Analyst firm Taneja Group has named VMware a leader in enterprise cloud management for the second year in a row. And once again, VMware wins top marks for its on-premise and cloud-based offerings in automation, operations and business management. The report, released last month, compares VMware to leading full suite cloud management vendors (such as Microsoft, ServiceNow, RedHat) and single solution vendors (such as RightScale and Turbonomic).
The firm offers an interesting take on the cloud, seeing it as essentially a maturation of the long-established space of IT operations. Taneja notes that while several vendors score well in important criteria such as operational monitoring and systems management, it’s really the power of automation and sophisticated orchestration that allows companies to scale to an enterprise-class, multi-cloud ecosystem. End users are looking for management solutions for hybrid cloud that allow for the development and deployment of cloud-native apps, according to the analysts, who gave VMware high scores for getting into the cloud-native space early.
This comprehensive study evaluates vendors in five major areas: cloud orchestration, operations management, hybrid cloud management, cloud-native applications and cloud costing/business management.
The report names VMware as a leader in both cloud innovation and in the maturity of its overall enterprise offering, topping other “full suite” vendors like Microsoft and ServiceNow. The innovation category considers emerging management support for the hybrid cloud and support for the development and deployment of cloud-native apps. Overall enterprise maturity, as Taneja defines it, looks primarily at the availability of cloud operations and orchestration.
Here are a couple of highlights on VMware from the analyst’s-eye-view:
- VMware continues to hold to a defining vision of simplifying IT. Years of development and consistent commitment to cloud management have paid off, allowing vRealize Suite to scale effectively for cloud native and hybrid cloud reaching overall high levels of maturity in automation, operations and management.
- VMware excels at delivering a rock-solid framework (very extensible) while keeping apace with trends and new personas/use cases such as DevOps.
“As IT cloud management matures into a well-defined set of enterprise capabilities, we find VMware is well-positioned with its enterprise grade platform, market-defining innovation, expertise and vision, and a capably deep and broad solution built expressly to simplify IT over an ever growing scope, scale, and level of sophistication.”
Taneja clearly feels that VMware’s cloud-native support is a real point of differentiation: VMware dove into cloud-native development years ago, while many vendors still carry the weight of legacy origins. “Organically grown” isn’t so good when it comes to cloud management; many vendors, according to the report, have put front ends on their legacy solutions, creating complexities that slow down IT and increase Opex.
Taneja noted: “Given that data centers are inevitably moving towards even more complex and dynamic hybrid cloud architectures, achieving successful end-to-end operations will soon become a very hard if not impossible task for any management vendors not completely focused on cloud management.”
Download the Taneja Group – IT Cloud Management Market Landscape Report
