How Does Terraform Compare to Cloud Management Platforms?

Transcript

We often get asked how Terraform compares to cloud management platforms. There are many cloud management platforms that promise a simple and easy way for you to deploy your applications and infrastructures across multiple clouds. Each one of these has a simple GUI, and they make a great demo, and it looks really easy: Go ahead and click a button and out pops your application on Amazon or Google Cloud or Azure or whatever you're using.

The problem with the cloud platform is that it locks you into a very specific and rigid way of doing things. It looks very simple, but you're limiting your functionality and your ability to customize your applications because you're tied to that specific platform and the way it works. The platform may work well for simple use cases, but as soon as you find a complicated or slightly off-the-beaten-path use case, you'll struggle to get that platform to work with your unique configuration.

Terraform is a big box of tools suiting your needs

Terraform, on the other hand, takes a different approach. We give you a big box of tools. Imagine a bucket of LEGO bricks or Tinkertoys. And you can customize these tools and build them in different ways to suit your particular application and your needs.

Instead of a rigid platform that locks you into the platform vendor's way of deploying infrastructure into the cloud, we give you a flexible framework that allows you to build around your own applications in the way that suits your needs. HashiCorp focuses more on workflows than specific technologies. And we're well equipped to help you evolve and grow as your cloud platform and infrastructure needs change.