Most organizations today rely on cloud services. Some operate entirely in Azure. Others use a mix of Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud. Many also maintain on-premises infrastructure. Regardless of your setup, you need visibility into everything you run, control over your spending, and assurance that nothing breaks without you knowing.
You essentially have two choices:
Use the native tools Azure provides, or use a Cloud Management Portal (CMP). Both options are effective—your decision simply depends on your environment and needs.
What Azure Provides
Azure includes a robust set of built-in management tools:
- Azure Portal for managing and creating resources
- Azure Monitor for performance and health monitoring
- Azure Cost Management for billing and spending insights
These tools are included with Azure, tightly integrated with its services, and familiar to most IT teams.
However, challenges appear when your environment extends beyond Azure. If you also use AWS or Google Cloud, you must sign into each platform separately. Managing resources across multiple clouds means switching between portals and stitching information together manually—a process that is both time-consuming and error-prone.
What a CMP Offers
A Cloud Management Portal acts as a single control plane for all your cloud platforms. With one login, you can:
- View resources across Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, and private clouds
- Deploy resources in any cloud from a unified interface
- Track costs from all providers in one dashboard
- Apply policies and governance consistently across platforms
The core difference is simple:
Azure’s native tools work only with Azure. A CMP works with everything.
Unified Visibility Into All Your Resources
To manage your environment well, you need a complete picture:
How many virtual machines are running?
Which databases are consuming the most storage?
Where are you paying for unused resources?
Native tools force you to check each platform individually. Many teams resort to spreadsheets to assemble a full view—time-consuming and often incomplete.
A CMP consolidates all resources into one interface. You can filter by provider, team, or project and search across your entire infrastructure instantly. When leadership asks for your total cloud footprint, you actually have the answer.
Clear, Consolidated Cost Management
Cloud billing is notoriously complex. Azure charges one way, AWS another. You receive separate invoices, and combining them into a single view is tedious.
A CMP gives you a unified cost dashboard, showing:
Total multi-cloud spend
Breakdowns by team, department, or project
Budget alerts before you overspend
Cost optimization opportunities
At SNP Technologies, Inc., our CMP tracks and normalizes costs across all cloud providers, delivering clear insights so you can make data-driven decisions—not guesses.
Consistent Security and Compliance
Every organization has governance requirements. Examples include:
- Mandatory resource tags (e.g., cost center, project)
- Data residency constraints
- Access restrictions for production resources
With native tools, you must configure and maintain these policies separately in each cloud. A change in Azure doesn’t automatically carry over to AWS.
A CMP lets you define a policy once and enforce it everywhere. If someone attempts to create a resource that violates the rules, it’s blocked—regardless of which cloud they’re using. This ensures your security posture remains consistent across the entire environment.
Automation That Works Across Clouds
Automation reduces manual work and speeds up delivery. Azure offers strong automation tools, but they’re limited to Azure.
A CMP can automate end-to-end workflows across all platforms. For example:
A developer submits a request for a new workspace.
The system automatically provisions the right resources, in the right cloud, based on your policies.
Dev workloads might land in Azure; production could be deployed in AWS.
With SNP Technologies’ Cloud Management Portal, we help organizations implement multi-cloud automation that accelerates delivery and reduces IT overhead.
If You Only Use Azure
If your environment is fully Azure-based and you don’t plan to adopt additional clouds, Azure’s native tools may be all you need. They’re built in, familiar, and completely integrated.
If You Use Multiple Clouds
Most modern enterprises operate in more than one cloud. Some workloads run best in AWS, others fit Azure, and certain data must remain on-premises for compliance reasons.
If this describes your organization, a CMP offers significant advantages:
- One place to view and manage everything
- Consistent policy enforcement across clouds
- Unified reporting and cost visibility
- A single interface for your teams
- Better governance for large, distributed environments
Organizations with multiple teams or business units especially benefit from this centralized control.
Which Option Is Right for You?
Ask yourself:
Do you use only Azure?
→ Native tools are likely sufficient.
Do you use multiple clouds or hybrid environments?
→ A CMP will simplify operations.
Do multiple teams manage cloud resources?
→ A single interface avoids wasted effort.
Are cloud costs difficult to track or optimize?
→ A CMP gives you the transparency you need.
There’s no one-size-fits-all answer. The right choice depends on your environment, complexity, and goals.
Need Guidance?
Cloud management is complex. Even with the right tools, navigating multi-cloud environments effectively requires expertise.
At SNP Technologies, Inc., we help organizations simplify cloud operations. Our Cloud Management Portal gives you a single pane of glass for all your environments—and we tailor it to how your business works.
If you’re looking to gain control, visibility, and consistency across your cloud infrastructure, we’re here to help you choose the right path.
