Choosing the right cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) provider is growing increasingly difficult in a highly competitive market. Here are the top IaaS players identified by Gartner and their recommended use cases.
Gartner identifies 9 major IaaS players
The cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) space is undergoing major upheaval this year, according to research firm Gartner. In its 2015 Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service, Worldwide, Gartner analysts found service providers were shifting strategies as the ecosystem consolidates around market leaders.
Leaders
IaaS vendors had to offer a service suitable for strategic adoption and boast an ambitious roadmap to make the cut for Gartner’s Leaders quadrant. These vendors, according to Gartner, offer services that serve a broad range of use cases. They may not necessarily be the best providers for a specific need, and they may not serve some use cases at all, but they have a track record of successful delivery, significant market share and lots of customers that can provide references.
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
AWS is the 800 lbs. gorilla in the IaaS market, with more than 10 times more cloud IaaS compute capacity in use than the aggregate total of the other 14 providers Gartner studied.
Gartner recommends AWS for all use cases that run well in a virtualized environment, but notes that some — particularly highly secure applications, strictly compliant applications or complex enterprise applications (such as SAP business applications) — may require special attention to architecture.
Microsoft
Microsoft, with its Azure Infrastructure Services, is the only other IaaS vendor to make the Leaders quadrant. It holds second place in market share, with more than twice as much cloud IaaS compute capacity as the other providers Gartner studied (excluding AWS).
Gartner recommends Azure for general business applications and development environments for Microsoft-centric organizations, as well as cloud-native applications and batch computing.
Visionaries
Vendors in Gartner’s Visionaries quadrant distinguished themselves with an ambitious vision of the future and significant investments in the development of unique technologies. They might be new entrants to the market or veteran providers in the process of reinventing their business. These vendors may have a significant number of customers but don’t yet serve a broad range of use cases well compared with their Leader quadrant counterparts.