Key Takeaways — The Forrester Wave: Hybrid Cloud Management, Q4 2020

Technology advisory firm Forrester Research has released its latest Forrester Wave for Hybrid Cloud Management, Q4 2020. Forrester recommends organizations looking to buy hybrid cloud management solutions consider providers that support their clouds with depth, offer multiple options to solve a single problem, and provide advanced optimization and automated operations.

According to Forrester: “In recent years, consolidation and innovation in the market have driven solutions formation of both net-new and newly rebuilt solutions, and these new solutions have moved management needs up the stack from infrastructure to development and platform layers. The rise of cloud-native is transforming the scope of hybrid cloud management from classic stack (e.g., virtual machine [VM] or monolithic apps) to classic plus cloud-native (e.g., container, serverless, or microservices). Edge computing plus cloud-native is now extending the boundaries of hybrid cloud management to be more distributed.”

In their 34-criteria evaluation of hybrid cloud management vendors and solutions, Forrester researcher Tracy Woo identified the nine providers whom they consider most significant in the category: BMC Software, Canonical, Flexera, IBM, Micro Focus, Morpheus Data, Nutanix, ServiceNow, and VMware – then researched, analyzed, and scored them.

The Wave report details their findings and examines how each vendor meets (or falls short of) Forrester’s evaluation criteria and where vendors stand in relation to each other. At Solutions Review, we read the report, available here, and pulled out the key takeaways.

Forrester named two vendors to the Leaders section: VMware and Micro Focus. VMware extends management from private to public cloud with a focus on app-aware multi-cloud management. Its latest major release of CloudHealth by VMware centered around self-driving operations, programmable provisioning, and deepening support for public clouds. With its rich background in private cloud, Micro Focus delivers a highly complex environment for enterprises in its product, Hybrid Cloud Management X (HCMX). Many of its products were acquired by Hewlett Packard Enterprise, but product leadership has remained consistent throughout this transition.

For the Strong Performers section, Morpheus Data delivers speedy cloud management with strong customer satisfaction reviews despite being one of the smaller vendors in the report. Flexera is a long-time IT asset management and software asset management vendor that powers asset management in the cloud through acquisition. BMC Software combines its ITSM and enterprise service management (ESM) offering with cloud management solutions to tackle complex cloud operational issues. Nutanix is a newcomer to the field, only offering a cloud management solution since 2016 with the acquisition of Calm.io, but the vendor has received good customer feedback and strong early numbers.

Rounding out the report are the two Contenders (IBM and ServiceNow) and the sole Challenger (Canonical). IBM leverages its cloud-native competencies for hybrid cloud management, boosted by its acquisition of Red Hat a few years ago. One of the dominant players in the ESM market, ServiceNow customers praised it for its large ecosystem and its faster go-to-market solution over a DIY path. Finally, Canonical offers a cloud-agnostic solution with deep container support and a strong open-source position.

Read the Forrester Wave: Hybrid Cloud Management, Q4 2020 here.

Looking for a managed service provider for your cloud solutions? Our MSP Buyer’s Guide contains profiles on the top cloud managed service providers for AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, as well as questions you should ask vendors and yourself before buying. We also offer an MSP Vendor Map that outlines those vendors in a Venn diagram to make it easy for you to select potential providers.

Check us out on Twitter for the latest in Enterprise Cloud news and developments!