Leading value-added distributor First Distribution has been appointed as the African distributor for Morpheus.

Morpheus is a hybrid multi-cloud management platform. It is a unified and composable platform that allows companies to modernise apps and manage hybrid cloud ecosystems. The agnostic application automation platform supports self-service provisioning into an unpredictable mix of hypervisors, platforms, automation tools, and clouds while assuring security for multiple organisations or business units.

Morpheus offers more than 100 codeless integrations into third-party tools, ranging from hyperscalers, on-premise or hosted cloud platforms, DevOps toolchains and frameworks, cloud native templating and tools, and day-two operational tools ranging from ITSM through backups, logging, monitoring, and network services.

As digital transformation accelerates, cloud - whether on-premises, hosted, public or hybrid - is here to stay, and app modernisation has become imperative.

A Morpheus spokesman comments: “We have generally found early adopters of public cloud have cost challenges, since public cloud is not cheaper; and late adopters now have more than one cloud to choose from - all with their own pros and cons.

“Because there are there are various benefits across the different public cloud providers, many of the early adopters are now considering - or already have - more than one public cloud. And a significant number of these same early adopters are now repatriating non-critical workloads back to their on-premises or hosted datacentres to achieve cost optimisation.

“Meanwhile, we see many latecomers to the cloud environment are now putting applications, tools, and services in place to ensure costs and operations are maintained when landing on their selected clouds, while still maintaining on-premises environments for their non-critical workloads.”

Whenever large enterprises deploy more than one cloud, they encounter challenges ranging from the skills gaps, team silos, operational challenges, governance and cost control, standard operating procedure (SOP) management, and systems administration perspectives, he adds.

Along with their global counterparts, South African organisations are accelerating the adoption of both public and private clouds. According to a First Distribution spokesman, this trend is driven by a need to deliver hybrid working for staff and better customer services.

“Flexibility and scaling have been the key drivers to cloud adoption, with the ability to rapid deployment of new services,” the spokesman says. “In addition, we are seeing a shift to on-demand computing, and a shared service model.

“However, cost optimisation and rogue processing can hinder the cloud transformation if no policies and controls are in place to manage and track costs against budgets.”

The challenges associated with cloud transformation can be managed and mitigated by having an effective hybrid multi-cloud management platform like Morpheus in place, which also provides DevOps and day-two operational capabilities.

This allows large enterprises to integrate clouds, tools, applications, and services into a single unified orchestration and automation framework, according to Morpheus.

Because it is a self service-driven platform, once all the various integrations are in place, Morpheus allows for the creation of self-service personas for all areas of the business, providing FinOps, CloudOps, DevOps, and SecOps access to the various clouds, tools, applications and services needed for them to be effective in their roles.

Morpheus has a full role-based access control (RBAC) and policy engine built-in which ensures that SOPs and governance controls can be effectively managed across large complex technology landscapes.

The South African market opportunity for the Morpheus solution is considerable, First Distribution believes. The reduction of cloud costs and provisioning efficiency sets Morpheus in a unique space within strained IT environments. With Morpheus Hybrid Cloud Automation resources have the ability to deploy, manage and optimise.

First Distribution’s reach into Africa was a key factor in Morpheus’s decision to appoint the company. “We chose First Distribution as a distributor because it has a fantastic business model and the necessary reach across the continent to assist us with taking Morpheus to Africa,” says the Morpheus spokesman.

From First Distribution’s perspective, Morpheus’s solution to hybrid cloud management provides a vital next step to First Distribution’s cloud strategy.

Morpheus will complement First Distribution’s existing solution offerings in AWS, Azure, Veeam, Oracle, Dell and VMWare, adding enterprise agility, control and efficiency.

Morpheus is delivered via the channel as a monthly and yearly enterprise workload licencing model.