Anyone can use the cloud, right? After all, if you're reading this blog post then chances are you've done one of the following in the last couple of days: checked your email, shared or saved a file using cloud storage, watched something on a streaming service.

The cloud is now a part of our daily lives, for sure – but the more complex the solutions, the less intuitive they are to manage. IT departments across the world are faced with highly elaborate networks that are increasingly composed of more than one cloud environment.

Multi-cloud is now the norm. At the time of writing, around three-quarters of large organisations buy cloud services from multiple providers – and this has been predicted to rise to 85% in the coming year.

Multi-cloud may be the norm, but it's not yet just a part of the digital furniture. As well as providing enterprises with a cost-effective and flexible cloud solution, it also introduces new problems.

It stands to reason. Owning a car is different from managing a taxi fleet. The more elements there are to manage, the greater the challenges.

Software has to reflect this spiralling complexity. This is one of VMware's specialities: creating platforms that simplify the management of complex environments. VMware Aria is one such offering.

What does VMware Aria do?

VMware Aria is a digital hamper full of features and functions. These centre on three broad areas: multi-cloud management, cross-cloud migration and the autonomous creation of actionable business insights.

There's always more to a product than its marketing hype, but here's what VMware has to say about it: "an intelligent multi-cloud management solution that enables you to consistently deploy and operate your apps, infrastructure and platform services across private, hybrid, and multiple clouds from a single platform with a common data model".

This may sound like any number of its competitors. But leaving the nuances aside for now, users have pointed to one key advantage: it's faster than your average multi-cloud management solution.

To understand its scope, let's break it down into its three key components: VMware Aria Cost, VMware Aria Operations and VMware Aria Automation.

VMware Aria Cost

This is a platform powered by CloudHealth – an engine you might have come across in VMware's Tanzu product line. It enables administrators to more effectively manage costs, optimise their resources and implement automated governance.

VMware Aria Operations

VMware Aria Operations (vROps) is all about monitoring. A large enterprise is like a busy city. You can't just stand at the top of the tallest building and take in all the flows of traffic. Instead, you study it through complex data sets provided by traffic cameras, real-time bus timetables and more.

The same principle applies here. vROps gives you granular visibility into the flow of traffic in your network, from applications to infrastructure.

On top of this, the platform furnishes you with predictive analytics. Need to know how to identify and fine-tune your performance, capacity or configurations? vROps will do that in the background, ready to be raided for actionable business insights.

VMware Aria Automation

Finally, VMware Aria Automation is about, well, automation. It's a secure, multi-tenant portal through which you can automate the delivery and management of applications and infrastructure.

What is Aria Hub?

At the centre of Aria is Aria Hub. This is the control console where you get an overview of your multi-cloud environment's apps, resources, roles and accounts. All of these are presented through VMware's Aria Graph.

It also features VMware Aria Guardrails, VMware Migration and VMware Aria Business Insights.

Guardrails (or security controls) need to be always-on – and the best way to achieve this is through automation. VMware Aria Guardrails lets you do this, meaning that you can scale your multi-cloud environments without fear of security issues.

VMware Aria Migration, meanwhile, is all about making multi-cloud migration easier to execute. It streamlines the process, from assessment to planning to execution. This part of Aria Hub is paired with VMware HCX.

Finally, Aria Hub can turn lumps of unusable data into solid-gold business insights. But the real beauty of it is that this analysis is going on in the background while you make a cup of tea, read the tech news digest or think about the weekend. It uses AI and ML to give you insights into network performance that can be translated into cost savings and performance tips.

What are the benefits of VMware Aria?

Perhaps the biggest plus you get from VMware Aria is its speed and ease of use. But let's drill down into the details. With VMware Aria, you get:

• The ability to speedily deploy and manage multi-cloud environments (including the deployment of security controls)
• Full visibility of all the flows of traffic within your network (these can be isolated and studied in granular detail)
• Native compliance management
• An intuitive interface
• A product that integrates well with other products (including non-VMware products)
• Automated vulnerability remediation
• Actionable business insights
• A guaranteed availability of 99.9%

How do you buy it?

There are two main ways to buy VMware Aria: directly from VMware – individually or as a suite – or from any of VMware's channel partners, MSP partners or public cloud service providers.

Conclusion

In this article, we've dived into the details. But at the end of the day, every product, no matter how niche, needs an elevator pitch.

VMware Aria, then, can simplify and streamline the management of multi-cloud environments with an integrated, comprehensive suite of services. It gives you security, flexibility, visibility and business insights. And at £213.22 a unit per year, it's cost-effective, too.

So if you're struggling to manage a complex multi-cloud environment, VMware Aria could be the solution your enterprise needs.

Ascend is a specialist VMware cloud solutions provider based in Cork, Ireland. We help global clients migrate to the cloud and make the most of their cloud infrastructure. To book a meeting, get in touch with our friendly experts.