<a id="cloud-usm-overview"></a>

# Unified Stream Manager in Confluent Cloud

Unified Stream Manager (USM) connects your self-managed Confluent Platform clusters to your
Confluent Cloud organization, providing a centralized interface to manage
and monitor all of your Confluent environments.

USM provides a complete view of your entire hybrid data streaming landscape
from a single location. This lets you do the following:

* Observe the health and performance of both cloud and on-premises clusters.
* Govern topics, schemas, and data policies consistently across all environments.
* Streamline migrations from on-premises Confluent Platform clusters to Confluent Cloud.

To learn more about USM components and architecture, see [Unified Stream Manager in Confluent Platform](https://docs.confluent.io/platform/current/usm/overview.html).

## How USM works

The USM Agent collects operational metrics and metadata from
your Confluent Platform cluster and transmits them to Confluent Cloud over a secure
connection. To set this up, you register your Confluent Platform clusters and
deploy the agent in your on-premises environment.

The agent works as follows:

1. The agent securely collects operational metrics and metadata from your cluster.
2. It transmits this information to Confluent Cloud over a secure, private network connection, using
   AWS PrivateLink or Azure Private Link. After your Confluent Platform cluster is registered, its resources—such as topics and
   connectors—appear in the Confluent Cloud UI, which lets you manage them alongside your cloud resources.

To learn more about the agent’s architecture, see
[Unified Stream Manager in Confluent Platform](https://docs.confluent.io/platform/current/usm/overview.html).

## Key capabilities

* **Manage hybrid clusters**: Register on-premises Confluent Platform clusters and connectors so they appear alongside your Confluent Cloud clusters.
* **Unify observability**: View the cluster health, operational metrics, topic throughput, and connector status
  for all clusters in one place.
* **Govern and discover data centrally**: Use cloud-native features like the Data Catalog and Stream Lineage to
  search, trace, and govern topics and schemas that span both Confluent Cloud and on-premises environments.
* **Enforce policies centrally**: Enable global schema rules, schema validation, and metadata tagging from
  the cloud, with enforcement on connected on-premises resources.
* **Manage security and access control**: Secure all connections by using private networking and manage
  operations with role-based access controls from Confluent Cloud.
* **Integrate with monitoring tools**: Query metrics for all registered clusters by using the Confluent Cloud Metrics API to integrate
  with tools like Grafana and Datadog.

## Getting started

To connect your hybrid environments, the first step is to register your self-managed Confluent Platform cluster. For instructions, see [Register Your Confluent Platform Cluster](register/overview.md#cloud-usm-register).

## Related content

* [Register Your Confluent Platform Cluster](register/overview.md#cloud-usm-register)
* [Set Up a Payment Method](register/payment-method.md#usm-payment)
* [Configure AWS Private Networking for USM Agents](register/usm-network.md#usm-network)
* [Configure Azure Private Networking for USM Agents](register/usm-network-azure.md#usm-network-azure)
* [Configure a Service Account for the USM Agent](register/usm-service-account.md#usm-sa)
* [Deploy the USM Agent](register/deploy-agent.md#usm-agent)
* [Complete the Cluster Registration](register/complete-registration.md#complete-registration)