blog. All duties are disclaimed. Scot works for a private investment firm, which may at any time invest in companies whose products are discussed in this blog, and no disclosure of securities transactions will be made.