Kion, formerly Cloudtamer, expands cloud management features
Cloudtamer, a cloud management startup, rebrands as Kion for the platform's 3.0 release. New features include expanded support for Google Cloud Platform and cloud finance tools.
Startup Cloudtamer.io has rebranded as Kion with the latest release of its public cloud policy management software.
Kion's cloud management product, now updated to version 3.0, offers new features for increased visibility into the usage and costs of reserved instances across multiple clouds. It also improved its cloud account wizard, simplifying the process of creating and ending projects or services across the three major hyperscalers: AWS, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Azure.
The update also improved compatibility and integrations with GCP, enabling project automation and cloud environment management through Kion.
First released in 2018, Kion offers services many companies need when moving into hybrid cloud environments across hyperscalers, according to Dennis Smith, research vice president at Gartner.
"The area of day two cloud management is something many companies may miss," he said, referring to the costs and headaches of operating applications within hyperscaler ecosystems after the initial setup. Management services such as Kion, he noted, can help mitigate those unplanned issues.
The new update is now generally available for all Kion users.
Cloud control to Kion
Kion is licensed as a SaaS and can remediate compliance issues, track budgets of purchased cloud services, and automate provisioning of resources and accounts for cloud servicers.
Kion can simplify multi-cloud environments, untethered from vendor-specific hardware or services compared to competitors such as CloudCheckr, which NetApp acquired last month, or VMware CloudHealth, according to Smith. The startup faces stiffer competition in hybrid environments from older, similar third-party vendor platforms such as CloudBolt.
We wouldn't expect whoever we were buying from to tell us how to spend less money.
Dennis SmithResearch vice president, Gartner
Kion doesn't abstract the management layer of the different clouds, enabling IT administrators to give users flexibility in requesting and utilizing different cloud services, Smith said. More importantly, Kion's own software remains divorced from the frequent upgrade cycles of the hyperscalers so users aren't waiting for a vendor update to continue using existing services.
"We wouldn't expect whoever we were buying from to tell us how to spend less money," he said. "I may have sophisticated users who want to go in natively. If you're hiding complexities, that means you're going to have to be updated with those features from many of the cloud providers."
The name change for Kion comes as the startup looks to grow, according to Brian Price, CEO of Kion.
The company secured $9.5 million in Series A funding last month through a variety of firms and investors. Some of Kion's clients include NASA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"It really sets the foundation for us to build Kion as this next generation platform beyond what Cloudtamer was doing," Price said. "There's a lot more we have planned in our roadmap."
Tim McCarthy is a journalist living in the North Shore of Massachusetts. He covers cloud and data storage news.
Dig Deeper on Cloud infrastructure design and management
