Continuing the trend from recent years, the cloud remains the top spending priority for enterprises, led by cloud applications and infrastructure. The major drivers include cost optimization, the need to provide a reliable infrastructure, and using hybrid models to best handle data storage and compliance. To meet this continued growth, cloud platform providers are enhancing their capabilities to provide value higher up the technology stack.
These are some of the top findings from Avasant’s new Cloud Platforms 2022 RadarView™, a comprehensive study on the cloud platform marketplace. It takes a close look at the leaders, innovators, disruptors, and challengers in this market.
This report addresses the need for businesses to accelerate their digital journeys, embrace the cloud, and identify the right cloud platform providers. It highlights key trends in the cloud platform market and Avasant’s viewpoint on the market’s direction over the next 12 to 18 months.
Avasant evaluated 15 providers using three dimensions: product maturity, enterprise adaptability, and innovation road map. Of the 15 providers, we recognized eight as having brought the most value to the market over the past 12 months.
The RadarView recognizes platform providers in four categories:
-
- Leaders: AWS and Microsoft
- Innovators: Alibaba Cloud and Google
- Disruptors: IBM and Oracle
- Challengers: DigitalOcean and Tencent Cloud
The following figure from the full report illustrates these categories:
“Cloud platform providers are now partnering with application vendors to offer tailored cloud environments for their enterprise systems,” said Anupam Govil, partner with Avasant. “A recent example is Google’s partnership with SAP to provide a cloud platform tuned specifically for SAP S4/HANA.”
The full report provides a number of findings and recommendations, including the following:
-
- Cloud continues to be a top spending priority. A net 83% of enterprises are increasing their spending on cloud applications, while 73% have increased spending on cloud infrastructure.
- Cloud platform providers are increasing their focus on hybrid cloud models, which allow organizations to use the public cloud to store frequently accessed data and private servers for sensitive or mission-critical data.
- Cloud platform providers are promoting the adoption of cloud applications on cloud platforms. To facilitate the migration of core business applications to the cloud, cloud platform providers are integrating new business applications, developing specialized connectors, and providing end-to-end services for deploying cloud applications.
- Cloud platform providers are helping companies in their sustainable journeys through new offerings. They are developing solutions to help firms track their emissions across the value chain, reduce carbon emissions, and streamline their reporting processes.
“Cloud adoption used to be mostly about lower cost and scalability,” said Gaurav Dewan, Avasant associate research director. “But increasingly these cloud platforms are adding value around industry specific use cases, native cloud apps, hybrid cloud, and even around tracking sustainability.”
The full report also features RadarView profiles of the top eight platform providers, including their solutions, offerings, and experience in assisting enterprises in digital transformation.
This Research Byte is a brief overview of the full Cloud Platform 2022 RadarView™ (click for pricing).
