Analyst firm Taneja Group recently published an extensive report on the IT Cloud Management Market Landscape, with VMware vRealize Suite clearly a leader in all aspects of cloud management from cloud automation, cloud operations and cloud financial/business management, all components inclusive of VMware’s vRealize Suite.
Taneja’s research and methodologies ranks VMware as leader in the aforementioned 3 categories. In this study, Taneja evaluated vendors with offerings in one or more of the three fundamental areas. Several well-known vendors (VMware, Microsoft, ServiceNow, HPE, IBM and BMC) have solutions in all three areas. Other vendors focus on only one or two areas, and because it’s possible to compose a broader solution from parts, Taneja also evaluated popular niche solutions within each area .
Taneja Group Cloud Management Market Rankings showing VMware as leader in cloud management – 2016
The above chart shows Taneja’s ranking in the overall cloud management market against several vendors with offering in the cloud management space, showing VMware as leader in the “full suite solution” category.
The full report includes a detailed breakdown of each cloud management pillar (cloud automation, cloud operations and cloud business management) including their individual rankings.
Taneja Offers Key Takeaways for IT and Business Leaders*
Following are Taneja’s takeaways for the overall Cloud Management market. Specific takeaways for the Cloud Automation/Orchestration, Operations Management and Financial Management markets are available in the full IT Cloud Management Market Landscape Report.
Overall Cloud Management Takeaways
- Cloud service advancements continue to outpace cloud management. The growth and sophistication level of both public and private cloud technologies and services has outrun the tools and capabilities available to manage them. Cloud management vendors and service providers are already playing catch-up, and given the continuing rate of innovation in IaaS and PaaS capabilities, cloud management functionality will continue to lag user needs for the foreseeable future. Given this reality, look for vendors with a track record of cloud innovation, a strong product portfolio and an overall strategy that will allow them to deliver a cloud management framework capable of meeting the needs of your business over the long term.
- Comprehensive cloud management platforms are rare. Look for cloud management solutions that are integrated across operations, automation and business disciplines. This is a rare capability in the market today, but will be critical going forward in providing you with a holistic cloud management solution. Without robust built-in integration and a common look and feel, you will be dealing with a set of fragmented point tools that you’ll have to stitch together or simply use independently. Ask vendors to demo their full cloud management suite – if a vendor can’t show you how their various solution modules work together, then you probably won’t find it easy to deploy and manage their full product suite due to overwhelming complexity.
- Proprietary interests often dictate vendor priorities. Despite what vendors may say, most cloud management toolsets are developed and optimized for particular platforms, versus designed for cross-cloud environments. For example, Microsoft cloud management is specifically designed for Azure clouds with Hyper-V and HPE cloud management for HPE’s flavor of OpenStack clouds. Demand cross-cloud and cross-provider portability and management capabilities wherever possible, and ask prospective vendors how their cloud management suites will help you prevent lock-in.
- Lack of standards makes cloud interoperability a challenge. The lack of cloud portability and cross-cloud management standards makes it difficult for vendors (incl. cloud service brokers) to effectively manage resources across multiple flavors of clouds. (OpenStack is an attempt to standardize, but even some different OpenStack cloud implementations cannot effectively interoperate, as vendors add proprietary enterprise functionality to their own OpenStack-based clouds.) Query your vendor/provider on their workload portability and management capability across different clouds to ensure their offerings will meet your needs.
- Hybrid cloud management is still a work in progress. In general, hybrid cloud management—even on a single vendor’s platform spanning on-premises and external clouds—is still a work in progress. Few offerings enable unfettered workload mobility, consistent resource management and costing, and compatible automation frameworks across public and private cloud boundaries. Focus on vendors that can deliver these capabilities today and into the future.
Prioritize offerings that enable you to manage highly distributed apps. The shape of cloud management is largely driven by the applications that run in the cloud, and will be especially influenced by the new breed of cloud-architected microservices that are already dominant on the world’s leading hyperscale clouds, such as Amazon, Facebook and Google. Given this, prioritize offerings that will enable you to effectively manage highly distributed apps in a hybrid cloud infrastructure. Ask vendors about their native cloud app development and DevOps capabilities to ensure that they can support the agility and mobility that will characterize cloud workloads going forward.
Cloud management is a relatively nascent market. You should therefore expect a steady wave of consolidation of both vendors and technologies going forward. For example, just as IBM acquired Gravitant last year, other cloud platform vendors will be looking to buy independent players such as cloud service brokers to extend or fill gaps in their offerings. Evaluate prospective vendors with that possibility in mind, including the risk that acquired companies or technologies may not remain vendor-agnostic, and consider the impact that such consolidation might have on your supported cloud management frameworks and capabilities over the long haul.
* (Source 2016 Taneja Group IT Cloud Market Management Landscape)
In addition to Taneja’s reseach, VMware cloud management was also recognized as a leader in IDC’s recent market share reports for cloud management (Worldwide Cloud Systems Management Software Market Shares) and datacenter automation (Worldwide Datacenter Automation Software Market Shares).
