14 Best Multi-Cloud Management Platforms in 2025

Any modern application or service today relies on cloud-based platforms to host their infrastructure. The same application or service can span multiple cloud vendors with different user and programming interfaces and service specifications. This is where multi-cloud management platforms can make your administration work easy.

Multi-cloud management platforms provide a single unified interface for monitoring, securing and optimizing across various public cloud deployments. In other words, IT teams can manage multiple clouds from a single UI, hiding much of the complexities involved, with the help of these solutions.

Since many organizations use more than one public cloud service provider nowadays, it avoids complete service failures due to dependency on any one vendor while simultaneously allowing the organization to take relative strength of different providers as per their business requirements.

In this post, I’ve researched and reviewed the 14 best multi-cloud management platforms, with their core capabilities, key features, pros, and cons. At the end, I’ll share a comparison table for these platforms and the challenges they face in the evolving IT world.

• 1. Cloudify – Orchestrate Anything, Anywhere
• 2. Terraform – Infrastructure as Code Solution
• 3. Flexera – Manage and Optimize Your Cloud
• 4. Nutanix – Simplify and Automate Your Hybrid Multi-cloud
• 5. Spectro Cloud – Kubernetes Management for Any Cloud
• 6. Anodot – AI-powered Cost Management Platform
• 7. OpenNebula – Build and Manage Your own Cloud
• 8. Lacework – Security and Compliance for Multi-cloud
• 9. Azure Arc – Azure, Everywhere
• 10. Ansible – Best for IT Infrastructure Automation
• 11. CloudZero – Understand and Optimize Cloud Costs
• 12. New Relic – Observability for Your Entire Stack
• 13. Scalr – Best for Enterprise Cloud Governance
• 14. IBM Turbomonic – Manage Application Resources
• Show moreShow less

1. Cloudify

Cloudify is an open-source multi-cloud and edge orchestration platform that offers automated resource provisioning and optimization by automating the existing infrastructure along with cloud-native and distributed edge resources.

I liked that Cloudify also allows you to manage different orchestration and automation domains as part of one common CI/CD pipeline.

Cloudify Features

• Everything as a code enables modeling of a composite service containing components from multiple orchestration domains
• Built-in integration with AWS Cloud formation, Azure ARM, Ansible, and Terraform
• Orchestration of cloud-native Kubernetes services across multiple Kubernetes clusters
• Built-in integration with Jenkins and other CI/CD platforms
• Consistent workflow management across all the infrastructure domains
• Customizable portal and catalog service
• Enhanced security and RBAC support
• Blueprint modeling and design using the Cloudify Composer
• Pluggability provides reusable component abstraction for the system
• Cloudify Spire handles large-scale deployment such as multi-site and Edge use cases

Cloudify Pricing

Cloudify offers the following pricing plans:

• Free Plan: $0
• Starter Plan: $1,000/month
• Pro Plan: $4,750/month
• Enterprise Plan: Customizable

Get started with Cloudify

2. Terraform

HashiCorp Terraform is an Infrastructure as a Code (IaC) tool, which can define both cloud and on-premise resources in human-readable format for further reuse and sharing. I like how it helps you to provision your complete infrastructure using automation, throughout its lifecycle. It can further facilitate infrastructure provisioning using your existing CI/CD pipelines.

Terraform Features

• Using Infrastructure as code to automate provisioning
• Deploy resources with multiple cloud vendors consistently
• Provision and manage Kubernetes clusters on AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, etc.
• Automate key network tasks like updating load balancer target pools or applying firewall policies
• Build and manage virtual images using Terraform and Packer
• Automate infrastructure deployments using existing CI/CD pipelines
• Using Sentinel policy as code, enforce policy guardrails before deployment
• Automate usage of dynamically generated secrets and credentials with HashiCorp Vault

Terraform Pricing

Terraform offers resource-based pricing plans as follows:

• Free Plan: $0 (up to 500 resources)
• Standard Plan: $0.00014/hour/resource
• Plus Plan: Custom (Contact sales)
• Enterprise Plan: Custom (Contact sales)

Get started with Terraform

3. Flexera

Flexera is a comprehensive cloud management platform with a rich set of capabilities. Some of them that interest me are discovery, template-based provisioning, orchestration and automation, operational monitoring and management, and governance.

It also helps you optimize cost across multiple public and private clouds as well as virtual and bare-metal servers.

Flexera Features

• Full visibility of public and private cloud resources in a single view
• Standardize architecture using reusable blueprints to orchestrate infrastructure
• Powerful orchestration engine to automate actions across multiple cloud servers and services
• Control cloud use with out-of-the-box and custom policies to automate governance

Flexera Pricing

Flexera offers custom pricing for its products. Contact their sales team to get a quote personalized for your environment.

Get started with Flexera

4. Nutanix

In my opinion, Nutanix Cloud Manager is a brilliantly simple multi-cloud management tool that can build and manage cloud deployments with speed and ease.

It can handle various cloud operations intelligently by automating operational tasks and can unify security operations with intelligent analysis and regulatory compliances.

Nutanix Features

• Enables smart IT cloud monitoring and operations with codeless task automation, automated optimization, and capacity usage scenario analysis
• Supports automation & cloud orchestration with self-service provisioning, application lifecycle management, and hybrid multi-cloud orchestration
• Better management of multi-cloud cost & security governance with features like showback, chargeback, and budgeting; automated rightsizing with intelligent purchases and holistic security monitoring and remediation

Nutanix Pricing

Nutanix Cloud Manager provides licenses on a per-core basis through a yearly subscription. It offers three NCM licensing tiers, Starter, Pro, and Ultimate, which are custom priced. Contact their sales team for a quote.

Get started with Nutanix

5. Spectro Cloud

Spectro Cloud Palette is a multi-cloud management platform designed specifically for the Kubernetes environment. I like that even with multiple clusters in various locations, you can easily manage your multi-cloud environment at any scale using this tool.

Its Palette management platform gives you effortless control of the full Kubernetes lifecycle, across clouds, data centers, bare metal, and edge environments.

Spectro Cloud Features

• Declarative management across the full Kubernetes stack
• Allows scaling to thousands of clusters with its unique decentralized architecture
• Supports bare metal, virtualized data centers, cloud IaaS, cloud-managed K8s services
• Provides a unified platform to manage both VMs and containers, with easy full-stack bare metal deployment
• Zero-trust security with certification from many recognized IT security standards, including FIPS 140-2, SOC 2 Type 2, and ISO 27001
• Integrates with all your existing tools and processes to allow managing your Kubernetes environments with Palette’s UI, API or CLI, or use Terraform or Crossplane

Spectro Cloud Pricing

You can contact their sales team, as it offers personalized pricing for your environment based on usage.

Get started with Spectro Cloud

6. Anodot

Anodot is an AI-based cost management platform for multi-cloud, K8s pods, and SaaS tools. In my opinion, its biggest benefits are that it can detect wastes, track your savings, and provide transparency on current and future costs, facilitating strategic financial planning and management for your IT infrastructure.

Anodot Features

• Allows creation of accurate multi-cloud cost forecasts, monitor budget adherence, and generate ad-hoc forecasts instantly
• Provides full visibility into your multi-cloud environments across cloud providers and teams
• Anodot Waste Detector helps you to identify and prioritize cloud cost optimization across multiple cloud providers
• Detects anomalies as soon as cost data is available and intelligently alerts the appropriate teams
• Provides data-driven insights and easy-to-action savings recommendations for cloud costs
• Simplify operations by managing multiple cloud accounts across Azure, Google Cloud, and AWS from a single platform
• Adaptive ML-powered forecasting with automated waste detection, real-time anomaly detection, and instant cloud cost insights with CostGPT

Anodot Pricing

Anodot has custom pricing plans. Contact their sales team to get a quote.

Get started with Anodot

7. OpenNebula

OpenNebula is an open-source platform delivering a simple but feature-rich and flexible solution to build and manage enterprise clouds for virtualized services, containerized applications, and serverless computing.

I like that it combines existing virtualization with advanced features for multi-tenancy, automatic provision, and elasticity to offer on-demand applications and services. It provides a single, flexible management platform for all cloud components across data centers, reducing complexity, resource usage, and operational costs.

OpenNebula Features

• Single control panel that unifies management across the hybrid multi-cloud environment
• Automated operations with quick deployment of clusters on-prem and on-cloud
• Infrastructure-agnostic platform to build an enterprise cloud that meets your needs, both on-prem and on-cloud
• Scalable with many large-scale production deployments using thousands of distributed nodes
• Supports both KVM VMs and Kubernetes clusters in a shared environment
• Allows provisioning hybrid and edge environments with infrastructure resources from AWS and Equinix
• Supports deployment and migration of workloads between different cloud and edge providers
• Workload located in different providers can be used to create an aggregated service

OpenNebula Pricing

OpenNebula offers 3 types of enterprise subscriptions:

• Elemental: $3,750/year
• Standard: $8,750/year
• Premium: $13,750/year

Get started with OpenNebula

8. Lacework

Lacework’s platform provides multi-cloud and hybrid cloud security, whether you are using Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, or Oracle Cloud infrastructure, and hybrid environments.

In my opinion, its key advantage is that it can identify threats and vulnerabilities across your whole environment with comprehensive cloud account security for all platforms.

Lacework Features

• Identifies configuration issues and monitors accounts for abnormal activity in your multi-cloud environment
• Helps remedy Identity and Access Management (IAM) vulnerabilities, monitor unauthorized API calls, and confirm secure network configurations
• Provides automated checks to identify IAM users without multi-factor authentication (MFA) enabled, exposed data, misconfigured security groups, etc.
• Conducts daily audits of your entire cloud infrastructure to pinpoint changes that impact your compliance posture, and provides the best remediation methods

Lacework Pricing

Lacework offers custom pricing on its Pro and Enterprise plans. Contact their sales team to get a customized quote.

Get started with Lacework

9. Azure Arc

Azure Arc is a bridge that extends the Azure platform to help you build applications and services with the flexibility to run across datacenters, at the edge, and in multi-cloud environments.

It provides a consistent multi-cloud and on-premises management platform to enable simplified governance and management, which I consider to be its biggest selling point.

Azure Arc Features

• Allows you to manage your entire environment together by projecting your existing non-Azure and/or on-premises resources into Azure Resource Manager
• Enables you to manage your virtual machines, Kubernetes clusters, and databases as if they are running in Azure
• Implements consistent inventory, management, governance, and security for servers across your environment
• Simplifies compliance and configuration for Kubernetes clusters using Azure Policy
• Helps you manage and govern Kubernetes clusters at scale
• Azure VM extensions give use of Azure management services to monitor, secure, and update your servers

Azure Arc Pricing

Azure Arc is part of Azure cloud and offers some features as free, while having usage-based pricing for advanced or higher use. Pricing also differs based on the region opted for Azure Arc. You’ll have to contact their sales team for a custom quote or check out their pricing calculator.

Get started with Azure Arc

10. Ansible

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform can manage, coordinate, and operationalize all kinds of public, private, and hybrid clouds under a single set of processes and policies. This also works for some combinations of virtual, bare-metal, and cloud environments.

I like that it is one of the few unified multi-cloud management solutions available that offers the security, features, integrations, and flexibility needed to scale automation across domains.

Ansible Features

• Allows you to deliver consistent, reliable automation across domains with a unified automation solution
• Enforces consistent security policies and configurations while automating security monitoring and response
• Supports Event-Driven Ansible to automate IT actions with rule-based constructs
• Enables building a foundation for AI adoption using Automation as Code strategy
• Supports training AI on your operational knowledge with Ansible Playbooks and Rulebooks
• Use Ansible Lightspeed to generate code recommendations for automation tasks

Ansible Pricing

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform offers Standard and Premium plans, with customized pricing based on your sizing. Reach out to their sales team for the pricing structure and quotation.

Get started with Ansible

11. CloudZero

CloudZero is the cloud cost intelligence platform that puts cost into context for your business. I like its simple and straightforward setup process that gets you started in minutes and provides cost insights and anomalies for any multi-cloud environment.

It offers different types of cost management tools to enrich your cloud cost with service metadata, telemetry, and more.

CloudZero Features

• Supports AI-powered anomaly detection using hourly data to detect and flag abnormal spend events
• Helps in budgeting and forecasting by predicting future cloud costs using data on past spend
• CloudZero Explorer tool provides relevant, timely data, translating all your cloud spends into a common data model and letting all cloud stakeholders see it in the ways that matter to them
• Helps to log, rank, and realize deep cloud efficiencies with nuanced savings opportunities automatically or with FinOps Account Managers (FAM)
• Includes powerful and automated business intelligence tool for enhanced visibility and savings
• CloudZero Dimensions allows you to sort your cloud spend by customers, products, features, teams etc.

CloudZero Pricing

CloudZero platform cost is based on a percentage of annual cloud spend starting at $1 million. You can request a quote by contacting their sales team.

Get started with CloudZero

12. New Relic

New Relic is an advanced all-in-one intelligent observability tool for your multi-cloud environment. I like that it can automatically understand your systems and data while predicting and preventing issues in your infrastructure.

It provides complete visibility across your stack and helps you with actionable AI-powered insights and unlimited scalability.

New Relic Features

• Complete visibility across the stack using 30+ capabilities in a single, unified experience
• Provides actionable AI-powered insights to issues across all your systems
• Supports ingestion of unlimited data from all telemetry sources to eliminate blind spots
• Large open-source ecosystem gives you better flexibility and avoids vendor lock-in
• Provides pre-built observability resources for you to get started instantly

New Relic Pricing

New Relic offers tiered pricing for its monitoring product. There are both user and usage-based pricing tiers which can be selected based on your needs. It offers Free, Standard, Pro, and Enterprise plans.

To get exact pricing for the chosen edition, contact the New Relic sales team.

Get started with New Relic

13. Scalr

Scalr is a remote operations backend solution for Terraform and OpenTofu (OTF), which executes, runs, and stores states centrally in Scalr or a backend of your choice, allowing for easy collaboration across your organization.

In my opinion, it can help a team to easily create a secure, standardized workflow to enable self-service for developers. You can continue using existing workflows built on the native Terraform or OpenTofu CLI, implement a GitOps workflow, or use No Code provisioning.

Scalr Features

• Flexible workflows with the ability to execute Terraform through the native Terraform or OpenTofu CLI, VCS/PR automation, or No Code deployments
• Supports any Terraform or OpenTofu remote backend
• Native integrations with tools like GitHub, Gitlab, Azure DevOps, BitBucket, Checkov, Terragrunt, AWS Eventbridge, Open Policy Agent, Datadog, Okta, Slack, MS Teams, and more
• Provides actionable reports on runs, drift, modules, providers, resources, and OPA results across all workspaces
• Actionable insights tell you exactly where issues arise with comprehensive monitoring and reporting across your operations

Scalr Pricing

Scalr has transparent, run-based pricing, offered in monthly or annual subscriptions. The first 50 runs are free, and the cost for a higher number of runs starts at $99/month for 100 runs.

For more than 15000 runs/month, you can contact their sales team for a quote.

Get started with Scalr

14. IBM Turbomonic

IBM Turbonomic is an application resource management platform for all your multi-cloud environments. I like how it can continuously optimize application resource performance while allowing you to automatically scale your existing IT infrastructure for higher performance and better economics.

It discovers and monitors your application environment through targets and then performs analysis, anticipates risks to performance or efficiency, and recommends actions to avoid problems before they occur.

IBM Turbomonic Features

• Provides complete visualization of your application and infrastructure stack
• Shows relationships between resources in the full stack, preventing issues before they become larger problems
• Gives you real-time, AI-powered automation to help ensure application performance
• Automatically addresses resource underutilization and overprovisioning
• Generates real-time insights into the health and performance of your applications
• Provides 3 built-in dashboards that display crucial metrics for optimal decision-making

IBM Turbomonic Pricing

IBM Turbonomic follows instance-based pricing. You can get an estimate using their pricing calculator or get a quote by contacting their sales team.

Get started with IBM Turbonomic

Multi-Cloud Management Platform Comparison

In the table below, I’ve compared the multi-cloud management platforms on this list based on their supported platforms, pricing models, specialties, and deployment options.

Product	Supported Platforms	Pricing Model	Specialties	Deployment Options
Cloudify	AWS, Azure, Ansible, Terraform	Cloudify as a Service, Cloudify Community, and Cloudify Premium	Everything as a code, Built-in integration with multiple providers and CI/CD platforms, Orchestration of cloud-native Kubernetes services	SaaS, On-Premises, Docker, Kubernetes
Terraform	AWS, Azure, Docker, GCP, HCP Terraform, OCI	Resource-based (Free, Standard, Plus, and Enterprise)	Infrastructure as Code, Multi-cloud compatibility, Declarative configuration language, State management system, Automated provisioning, Dependency tracking	Local or Self-hosted, CI/CD Pipelines, Cloud, Containers
Flexera	AWS, IBM, OCI, Azure, Kubernetes, VMware	Custom	Full visibility, Reusable blueprints, Powerful orchestration engine, Out-of-the-box and custom policies	On-Premises, Cloud
Nutanix Cloud Manager	Nutanix, VMware, AWS, Azure, GCP	Tier-based (NCP Starter, NCP Pro, and NCP Ultimate)	Smart IT monitoring, Codeless task automation, Self-service provisioning	On-Premises, Cloud, Hybrid
Spectro Cloud	Bare metal and virtualized data centers, Cloud IaaS, Cloud managed K8s services (EKS, AKS, GKE), Form-factor edge	Usage-based (Palette Enterprise, Edge and VerteX Editions)	Declarative management for Kubernetes, Unified platform, Zero trust security	Multi-tenant SaaS, Dedicated SaaS, Self-hosted
Anodot	AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes	Duration/Usage/User/Metrics-based	Cloud cost insights, Accurate multi-cloud cost forecasts, Detects anomalies	Cloud-based SaaS
OpenNebula	AWS, Equinix, GCP, OCI, Digital Ocean, Vultr, Threefold, OVHcloud, Scaleway, Bare-metal, Hybrid environments	Node-based subscription (Elemental, Standard, Premium)	Automation, Portability, Interoperability	On-Premises, Hybrid Cloud, Edge, Virtualization (KVM, VMware, Xen), Docker, Kubernetes
Lacework	AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Kubernetes, Hybrid environments	Custom (Pro and Enterprise Plans)	Automated security checks and remediation, Compliance, Continuous checks	SaaS, Kubernetes, OpenShift, Hybrid environments
Azure Arc	Windows and Linux physical servers and virtual machines, Kubernetes, Azure Data Services, SQL Server	Consumption-based pricing model (Free for some services)	Consistent management across clouds, Kubernetes governance, Azure services deployment	SaaS
Ansible	AWS, Azure, GCP	Sizing and subscription-based (Standard and Premium)	Automation, Configuration Management, DevOps, Orchestration	On-Premises, Cloud-hosted, Containers, Red Hat OpenShift
CloudZero	AWS, Azure, GCP, Snowflake, New Relic, Databricks, Datadog, MongoDB	Percentage-based on annual spend (starting at $1 million of spend)	Anomaly Detection, Budgeting and Forecasting, Optimization Insights	SaaS
New Relic	AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes, Network, Prometheus	Usage-based (Free, Standard, Pro, Enterprise)	Complete visibility, AI-powered insights, Unlimited scalability	SaaS (Managed and via partners)
Scalr	Platforms supported by Terraform or OpenTofu	Subscription-based (on Terraform run count)	Flexible workflows, Secure self-service, Actionable insights	SaaS
IBM Turbomonic	Public cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP), Private cloud, Prometheus, Hypervisors (Hyper-V VMware, PowerVM), SNMP, Kubernetes, Applications and Databases	Instance-based subscription	Full-stack visibility, AI-powered automation, Real-time insights	SaaS, On-Premises, Kubernetes

What Is Multi-Cloud Management Platform?

Multi-Cloud Management Platforms (MCMPs) are software solutions for monitoring, managing, and controlling complex and dynamic multi-cloud environments. These platforms help businesses optimize resource utilization, application integration, and cloud costs, while ensuring security and compliance.

Additionally, some solutions enable organizations to distribute their applications and workloads across different clouds. This balances the loads and improves speed and response time, thereby avoiding overloading a particular cloud.

As the multi-cloud environment expands, teams may be overwhelmed, resulting in inefficiencies, non-compliance, security issues, and problems. An ideal tool should provide adequate visibility and enable teams to optimize the environment for performance and better ROI.

I’ve also come across a couple of interesting statistics regarding MCMPs’ market growth and adoption rate, which I consider worth noting:

• Market Growth: The global multi-cloud management market size was valued at USD 8.03 billion in 2022 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 28.0% from 2023 to 2030.^[1] This rapid growth is driven by the increasing need for automation, efficiency, and effective organizational governance processes.
• Adoption Rate: According to a study by HashiCorp in 2021, 76% of organizations already use multi-cloud infrastructure.^[2] This indicates a significant shift away from single-cloud strategies, with larger enterprises (94% of those with 5,000 or more employees) leading the way.

5 Benefits of a Multi-Cloud Management Platform

Below, I’ve listed 5 important benefits of multi-cloud management platforms:

1. Centralized Visibility and Control: MCMPs allow you to manage and control your cloud infrastructure from a single dashboard. They offer real-time insights into performance, security, and compliance, while centralized policies ensure consistent environment across different clouds.
2. Cost Optimization: These solutions enable you to track and analyze cloud spending across providers, allowing you to identify unused or underutilized resources. You can get automated recommendations with cost-saving strategies for rightsizing instances and using reserved or spot instances. They also help companies choose the most cost-effective cloud services based on workload demands.
3. Increased Agility and Flexibility: Based on performance, location, or pricing, a multi-cloud management platform allows you to deploy workloads on the most suitable cloud provider. It also provides seamless workload migration between clouds, while supporting hybrid cloud setups for maximum flexibility.
4. Improved Disaster Recovery: The platforms ensure redundancy by replicating data and workloads across different cloud providers. They handle the risk of downtime due to cloud outages by automatically rerouting traffic to another provider. You also get simplified backup and recovery processes by leveraging multiple storage solutions across different clouds.
5. Avoid Vendor Lock-in: Using MCMPs, you can better negotiate for pricing and services as you avoid dependency on a single cloud provider. Your applications can be migrated or distributed across different clouds to avoid being locked into proprietary tools or APIs. This ensures long-term flexibility as technology and pricing evolve.

4 Challenges in Multi-Cloud Environments

While multi-cloud environments provide excellent flexibility, they come with their own set of issues. I’ve discussed four of the major challenges with multi-cloud environments below:

1. Lack of Adequate Visibility

Due to the complexity of the multi-cloud environment, some organizations lack full visibility. This may prevent teams from properly monitoring, optimizing, and securing their assets.

Traditionally, getting a holistic view of a cloud environment is challenging, and this is even more complex when there are multiple VMs, containers, instances, services, and resources spread across multiple servers from different providers and in different regions. Consequently, the organizations may end up paying for idle resources and exposing themselves to security and compliance issues. 

2. Cloud Overspending

Cloud deployment helps to save costs by eliminating the need to invest in an in-house data center. However, unless managed properly, the cost of maintaining a multi-cloud environment may be excessive, especially when an organization pays more for overprovisioning or idle resources. 

Distributing, moving, and synchronizing data across different clouds is complex and costly. Additionally, while uploading is inexpensive and sometimes free, the exit costs could be very high. Besides the data costs, managing and securing the assets in a multi-cloud environment is expensive and requires higher technical skills and tools.

3. Security and Compliance Challenges

Most cloud computing environments use a shared security model. The provider takes care of the infrastructure security, while the customer is responsible for the security of their applications, access control, and data. However, the exact responsibilities may vary from one provider to the other and whether the service is self or fully vendor or third-party managed. 

Additionally, vendors may have different security models, and there is a high likelihood of security gaps that increase vulnerabilities and the attack surface. 

4. Applications, Processes, and Data Governance Challenges

Data governance and proper access control become a challenge as the volumes increase. Usually, the multi-cloud environment has more applications and processes spread out across different clouds. Furthermore, the data volume grows rapidly and spreads across several locations, making it difficult to control and ensure proper and secure access.

While most providers have in-built access control mechanisms specific to their clouds, managing a multi-cloud environment is difficult without a unified solution. Challenges include managing multiple access systems simultaneously and ensuring consistent environmental policies.

References

Click to Expand

1. 1. Global Multi-cloud Management Market Size Report, 2030 – Grand View Research
2. 2. State of Cloud Strategy Survey – HashiCorp