1 Introduction

The KuppingerCole Leadership Compass provides an overview of vendors and their product or service offerings in a certain market segment. This Leaders ...

1.1 Market Segment

The market segments for IaaS services are defined by the scale of operation and the richness of the service provided. There are several well-known g ...

1.2 Required Capabilities

The core features and functionalities that we are looking for include but are not limited to:

• Basic service functionality – the basic IaaS servi ...

1.2.1 Basic Service Functionality

Here we consider the basic functionality provided by the Cloud Service. This must include compute and storage and support for Public / Private / Hybr ...

1.2.2 Enterprise and Hybrid Workload Support

Here we consider the functionality provided for organizations to migrate and run enterprise workloads in the cloud service. This includes the availab ...

1.2.3 Support for DevOps

Here we consider the functionality provided by the cloud service to support the development of new application functionality together with rapid trans ...

1.2.4 Cloud Service Availability

Loss of access to the service or data can occur for a variety of reasons some of which are technical and some due to other causes such as takeover or ...

1.2.5 Compliance

In this area, we consider how the service enables organizations using it to comply with laws and regulations. Specifically, we are looking at the kin ...

1.2.6 Data Protection

This area covers how access to the service and the applications and data it contains are controlled through features such as identity and access manag ...

1.2.7 Cyber Security

This area covers how the service is protected against cyber-security risks and the help provided to its customers to protect against these risks when ...

1.2.8 Consulting Services

This area covers the availability of consulting services provided to support customers in their migration to and use of the cloud service. We look at ...

2 Leadership

Selecting a vendor of a product or service must not be only based on the comparison provided by a KuppingerCole Leadership Compass. The Leadership Com ...

2.1 Overall Leadership

We find several companies in the Leader section. AWS remains the leader as the CSP with the most comprehensive offering, continuing innovation and mar ...

2.2 Product Leadership

Product Leadership is the first specific category examined below. This view is mainly based on the analysis of product/service features and the overa ...

The leaders in this segment all have products that excel in several aspects. AWS continues to invest and innovate in the cloud services that it offer ...

2.3 Innovation Leadership

Next, we examine innovation in the marketplace. Innovation is, from our perspective, a key capability in all IT market segments. Customers require i ...

AWS has a unique approach to innovation with a strong focus on identifying and delivering those innovations that provide real business benefits. For ...

2.4 Market Leadership

Lastly, we analyse Market Leadership. This is an amalgamation of the number of customers, the geographic distribution of customers, the size of dep ...

Once again, the dominant players in the IaaS market worldwide are AWS, Microsoft and IBM. The important challenger for this market is Oracle.

Mar ...

3 Correlated View

While the Leadership charts identify leading vendors in certain categories, many customers are looking not only for a product leader, but for a vendor ...

3.1 The Market/Product Matrix

The first of these correlated views contrasts Product Leadership and Market Leadership.

Vendors below the line have a weaker market position than expected according to their product maturity. Vendors above the line are sort of “overperf ...

3.2 The Product/Innovation Matrix

This view shows how Product Leadership and Innovation Leadership are correlated. It is not surprising that there is a pretty good correlation between ...

Vendors below the line are more innovative, vendors above the line are, compared to the current Product Leadership positioning, less innovative.

Thi ...

3.3 The Innovation/Market Matrix

The third matrix shows how Innovation Leadership and Market Leadership are related. Some vendors might perform well in the market without being Innova ...

Vendors above the line are performing well in the market compared to their relatively weak position in the Innovation Leadership rating; while vendors ...

4 Products and Vendors at a glance

This section provides an overview of the various products we have analyzed within this KuppingerCole Leadership Compass on IaaS Global Service Provide ...

4.1 Ratings at a glance

Based on our evaluation, a comparative overview of the ratings of all the products covered in this document is shown in table 1.

In addition, we provide in table 2 an overview which also contains four additional ratings for the vendor, going beyond the product view provided in t ...

Table 2 requires some additional explanation regarding the “critical” rating.

In Innovativeness, this rating is applied if vendors provide none or v ...

5 Product/Service evaluation

This section contains a quick rating for every product/service we’ve included in this KuppingerCole Leadership Compass document. For many of the pro ...

5.1 Amazon Web Services

AWS continues to invest and innovate in the cloud services that it offers. It has evolved to include sophisticated tools for development including ma ...

5.2 CloudSigma

CloudSigma is a pure play IaaS service provider that was founded in 2009 with headquarters in Zurich Switzerland. The service is delivered from data ...

5.3 Fujitsu

Fujitsu is an information and communication technology company with its headquarters in Tokyo Japan. It is the world's fifth-largest IT services prov ...

5.4 IBM

IBM Cloud has made significant investments in their cloud infrastructure, their cloud development platform as well as a wide range of SaaS. IBM offe ...

5.5 Interoute (was acquired by GTT in 2018/05)

On February 26^th, 2018 GTT Communications, Inc. announced² an agreement to acquire Interoute Communications Ltd. This report relates to the situ ...

5.6 Microsoft

Microsoft Azure is a comprehensive set of cloud services that can be used to build, deploy, and manage applications. It includes IaaS providing compu ...

5.7 NTT Communications

NTT Communications is a part of NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation), a Japanese telecommunications company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. ...

5.8 Oracle

Oracle is a well-known major IT software and hardware vendor. In March 2016, Oracle announced an expanded cloud portfolio, releasing new Oracle Cloud ...

5.9 Virtustream

Virtustream, a Dell Technologies Business, is a cloud service and software provider focussed on the migration and delivery of business-critical applic ...

6 Vendors and Market Segments to watch

Aside from the vendors covered in detail in this Leadership Compass document, we also observe other vendors in the market that we find interesting. So ...

6.1 Alibaba

Alibaba Cloud is the cloud computing arm and a business unit of Alibaba Group (NYSE: BABA). The Alibaba Cloud is the dominant cloud provider in the C ...

6.2 Armor

Armor is a privately held company that has grown out of Firehost with its headquarters in Richardson TX, in the US. In 2009 Firehost was launched as ...

6.3 Century Link

CenturyLink is the second largest U.S. communications provider to global enterprise customers. The company is listed on the NYSE and has its headquar ...

6.4 Google

The Google Cloud Platform™ is a set of cloud services that are based on the same infrastructure used by Google to deliver its end-user products, suc ...

6.5 Joyent

Joyent is a cloud service provider based in San Francisco CA, that was acquired by Samsung³ in June 2016. It offers the Triton Cloud service that ...

6.6 NTT Communications

In November 2017, Dimension Data, the global technology solutions and services provider, and NTT Communications, the ICT solutions and international c ...

6.7 OVH

OVH is a French company that was founded in 1999. It offers a range of cloud services for storing, managing and processing data and applications. Th ...

6.8 Rackspace

Rackspace is a public company listed on the NYSE. It offers a range of services that include managed hosting and managed cloud. Rackspace differenti ...

6.9 SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud

SAP is a world leader in enterprise applications and, based on market capitalization, SAP is the world’s third largest independent software manufact ...

6.10 Skytap

Skytap is a privately-owned company based in Seattle WA, in the US. It offers a form of cloud service Skytap Cloud that delivers what it calls Enviro ...

6.11 Telefonica Open Cloud

Telefonica is a publicly listed Telecommunications company its headquarters in Spain and with revenues of over 52 Billion Euros in the year ending Dec ...

6.12 T-Systems Open Telekom Cloud

T-Systems is a leading vendor independent provider of digital services with its headquarters in Europe. It has a footprint in more than 20 countries, ...

7 Related Research

Advisory Note: Security Organization, Governance, and the Cloud – 71151
Scenario Report: Understanding Cloud Security – 70321
Advisory Note: Cloud Provider Assurance – 70586
Advisory Note: Selecting your cloud provider – 70742
Advisory Note: Rising to the Security Challenge of Heavy Cloud Adoption - 72542
Leadership Brief: Cloud Provider Codes of Conduct and GDPR - 70276
Leadership Brief: Six Key Actions to Prepare for GDPR - 70340
Executive View: SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud – Security and Compliance - 71117
Leadership Compass: Cloud Access Security Brokers - 72534