Magic Quadrant for Infrastructure Platform Consumption Services

Infrastructure Platform Consumption Services Vendor Product Comparisons 2025

Key features and pros and cons of top Infrastructure Platform Consumption Services products:

HPE - Leader

Pros:

Comprehensive platform portfolio: HPE offers the most comprehensive set of platform offerings and services, including best-of-class infrastructure domain stack products, including storage, compute, networking and AIOps.
Enterprise-class virtualization alternative: HPE Morpheus VM Essentials offers a cost-effective, enterprise-grade KVM-based virtualization solution for customers impacted by VMware licensing changes and continued support for VMware.
Unified cloud operations suite: HPE's AI-powered, multivendor and multicloud HPE CloudOps suite enhances operational agility and reduces administrative complexity.

Cons:

Platform complexity: The breadth and continuous evolution of HPE GreenLake's platform capabilities, which encompass various infrastructure, private cloud and data services offerings, can be difficult for customers to navigate.
Overlooked market perception: Some heads of I&O prospects often mistake HPE GreenLake for a lease financing capex solution, overlooking its capability as a platform for diverse as-a-service workloads across all delivery models.
Juniper hybrid platform integration: Combining Juniper Networks connectivity, security, unified management and AI across hybrid platform environments poses considerable challenges with uncertain outcomes regarding HPE platform network-as-a-service capabilities.

Pure Storage - Leader

Pros:

Industry-leading SLA outcomes: Pure Storage offers a comprehensive portfolio of binding platform SLAs for Evergreen//One subscriptions.
AI-powered autonomous operations: Pure's EDC reduces IT administration and support tasks by providing Pure1 AI-powered telemetry in conjunction with AI Co-Pilot features for infrastructure management and SLA enforcement.
Best-in-class platform capabilities: Pure Storage's platform offers strong capabilities in data governance, cyber recovery and resilience, security SLAs, compliance and nondisruptive life cycle management.

Cons:

High, ongoing costs: Some users report that Pure Storage services costs can be higher than competitors impacting the total cost of ownership and lifetime platform value.
Service level offerings are ambiguous: The lack of a distinct definition of commercial value and benefits for heads of I&O between Evergreen//One, Evergreen//Flex and Evergreen//Forever could lead to confusion when comparing the different Evergreen-branded solutions.
Pure Storage-centric-focused control plane: Pure's Fusion control plane utility focuses primarily on Pure's ecosystem, limiting its utility as a universal control plane for all storage assets for I&O teams operating in highly heterogeneous environments with significant investments in diverse storage solutions.

Dell Technologies - Challenger

Pros:

Disaggregated infrastructure focus: Dell offers HCI with three-tier architectures, which allows enterprises to independently scale computing and storage resources based on their specific workload needs, optimize costs and prepare for future information technology evolutions.
Comprehensive AI-powered operations: Dell AIOps provides AI/machine learning-driven analytics and insights across Dell's infrastructure portfolio, including PowerStore, PowerSwitch and PowerEdge. It enhances overall efficiency and enables data-driven workload optimization.
Secure zero-touch provisioning: Dell's platform emphasizes zero-touch provisioning (ZTP) and zero-trust security embedded directly from the factory using fast identity online (FIDO)-based identity and hardware security modules (HSMs).

Cons:

Limited prevalidated ISV solutions: Dell's breadth of readily available and prevalidated third-party independent software vendor (ISV)-integrated solutions is still developing relative to some competitors' platform ecosystems.
Limited proactive cyber resilience: Dell PowerProtect Data Manager and CyberSense are designed to detect encryption from ransomware during the backup phase, focusing on recovery from cyberattacks.
Limited platform architecture capabilities: Dell's platform does not yet entirely abstract the complexity of managing diverse workloads through a centralized data control plane, limiting its ability to deliver nondisruptive workload mobility.

Hitachi Vantara - Challenger

Pros:

Cyber resilience guarantee: Hitachi VSP One Platform includes CyberSense for threat detection and offers a financially backed guarantee, providing up to 100% storage credit if data recovery fails after a ransomware attack.
Unified management: EverFlex Control supports AIOps, observability and orchestration across different environments, including non-Hitachi and cloud infrastructure. This allows for automated operations and reduced resolution times.
Concrete data sovereignty: Hitachi Vantara's platform mitigates geopolitical risks by enforcing policy-based data placement with automated compliance capabilities, allowing I&O to control where data resides and how it moves across borders.

Cons:

Brand visibility: Hitachi Vantara's market awareness is limited. Prospective customers considering the vendor often start with a low level of awareness, which may extend the time required to learn about the vendor and its offerings.
Incomplete data resilience simulation: The VSP One platform does not yet natively offer full ransomware simulations.
Maintenance simplification is needed: The VSP One platform lags behind competitors in simplifying maintenance operations to reduce human error, security breaches and maintenance complexity.

IBM - Challenger

Pros:

Robust cyber resilience and encryption: Backed by a cyber resilience SLA, hardware encryption, and SafeGuarded Copy, IBM provides ransomware detection by analyzing input/output (I/O) operations. It guarantees a detection time below 60 seconds and a false positive rate of less than 1%.
Controlled sovereign environments: IBM's platform offerings run entirely on-premises or in customer-controlled environments, enabling customers to meet strict data residency and compliance requirements while providing cloudlike scalability and automation.
AI-driven workload placement advisor: IBM Storage Insights includes an AI-powered tool that helps identify and nondisruptively migrate workloads by evaluating performance requirements, capacity needs and I/O profiles. The tool allows workloads to be rebalanced between devices.

Cons:

Platform SLA gaps: IBM lags behind competitors in SLAs that favor IT operations and does not offer a formal roadmap to address demands or SLA gaps.
Absence of platform business unit head: IBM's platform-native efforts are coordinated by a central IBM infrastructure team, making it challenging to execute a unified vision for platform priorities.
Limited PowerVS operating system support: IBM PowerVS is based on the IBM Power architecture and does not support x86, ARM or Microsoft Windows.

Lenovo - Challenger

Pros:

Global, sovereign-ready infrastructure: The Lenovo TruScale Hybrid Cloud Platform enables sovereign-ready infrastructure through localized deployment options, data residency support, region-specific compliance and local ecosystem integrations.
Complete offerings: Lenovo's TruScale consumption services cover end-user devices, edge, servers, storage, networking and cloud environments.
Efficiency and automation: The TruScale Lenovo Hybrid Cloud Platform (LHCP) embeds FinOps visibility and AIOps capabilities with XClarity One for real-time telemetry, predictive analytics and automated remediation.

Cons:

Limited platform SLA services: Lenovo's TruScale Hybrid Cloud Platform offerings rely on integration with independent software vendors for platform services functionality, which may limit Lenovo's direct control over service-level assurances that favor IT operations.
Brand recognition: Lenovo is known primarily as a hardware-as-a-service vendor for end-user devices with limited platform-native enterprise storage as a service offerings.
Limited storage portfolio: Lenovo's portfolio is primarily based on original equipment manufacturer (OEM) NetApp ONTAP solutions. It does not provide a high-end enterprise storage as a service platform.

NetApp - Challenger

Pros:

AI ransomware defense: NetApp's Autonomous Ransomware Protection (ARP/AI) delivers third-party validated 99% precision threat detection for file, block and native cloud workloads and a Ransomware Recovery Guarantee.
Hyperscaler native services: NetApp collaborates with hyperscalers to enable first-party services in Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google to simplify multicloud operational capabilities, data mobility, workload portability and consistency in storage management between on-premises and public cloud.
Unified data plane: NetApp provides a unified data storage management service capability that simplifies data management across diverse data types and workloads, and reduces operational complexity.

Cons:

Limited cyber resilience capabilities: NetApp does not offer an advanced NetApp-native isolated clean room recovery capability designed to enhance cyber resilience by facilitating safe data restoration within an isolated environment.
Limited IT operations SLAs: NetApp does not offer SLA assurances for critical operational categories such as productivity/efficiency, asset management and continuous workload cost-performance optimization.
Limited third-party ISV solutions: NetApp's platform does not offer a platform marketplace portfolio of third-party ISV as a service consumption-oriented data services solutions to accelerate IT operations innovation and enable rapid adoption of advanced services.

Nile - Challenger

Pros:

Autonomous AI-powered operations: Nile's AI Automation Center, powered by Nile Experience Intelligence (NXI), resolves network issues automatically using NXI.
Built-in zero trust security: Nile embeds Zero Trust capabilities directly into the network infrastructure, providing per-device isolation and microsegmentation with identity and posture-based access without requiring traditional NAC appliances, virtual LANs (VLANs) or manual access control lists (ACLs). This eliminates the need for separate appliances.
Guaranteed performance NaaS: Nile offers financially backed SLAs for network availability, coverage and capacity, a unique competitive differentiation. The vendor's NaaS model bundles all hardware, software, upgrades and operations into a single subscription, reducing capex and providing predictable operating expenditure (opex).

Cons:

Limited asset management: Nile does not provide customer-facing AIOps capacity asset management or optimization tools, nor does it integrate with client-side ordering, billing or supply chain systems.
Developing ecosystem integration: Nile's breadth of readily available and prevalidated third-party ISV integrations continues to develop compared with leading competitors.
Limited geographical reach: Nile's sales and geographic strategies are narrowly focused, limiting its ability to address the needs of global enterprise customers.

Fujitsu - Niche Player

Pros:

Flexible multidomain consumption models: Fujitsu's uSCALE platform offers pay-as-you-go pricing for various on-premises solutions, including compute, data management, SAP, AI, containers and cyber resiliency. This model aligns information technology spending directly with usage, reducing upfront capex spending.
Broad ecosystem integration: Fujitsu integrates third-party technologies into its uSCALE platform, enabling I&O teams to leverage existing investments and access tailored third-party solutions for critical workloads like AI and cyber resiliency through a single platform.
Private, data-governed AI platform: Fujitsu's investment and partnership with Cohere provides on-premises governance-based, secure AI capability with its private GPT solution that addresses data privacy for sensitive workloads.

Cons:

Limited platform maturity: While Fujitsu's uSCALE is gaining traction, particularly among midsize and enterprise customers, it's relatively new, which may raise concerns about its scalability, breadth of real-world use cases, or the availability of a large peer community for references.
Limited AI-driven threat detection: Fujitsu's cyberthreat detection occurs during or after the data encryption process has been initiated, and it lacks AI-driven threat detection to proactively identify and respond to cyberthreats.
Limited platform SLAs: uSCALE depends on third-party AI telemetry tools for anomaly detection and optimization, and underwrites operational SLAs on a case-by-case basis, slowing platform SLA innovation.

Join Digital - Niche Player

Pros:

Customer experience: The vendor offers hands-off, SLA-based operation, targeting organizations with limited resources.
Built-in zero-trust network security: The NaaS offering includes a plug-and-play approach that uses automation to simplify Day 1 network deployment, AI to optimize the experience and integrated zero-trust security capabilities to protect the enterprise.
Innovation: Join Digital's Workplace Analytics platform provides real-time data on occupancy, indoor environmental quality and network performance.

Cons:

Emerging vendor limitations: Transitioning to Join's NaaS will result in dependence on Join's platform and ecosystem, making switching providers complex and costly at an early stage.
Marketing execution: Join Digital has limited market awareness. Prospective customers considering the vendor often start with a low level of awareness, which may extend the time required to learn about the vendor and its offerings.
Limited geographical reach: Join Digital's geographic strategy is narrowly focused, which will limit its ability to address global enterprise customer demands.

FAQs

Q: Which vendors are Leaders in 2025?

A: HPE, Pure Storage

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

A: Vendors in the Leaders quadrant have the highest composite scores for their Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision. A Leader has broad platform market recognition across major geographies, brand awareness, financial performance and enterprise credibility. Leaders are market-driven — they envision the market over time and make the long-term investments needed to drive platform-native outcomes, technologies, capabilities and ecosystem partnerships. These vendors clearly understand infrastructure platform market needs and how platform features and AI-powered SLA outcomes, combined with platform business model innovation, transform and modernize IT operations. Leaders are innovators and thought leaders with well-articulated plans that customers and prospects can depend on for their platform infrastructures and strategies.

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 Infrastructure Platform Consumption Services in 2025

Infrastructure Platform Consumption Services Vendor Product Comparisons 2025

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FAQs

Q: Which vendors are Leaders in 2025?

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

Q: How do I interpret a Gartner Magic Quadrant?

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