Infrastructure as a Service – Global Providers

The KuppingerCole Leadership Compass on global Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) evaluates cloud service providers (CSPs) that can support both agile development and migration of existing workloads, including hybrid cloud scenarios, across multiple geopolitical regions with particular attention to European security and compliance needs. IaaS is positioned as basic compute and storage delivered without up-front capital expenditure, where customers manage operating systems and applications while CSPs secure and operate the underlying infrastructure; compliance and security responsibilities are shared.

The assessment framework emphasizes required capabilities spanning basic service functionality (compute, storage, public/private/hybrid models, OS images, middleware, high-performance options like bare metal and GPUs), enterprise and hybrid workload support (migration services, network/IP flexibility, secure connectivity, workload separation/co-location, VMware support, cloud bursting, hot/cold standby), DevOps enablement (containers, deployment/rollback, databases and frameworks, secure SDLC tooling), service continuity (SLA realism, resilience to disasters and provider risk, backup/recovery), compliance (certifications, data location guarantees, legal request and breach transparency), data protection (IAM standards, directory integration, encryption and key management), cyber security (controls, monitoring, incident response, tenant separation, SIEM and security tooling), and consulting services.

Overall, AWS, Microsoft, and IBM are the Overall Leaders; Virtustream joins them as a Product Leader and is also an Innovation Leader. AWS is highlighted for breadth, innovation pace, global footprint, and GDPR focus; Microsoft for an integrated IaaS/PaaS vision and hybrid capabilities via Azure Stack; IBM for major infrastructure investment, availability zones, Watson services, and managed migration/modernization; Virtustream for assured application-level SLAs and strong security/compliance for business-critical workloads. Challengers differentiate through regional focus, enterprise migration, hybrid services, and European compliance emphasis, with examples such as CloudSigma’s Swiss-aligned privacy posture and 100% network availability guarantee. Correlated matrices underscore that market leadership and product maturity do not always align, creating opportunities for strong but less visible providers.

• IaaS allows customers to run operating systems and applications while the CSP manages the underlying cloud infrastructure.
• AWS, IBM, and Microsoft are the Overall Leaders in the IaaS Global market segment.
• Virtustream is a Product Leader in the IaaS Global market segment.
• AWS released 1,300 new services and features during the first 10 months of 2017.
• AWS has 53 availability zones across 18 geographic regions, plus one local region, and announced 12 new availability zones and four more regions: Bahrain, Sweden, Hong Kong, and a second US GovCloud region.
• CloudSigma was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland.
• CloudSigma guarantees 100% network availability in any given calendar month.
• Microsoft Azure is delivered from 42 regions globally, with each region containing multiple data centres.
• Interoute’s Virtual Data Centre includes zones in cities such as Amsterdam, Berlin, Frankfurt, Geneva, London, Paris, Stockholm, Zurich, Hong Kong, Singapore, New York, and Los Angeles.
• On February 26, 2018, GTT Communications announced an agreement to acquire Interoute Communications Ltd.

• “The responsibility for security and compliance in the use of cloud services is shared between the customer and the cloud service provider (CSP).”
• “Loss of access to the service or data can occur for a variety of reasons some of which are technical and some due to other causes such as takeover or financial failure of the CSP.”
• “Innovation is not about delivering a constant flow of new releases.”
• “Rather, innovative companies take a customer-oriented upgrade approach, delivering customer-requested cutting-edge features, while maintaining compatibility with previous versions.”
• “Vendors above the line are sort of ‘overperformers’ when comparing Market Leadership and Product Leadership.”
• “The matrix shows a picture that is typical for evolving market segments, with a rather broad distribution of the various players across the quadrants and a weak correlation between Market Leadership and Product Leadership.”
• “AWS has a unique approach to innovation with a strong focus on identifying and delivering those innovations that provide real business benefits.”
• “The AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) is designed to help enterprises migrating existing workloads to AWS.”
• “Microsoft believes that their contractual commitment to all customers provides stronger and more meaningful assurance.”
• “Selecting a vendor of a product or service must not be only based on the comparison provided by a KuppingerCole Leadership Compass.”