Magic Quadrant for Data Center Outsourcing Services
Gartner defines the data center outsourcing (DCO) services market as a comprehensive suite of services that support deployment, consolidation, optimization, modernization and managed services. These services primarily cater to data centers, private clouds, edge computing, ERP hosting, mainframes or legacy systems, midrange systems, infrastructure modernization, network and security. Organizations with such environments engage with DCO service providers to enhance efficiency, improve agility, optimize costs, strengthen security — physical, data and cyber — and realize substantial modernization benefits. Data center outsourcing refers to the strategic decision by organizations to delegate data center operations to a third-party service provider. Adopting this approach assists organizations with prioritizing their core business activities while capitalizing on the advanced technologies, operational expertise, best-in-class performance metrics and cost-efficiencies offered by vendors, compared to insourced best efforts.
Vendors must, among other requirements:
A: This research covers the Data Center Outsourcing (DCO) services market globally, evaluating 17 leading service providers across all major geographies (North America, Europe, and Asia/Pacific). It assesses vendors' ability to deliver comprehensive data center outsourcing services including managed services for distributed systems, mainframes, midrange systems, enterprise applications, private cloud, infrastructure modernization, disaster recovery, backup services, and security. The evaluation examines both Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision across mandatory and common features.
A: This research should be used by Strategic Planning and Vendor Management (SPVM) leaders, CIOs, and Infrastructure & Operations (I&O) leaders who are responsible for selecting DCO service providers for contracts that support essential business functions and objectives. It helps organizations assess vendors' capabilities in delivering secure, scalable, and cost-effective solutions, evaluate providers' strategic vision and execution capabilities, and make informed decisions when outsourcing data center operations to third-party providers. The research is particularly valuable for organizations seeking to delegate data center operations while ensuring alignment with business goals, modernization objectives, and compliance requirements.
A: Vendors must provide managed services for distributed systems (Intel x86 technology including Windows and Linux), data center network/storage/equipment managed services, managed servers and virtualization capabilities, and backup and recovery services. These core services ensure the provider can deliver comprehensive data center operations including infrastructure management, server deployment and configuration, monitoring, and data protection/restoration capabilities.
A: Vendors are excluded if they: 1) Deliver data center services mostly or entirely through partners or subcontractors rather than as a direct provider, 2) Focus exclusively on pure hosting services such as colocation or simple/dedicated hosting, 3) Take a purely rental approach to data centers, 4) Deliver only pure cloud capabilities as hyperscale providers, 5) Do not meet minimum revenue thresholds ($250M global, with specific regional minimums), 6) Do not operate in at least two of three major regions, 7) Lack mainframe managed services presence with minimum 10,000 MIPS, or 8) Do not rank sufficiently high on Gartner's customer interest indicator (CII).
A: Ability to Execute evaluates the quality and efficacy of processes, systems, methods, and procedures that enable competitive and effective performance, positively affecting revenue, retention, and reputation. It focuses on current capabilities, including service delivery, viability, sales execution, market responsiveness, marketing, customer experience, and operations. Completeness of Vision evaluates the provider's ability to articulate logical statements about current and future market directions, innovations, customer needs, and competitive forces. It assesses understanding of how to exploit market forces to create opportunities, focusing on strategic elements like market understanding, marketing/sales strategy, offering strategy, business model, vertical/industry strategy, innovation, and geographic strategy. In essence, Ability to Execute measures 'how well they deliver today' while Completeness of Vision measures 'how well they understand and plan for tomorrow'.