Magic Quadrant for Distributed Hybrid Infrastructure

Distributed Hybrid Infrastructure Vendor Product Comparisons 2024

Key features and pros and cons of top Distributed Hybrid Infrastructure products:

Amazon Web Services - Leader

Pros:

Leading public cloud provider: AWS DHI solutions appeal to AWS public cloud customers that want to extend their infrastructure to their data center and edge locations, while also migrating from their remaining private cloud infrastructure.
As-a-service delivery: The fully managed infrastructure delivery of AWS Outposts simplifies operations and enables a hands-off, single-vendor approach to infrastructure management, including integration with some on-premises technologies.
AWS support: In Gartner client inquiries, customers report high satisfaction with the AWS worldwide support and services team.

Cons:

Customer awareness: Non-AWS customers seeking alternatives to private cloud deployments are rarely shortlisting AWS DHI solutions, due to limited awareness among potential customers.
Operations: AWS Outposts lack support for disconnected operations. This means that customers need to use AWS Snow Family products for edge environments with limited or intermittent cloud connectivity. These products provide a limited subset of AWS capabilities, services and scale.
Deployment: In Gartner client inquiries, some customers report challenges in planning, rightsizing and demonstrating the total cost of ownership for AWS Outposts deployments, resulting in a longer and more complex onboarding process.

Broadcom (VMware) - Leader

Pros:

Skills prevalence: VMware-based offerings have a large global installed base. These existing VMware users have a natural pathway to apply their existing VMware knowledge and skills to VCF.
Single DHI product: Broadcom's focus on VCF as a single, flagship DHI offering with license entitlement portability makes it easy for clients to evaluate and recognize VCF's DHI features and functionality.
Partner integration: VCF can be purchased as an integrated appliance or delivered as a service through a variety of hardware partners, including Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Lenovo, as well as hyperscale cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and hundreds of cloud service providers globally.

Cons:

License changes: The vendor's shift from perpetual licenses to subscriptions, and its product restructuring, has raised costs among many existing users of VMware solutions. This is causing numerous Gartner clients to create longer-term plans to avoid VCF or move away from it.
Broadcom brand: Broadcom's history of acquisitions and its business practices have negatively impacted VMware's brand. This brand image is deterring some potential DHI customers from evaluating and selecting VCF.
Solution support: As Broadcom has transitioned from VMware support systems to Broadcom support, many Gartner clients have expressed negative experiences in sales and solution support.

Microsoft - Leader

Pros:

Brand recognition: With a proven track record and a deep understanding of the requirements of this market, Microsoft stands out as a reputable DHI provider that offers a range of public cloud services and on-premises data center solutions.
Single DHI offering: Microsoft DHI customers value the convenience of a single DHI offering that simplifies their selection process and allows for unified management for multiple infrastructure services. The solution is deployed through OEM partners including Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Lenovo and DataON.
Unified management capabilities: Services enabled by Azure Arc extend Azure controls and processes to other public cloud, private cloud and edge deployments. Users can conduct monitoring and security posture management through the Azure control plane with Azure Update Manager, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, and Azure Monitor for fleet orchestration, updates, monitoring and alerting.

Cons:

Complexity of offering: Some Gartner clients find it challenging to manage the entire hardware and software solution stack seamlessly because it requires the use of multiple administration tools, including different generations of Microsoft solutions, potentially necessitating the acquisition of new skills.
Scalability: Azure Stack HCI is rarely considered for scenarios beyond edge computing, due to its limited traction for large single-site deployments and private cloud migrations.
Security management: Despite Microsoft's ongoing efforts to enhance the security of Entra ID integrations within its products, there is still room to improve its DHI security capabilities.

Nutanix - Leader

Pros:

Capability improvements: Numerous customers use HCI software as a stepping stone to hybrid cloud. Based on its hyperconverged software market leadership, Nutanix has been able to invest significantly in R&D to improve NCP's capabilities.
Migration simplicity: Nutanix customers often cite the offering's ease of use, including the ability to manage multiple hypervisors, which can streamline management and VMware vSphere migration.
Licensing portability: Gartner clients have emphasized the benefits of Nutanix's licensing portability, which allows customers to seamlessly use multiple server hardware solutions, as well as AWS and Azure cloud providers. This enables customers to easily expand their hybrid cloud capabilities.

Cons:

Company scale: In comparison to the larger providers in the Leaders quadrant, Nutanix is relatively smaller in terms of company scale.
Public cloud deployment: Many customers are considering Nutanix tactically to shift away from VMware. Nutanix is not a public cloud-native offering, so it may not appeal to organizations seeking a longer-term strategic public cloud-based option.
Licensing heterogeneity: Customers may face challenges when seeking as-a-service consumption-based models with Nutanix, as these models are not consistently available across its entire product portfolio, potentially leading to a complex purchase process.

Oracle - Leader

Pros:

Operations: Oracle consistently manages its full range of deployments. Its ability to deploy up to a full OCI Dedicated Region on customer sites delivers full parity of services and consistent pricing in the cloud and on-premises.
Flexible, assured workloads model: Oracle DHI can be delivered as a fully managed service, as a cloud region or on customers' premises. Alternatively, it can support a fully air-gapped, customer-managed solution for high-security or sovereign clouds.
Multicloud: Oracle offers high-performance interconnects to Microsoft Azure and AWS (connections to Google Cloud Platform were announced after the evaluation cutoff date for this Magic Quadrant and were not evaluated). It also provides Oracle services in both clouds, enabling integration between OCI and other public clouds.

Cons:

Traction: Oracle's DHI compute solution, Oracle Compute Cloud@Customer, is rarely shortlisted by DHI prospects unless they are already invested in Oracle Exadata implementations.
Generative AI capability: OCI's generative AI strategy is less mature than that of other public clouds, and its messaging is not as strong. OCI's AI infrastructure is not yet well-differentiated in the market, although it has some unique capabilities for sovereign cloud and GPU clustering.
Legacy perceptions: Many enterprises hesitate to commit to an OCI platform, due to concerns (raised by Gartner clients) regarding Oracle's typical behavior regarding traditional on-premises software sales.

Alibaba Cloud - Niche Player

Pros:

Long-term commitment to DHI solutions: Alibaba Cloud launched its Apsara Stack in 2015. It has continuously invested in private cloud and hybrid cloud solutions, enabling it to support use cases for hybrid cloud solutions, especially in China.
Public cloud infrastructure: Alibaba Cloud's IaaS and PaaS portfolios in the public cloud enhance its Apsara architecture as a core component of DHI solutions. It stands out as the most comprehensive among Chinese cloud providers, providing the flexibility to adopt architecture similar to that of on-premises deployments for customers.
Support for Chinese enterprises' global strategy: Alibaba Cloud appeals to the growing number of Chinese enterprises expanding outside China, particularly those that want a similar solution architecture for their domestic and global markets.

Cons:

Apsara Stack deployment: Some Gartner clients cited that deploying, customizing and operating the Apsara stack solution requires significant effort and allocation of resources, and sufficient time for deployment.
Customer support: Alibaba Cloud's services have a limited local sales and service presence in the U.S. and Europe, and international customers may receive live technical support in only English and Mandarin languages.
International operations and ecosystem change: Alibaba Cloud revised its global infrastructure strategy, ceasing data center operations in Australia and India, which impacts the international partner ecosystem accordingly.

Huawei - Niche Player

Pros:

Fast growth in China: Huawei's cloud revenue has been growing quickly, giving it a strong position in the public cloud market on the Chinese mainland. This makes Huawei a serious DHI contender for organizations in this region.
Telecommunications expertise: Huawei is one of the world's leading providers of carrier solutions for the telecommunications sector. Its telecom and network expertise helps it support hybrid cloud customers, enhancing the quality of connectivity across different environments.
End-to-end life cycle solution: Huawei builds, deploys and supports the entire DHI solution stack, from hardware such as network devices, servers and storage to software such as the operating system and modeling.

Cons:

Geopolitical situation: The U.S. sanctions on Huawei continue to impact the vendor's supply chain and product planning globally, which has raised concern among potential customers.
AI capabilities: Huawei's DHI solutions extend its public cloud solution to hybrid cloud within edge applications. However, the vendor lacks an NVIDIA-based solution to enable most popular AI platforms and capabilities. In addition, its proprietary AI infrastructure, based on its Ascend series of AI processors, Pangu 5.0 and industrial modeling, is not widely available outside of China, with the exception of Singapore.
Ecosystem support: Huawei's DHI solutions face challenges in gaining traction among partners outside of China, thereby limiting customer options for implementation assistance outside of China.

IBM - Visionary

Pros:

Cloud-native infrastructure: IBM ensures a unified platform experience across various public clouds, including its own, by leveraging OpenShift and IBM Cloud Satellite, thereby facilitating the deployment of modernized applications in a hybrid multicloud environment.
Expansive infrastructure offerings: IBM has a comprehensive suite of offerings such as Fusion HCI System, OpenShift, Cloud Satellite, IBM Power Private Cloud, and IBM Power Virtual Server. This gives it a distinctive advantage in assisting customers to seamlessly integrate business-critical applications across platforms such as IBM Power Systems and x86 into a distributed hybrid solution.
Vertical support: IBM has directed its focus toward delivering cloud solutions tailored for regulated industries such as financial services and retail, equipped with specialized capabilities to meet industry-specific requirements.

Cons:

Deployment complexity: In the IBM DHI portfolio, there are still complexities in virtual machine deployment selection (e.g., PowerVM versus OpenShift virtualization), and challenges around container management, configurations and cluster life cycles, which may result in inconsistencies between cloud and on-premises deployments.
Product integrations: IBM's DHI product offerings continue to leverage Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization to support management of virtual machines. It is still a relatively new technology and is not as proven for running large-scale production workloads and implementations.
Business continuity configuration limitations: For IBM Cloud Satellite, IBM requires configuration of control plane nodes for high availability. It also does not allow changes in the number of master instances or how high availability is configured, since the Cloud Satellite management plane is managed by IBM. This can lead to complex management of SLAs for IBM Cloud Satellite products.

Tencent Cloud - Niche Player

Pros:

Committed investment: In the past several years, Tencent Cloud has invested in private cloud solutions and TKE with its public cloud services, and has extended its DHI product line from private cloud to hybrid cloud, distributed cloud and edge. It offers customer-dedicated cloud solutions, as well as local hosting cloud capacity with cloud-dedicated zones.
Infrastructure-neutral: The vendor's private cloud solution can use customers' existing infrastructure if it meets the minimal configuration requirement. It is a logical choice for hybrid cloud customers in China that prefer to use existing infrastructure platforms.
Open-source engagement: Tencent Cloud deeply engages with Kubernetes technologies as the control plane in its DHI solutions. It uses industry-leading open-source technologies that can support customization to meet business expectations.

Cons:

Limited international availability: Tencent Cloud derives much of its revenue from the Chinese market, and some of its key distributed cloud products, such as Tencent Cloud Edge Zones and TKE register nodes, are not available internationally. Few of the vendor's customers have deployed both public and private cloud solutions outside China. Not all of its DHI product portfolio has support documentation in English.
Marketing visibility/strategy: Despite investment in global DHI products, it is hard to identify Tencent Cloud's target customer persona. Its historical strengths in gaming and social networking are evident in its PaaS services, but not in any of the DHI solutions tailored for these markets.
Product segmentation: Tencent Cloud's DHI has developed a range of products that cater to various scenarios, including private, hybrid cloud and edge solutions. However, the presence of overlapping features within the product offerings can potentially complicate the decision-making process for DHI customers.

FAQs

Q: Which vendors are Leaders in 2024?

A: [object Object], [object Object], [object Object], [object Object], [object Object]

Q: What does "Leader" mean in MQ terms?

A: Leaders distinguish themselves by offering a service suitable for strategic adoption and having an ambitious roadmap. They can serve a broad range of use cases. However, they do not excel in all areas, may not necessarily be the best providers for a specific need and may not serve some use cases at all. Leaders in this market have appreciable market share and many referenceable customers supporting multiple geographies, verticals and deployment models.

Q: How do I interpret a Gartner Magic Quadrant?

A: https://www.gartner.com/en/research/methodologies/magic-quadrants-research

Report:

Top Vendor Products for Distributed Hybrid Infrastructure in 2024

Distributed Hybrid Infrastructure Vendor Product Comparisons 2024

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FAQs

Q: Which vendors are Leaders in 2024?

Q: What does "Leader" mean in MQ terms?

Q: How do I interpret a Gartner Magic Quadrant?

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