In a recent report, Forrester analyzed the hybrid cloud management solution market by evaluating the 11 top software providers on 32 criteria. While there are many paths to the cloud, hybrid cloud is increasingly the mode of entry for organizations with 65% of enterprise I&O decision makers saying they use more than one public and/or private cloud platform. Hybrid cloud allows technical professionals to get the infrastructure they need to agilely build applications across multiple platforms.
Forrester found three main functionalities needed by enterprises in a cloud solution:
- Management of expanding portfolios of public and private cloud platforms
- Enabling developers to build and run apps on multiple clouds
- Helping IT managers deliver, govern, and optimize multiple cloud platforms
Forrester identified 11 top vendors who provide the above functionality in their hybrid cloud offerings. Among them, IBM ranked as a leader with its offering providing a tight integration with developer-focused tooling. IBM’s hybrid cloud platform ranked well among competition for five key reasons:
- Powerful resource discovery and onboarding
- Configuration management
- Depth and breadth of available templates
- Role-based controls
- Platform APIs
IBM has also taken recent steps to bolster and enhance its hybrid cloud capabilities, with investments like the purchase of Graviant, a company focused on building software to enable software and services purchases across mixed cloud platforms, in November.
