G00261066
Magic Quadrant for Cloud-Enabled Managed
Hosting, Asia/Pacific
Published: 10 December 2014
Analyst(s): To Chee Eng, Arup Roy, Vincent Fu, Kenshi Tazaki
Many providers offer cloud-enabled managed hosting services in Asia/
Pacific, but most are immature. This Magic Quadrant will help enterprises
migrating to cloud-enabled managed hosting to choose providers that can
support their use cases and geographic requirements.
Market Definition/Description
An increasing number of enterprises in Asia/Pacific are migrating to cloud-enabled managed hosting (CEMH); drawing in a wide range of providers, including managed hosting providers, IT service providers and communications service providers (CSPs). Service providers are gearing up to be strong regional players. They are, however, still at an early stage of development and many have gaps in their capabilities, which can range from the quality of the cloud platform to managed
services capabilities to geographic coverage. For this reason, there are currently no market leaders in Asia/Pacific.
The CEMH market deals in standardized, productized hosting offerings that combine a cloud-enabled system infrastructure (CESI) platform — comprising compute, network and storage hardware — with cloud management platform software to facilitate self-service and rapid provisioning with managed services (see "Technology Overview for Cloud-Enabled System Infrastructure"). The infrastructure platform may be located in a service provider's data center or (optionally) at the customer's data center. But either way, it requires standardized deployment across all customers and uses a single code base. At a minimum, a service provider must supply server OS management services, including guest OS instances when virtualization is used. The provider may (optionally) supply other managed and professional services relating to the infrastructure's deployment and operation.
CEMH allows only limited customization. It is sold on a stand-alone basis, with no requirement to bundle it with, for example, application development, application maintenance or data center outsourcing (DCO) services.
Customers must be able to access a self-service interface, which may be different from the platform interfaces used internally by the provider. A service provider can potentially intervene in the self-service workflow to manually approve, deny or alter a customer's requests, as long as the provisioning requested is fulfilled in a fully automated manner thereafter.
Managed services (such as OS backups, patching and monitoring) must be available to customers on commitments of less than one year. For a more detailed overview of CEMH, see "Technology Overview for Cloud-Enabled Managed Hosting."
This Magic Quadrant focuses on the enterprise-class CEMH market. Multiple delivery models are used in this market:
■ Multitenant, on the provider's premises: Compute, storage and networking hardware is shared by many customers, housed in the service provider's facilities and fully managed by that provider. This is the most common use case. It encompasses cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) offerings for which the provider offers management of guest OS instances.
■ Single-tenant, on the provider's premises: Compute and storage hardware is dedicated to one customer and housed in the service provider's facilities.
■ Single-tenant, on the customer's premises: Compute, storage, and networking hardware is dedicated to one customer and housed in that customer's data center facilities, but owned and managed by the service provider in a nearly identical fashion to the multitenant and single-tenant provider premises approaches. (While this delivery model is available from some providers, it is not evaluated for the purpose of this Magic Quadrant, which focuses on multitenant services.)
In addition to server OS management, managed and professional services related to infrastructure operations may be offered, such as:
■ Management of infrastructure software at the middleware or persistence layer, such as Web server software, application servers and database servers
■ Management of storage, including backup and recovery
■ Management of host-based and network-based security functions ■ Management of network devices, such as application delivery controllers
■ Professional services associated with hosting, such as architecture consultation, capacity planning, performance testing, security auditing and data center migration
CEMH services must be available to customers on contracts shorter than those used for traditional managed hosting. Customers may opt for longer contracts of one to three years, to secure greater overall discounts, but this is entirely at their discretion. Ultimately, CEMH should afford customers the ability to elastically change the amount of capacity and managed services in use, without requiring a contract alteration.
Use Cases Covered by This Evaluation
This Magic Quadrant focuses on the following common use cases, independent of the type or types of infrastructure used for the associated workloads:
■ E-business hosting — For digital marketing sites, e-commerce websites, SaaS, social websites and similar modern online properties and applications. These workloads are often
complex and are associated with a high rate of change in systems and application infrastructure.
■ Web-based business application hosting — For corporate intranets and Web-based applications delivered to users, primarily within enterprises. The applications may be
commercial software or developed in-house; workloads are often relatively static and do not have a high rate of change.
■ Enterprise application hosting — Managed hosting for the infrastructure supporting large commercial software applications, such as those of Oracle, SAP and other enterprise software vendors. These workloads are often complex and require specialized knowledge to operate optimally, but do not have a high rate of change.
All three use cases typically involve tactical sourcing decisions that center on one application or a single group of closely related applications. They are, typically, best served by a best-of-breed provider that has strong operational expertise with similar solutions. However, many customers expand their use of hosting over time and the choice of provider may become a strategic decision. In the CEMH market, it is difficult to find a provider that excels in all areas — providers may be Leaders in some areas but lag behind in others. As a result, it is important to match your use case with a vendor that excels at meeting your particular needs. Smaller providers may do one thing well, but may not have a comprehensive set of services that enables them to address a broad array of use cases.
It is also crucial to note that this Magic Quadrant shows the overall position of a vendor in the CEMH market, specifically; it does not consider a provider's strength in other adjacent areas in IT services. It is, therefore, crucial to look beyond the major players in the Magic Quadrant when selecting a service provider, especially if you have a particular need. The perfect vendor for your needs might, for example, be a Niche Player.
To provide a global view of this marketplace, Gartner publishes similar Magic Quadrant reports for North America and Europe (see "Magic Quadrant for Cloud-Enabled Managed Hosting, North America" and "Magic Quadrant for Cloud-Enabled Managed Hosting, Europe").
Types of Business Covered by This Evaluation
This Magic Quadrant focuses on CEMH services for the following types of business:
■ Western multinational corporations (MNCs) operating in Asia/Pacific. They generally host their IT infrastructure in one or two regional locations (hubs) — typically Singapore and Hong Kong, and to a lesser extent in Japan and Australia as fewer MNCs have regional headquarters there. In some instances they may require local IT hosting in India for back-end IT operations, and in China to support their large businesses there. Providers that address this segment must have presence in both Singapore and Hong Kong and, to a lesser extent, in the other markets. ■ Asia/Pacific businesses, including government and midmarket companies. Their
within their markets for a variety of reasons, of which data security, data sovereignty and proximity hosting for application performance are the most important.
Magic Quadrant
Figure 1. Magic Quadrant for Cloud-Enabled Managed Hosting, Asia/Pacific
Vendor Strengths and Cautions
CenturyLink
CenturyLink is a U.S.-based global network service provider, with a track record of leadership in the U.S. managed hosting market through its acquisition of Savvis. It targets enterprises, including MNCs. It offers both multitenant and single-tenant CEMH and related managed services. CenturyLink operates cloud data centers in Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, India and China.
Strengths
■ CenturyLink has a strong cloud platform through its 2013 acquisition of Tier 3. The product, CenturyLink Cloud, offers cloud-native capabilities, an easy-to-use portal, and good
governance and management features.
■ CenturyLink has a broad range of managed services, including database management, security management, and consulting and professional services. It has a good understanding of security requirements, with strong security implementations, governance and certifications.
■ CenturyLink offers managed services by the hour, a significant differentiator, and these services are integrated with automated capabilities. It has a strong road map for automating more
managed services.
■ CenturyLink is gaining significant sales traction, following sustained investment and improved execution (during the past two years) in management, infrastructure, IT skills, and sales capacity and channels. CenturyLink is expected to continue further investment in the region.
Cautions
■ CenturyLink has multiple cloud IaaS offerings. It plans to consolidate its services under
CenturyLink Cloud, with no further development in its other platforms. Customers of these other platforms may need to migrate to the new platform in the future.
■ CenturyLink's data center coverage is less extensive than it appears on the surface, because it is split between the different platforms. CenturyLink's CEMH offerings are available in
Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, India and (recently) China. It is launching CenturyLink Cloud in Singapore at the end of 2014, with a second regional location during early 2015.
■ CenturyLink's cloud operation has been in Asia since 2011; but, because its initial focus was on global MNCs, its customer base here is small. Although it is gaining significant sales traction, it needs time to gain the maturity to be a regional player.
CtrlS Datacenters
CtrlS Datacenters is a managed hosting provider as well as an early public cloud provider in India. It targets enterprises and the banking and financial services sector. CtrlS offers CEMH — both
multitenant and single-tenant — and related managed services; it also provides colocation services. Its cloud data centers are located in Hyderabad and Mumbai, India.
Strengths
■ CtrlS invests in high-grade data centers, an important requirement for enterprises due to the lack of good infrastructure in India. It is expanding its data center coverage outside India to support foreign and Indian MNCs with inbound and outbound hosting requirements.
■ CtrlS provides high-availability services through its high-grade data centers, multiavailability zones and three-way disaster recovery architecture — with a zero data loss guarantee backed by SLAs. Due to this implementation, it is strong in the banking and finance sector.
■ CtrlS provides a wide range of managed services, including security, disaster recovery, OS, middleware and databases. It is also price competitive, with a choice of hourly and monthly plans. Pricing for infrastructure services is also transparent, as in a typical public cloud service. ■ CtrlS has a well-designed cloud management portal that provides ease of use and a suitable
choice of features. It provides high service quality and is responsive in terms of meeting customer requirements.
Cautions
■ CtrlS is expanding its presence outside India to tap new growth opportunities. However, it is not well known beyond its home market.
■ Most CtrlS staff and skill sets are concentrated in India. It will require significant investment, in cloud infrastructure, professional services and sales and marketing, in those markets it wants to compete in.
Datapipe
Datapipe is a midsize, U.S.-based managed cloud service provider, with a small but growing
presence in Asia. Its target market is MNCs. This company offers both single-tenant and multitenant CEMH, and related managed services. Datapipe's cloud data centers are in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore, and are connected to its data centers in the U.S. and the U.K. to form a global cloud platform.
Strengths
■ Datapipe supports MNCs with regional requirements through its data centers in Hong Kong and Singapore, the key regional hubs. It is also one of few providers that can support domestic requirements in China — an important market for MNCs.
■ Datapipe provides a broad range of managed services, including storage, security and database servers. It is also one of the few providers that supports Amazon Web Services (AWS), a third-party public cloud service. Datapipe's 2014 acquisition of Layered Tech has improved its portfolio of compliance services.
■ Datapipe offers a simple, customer-friendly pricing scheme, with a choice of hourly and monthly pricing. Its prices are competitive and include managed services up to the application layer. ■ Datapipe provides good service and support, and has shown an increasing ability to win
contracts from large MNCs (including those from Asia) — enabled by its broad range of services and experience with managed hosting.
Cautions
■ Datapipe takes a modest approach in terms of expanding its presence in Asia. Its operations are concentrated in Hong Kong, with a small presence in China and Singapore.
■ The number of Datapipe's Asia/Pacific customers is small, even though these customers are significant in terms of size and complexity.
■ Despite its direct presence in China, Datapipe has yet to gain traction with Chinese enterprises.
Dimension Data
Dimension Data is a large global system integrator with a strong regional presence. It has a long history in managed services. It is owned by the NTT Group in Japan. Dimension Data's target markets are enterprises, including MNCs and midmarket companies. It offers CEMH with
multitenant and single-tenant options and related managed services. It operates cloud data centers in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, India and Indonesia.
Strengths
■ Dimension Data's Managed Cloud Platform provides a single unified architecture for its public and private cloud services, with a common cloud management platform for both environments. All its data centers are connected to form a global cloud platform.
■ Dimension Data provides a good range of managed services, including security, applications performance management, and professional and consulting services for data center
consolidation and cloud migration.
■ Dimension Data has good geographic coverage. It has data centers in seven markets, including India and Indonesia — where its data centers are jointly operated with local CSP partners under its OneCloud partnership program. It can also provide in-country local service and support through its strong regional presence.
■ Dimension Data has shown an increasing ability to win customers in multiple markets, though its customer numbers are currently still relatively low. It is gaining experience by supporting a range of customers and use cases, which will enhance its ability to compete in the future. Cautions
■ There have been few enhancements to Dimension Data's cloud platform and managed services capabilities, an indication that it's not keeping up with the pace of innovation in the market.
■ Dimension Data is gaining experience in supporting Microsoft applications, but it lacks experience in supporting a broad range of enterprise applications — which puts it at a
disadvantage when competing against the large IT providers. It works with sister company NTT Data to compete for large or complex projects.
Fujitsu
Fujitsu is a large global IT service provider. Its target markets are enterprises and midmarket companies. It offers CEMH with a choice of multitenant and single-tenant options and related managed services. Its cloud data centers are in Japan, Australia, Singapore, Thailand and China. Strengths
■ Fujitsu has a reasonable regional data center footprint. It can support MNCs in several regional hubs as well as China and Thailand — both important locations for manufacturers.
■ Fujitsu provides a choice of two multitenant platforms — Fujitsu Cloud IaaS Private Hosted supports VMware, while Fujitsu IaaS Trusted Public S5 supports open-source Xen.
■ Fujitsu provides a wide range of managed services, including support for OSs, middleware and applications and databases, which makes it suitable for supporting large or complex
requirements.
■ Fujitsu has a long track record in managing large-scale IT infrastructure and operations in Asia. Customers in Asia say it provides a good quality of service, with responsive service and
support. Cautions
■ Fujitsu is putting more emphasis on its VMware-based platform, which comes with the full range of managed services and is available in all locations. In contrast, the open-source, Xen-based platform has limited managed services and is available only in Japan, Australia and Singapore.
■ Fujitsu's market presence is uneven. It has strong presence in Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, but has limited presence in the rest of the region.
■ Apart from Japan and Australia, Fujitsu's operations in other markets tend to be product-centric, which means its depth of managed services experience in these markets is not at the same level as in its two mature markets.
HP
HP is a large global IT service provider with a long track record for managed services and outsourcing. Its target markets are enterprises and upper midmarket companies. It offers both multitenant and single-tenant CEMH, and related managed services. Its cloud-enabled data centers are in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore and India; they are connected to its data centers in the U.S. and Europe to form a global network of 23 sites.
Strengths
■ HP has a reasonable regional data center footprint. It can support MNCs in several regional hubs as well as in India — an important emerging market. Its service, HP Helion Managed Cloud, supports a choice of VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisors.
■ HP has improved its SLA for IaaS availability significantly. It now offers availability of 99.95% as standard, and 99.999% for customized deployments.
■ HP provides a choice of managed services, including security, database management and professional services. It has also expanded its professional services head count significantly. ■ HP has a long track record of managing large-scale IT infrastructure and operations in Asia/
Pacific. Customers say it provides a high-quality service with sound service and support. Cautions
■ HP lacks cloud-enabled data centers in Hong Kong and China, both important locations for MNCs. It has started offering community clouds in China via a partnership with a local provider. ■ HP's cloud platform is robust, but has limited differentiation. It is now focused on accelerating
its hybrid cloud capabilities, although it's not clear if this plan will be realized soon.
■ HP has limited standard managed services for middleware and applications for e-business hosting; however, these are available on a customized basis.
IBM
IBM is a large global IT service provider with extensive presence in Asia. It has a long track record in IT outsourcing and its target markets are enterprises and government. It offers CEMH, with a choice of multitenant and single-tenant options, and related managed services. IBM's cloud data centers are in Australia, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong. They are connected to its data centers in the U.S. and Europe to form a global cloud platform.
Strengths
■ IBM offers a choice of two platforms — IBM Cloud Managed Services (previously named SmartCloud Enterprise+) and SoftLayer (a cloud platform it acquired in July 2013). Managed services are available for both platforms.
■ IBM has a long track record in managing large-scale IT infrastructure and operations in Asia. It is now more willing to take on stand-alone CEMH projects. It provides a full range of managed services, including disaster recovery, database management and security.
■ IBM is expanding its cloud data center coverage aggressively to provide global delivery
capabilities. It will add three new data center locations — Australia (Sydney), India and China — by 1Q15, bringing its coverage in Asia to six countries.
■ IBM has a large base of existing customers into which it can sell cloud services. It is beginning to win more customers with its increased emphasis on cloud, although the number of
customers remains small at this stage. Cautions
■ IBM operates two cloud platforms. These have different capabilities and are managed separately. It plans to introduce a cloud management platform, IBM Cloud Orchestrator, to manage both environments; however, this is still at the early stages of development.
■ IBM's data center coverage is less extensive than it appears on the surface, because it is split between the two platforms. IBM Cloud Managed Services is available in Australia and Japan, while SoftLayer is available in Singapore and Hong Kong. The new data centers will be for SoftLayer.
■ IBM Cloud Managed Services provides customers with direct access to the provisioning portal or the use of a mediated provisioning process, whereby IBM provisions resources on the customer's behalf. Customers should choose direct access to the provisioning portal to get the benefits of the cloud.
IIJ
IIJ is a major Japanese hosting and managed services provider. Its target markets are enterprises and midmarket companies. It offers multitenant and single-tenant CEMH, with related managed services. IIJ's cloud data centers are in Japan, China and Singapore. They are connected to its data centers in the U.S. and the U.K. to form an international cloud platform. IIJ will open a cloud data center in Indonesia during 1Q15.
Strengths
■ IIJ has good domestic coverage in Japan, with six cloud data centers supporting a wide range of customers. It is expanding its coverage overseas, to support its Japanese customers and target new opportunities in other markets.
■ IIJ supports hybrid cloud and IT management through its unified operation management
system, which provides monitoring, operations management and reporting functions for server, storage and networking equipment.
■ IIJ has deep in-house technical skills. It has developed a wide range of cloud capabilities and managed services and is constantly introducing new products — including a software library for VMware, data warehousing and SAP-certified cloud services.
■ IIJ offers a broad range of managed services, including storage management and security management, and professional services. It is among the few providers in Asia that provides a private network connection to Microsoft Azure, called ExpressRoute, which enables customers to have better network performance when accessing the public cloud service.
Cautions
■ While IIJ has expanded its coverage overseas, its initial expansion was driven by the
requirements of Japanese MNCs. It is now more focused on tapping local opportunities in other markets, but this is still at an early stage of execution.
■ IIJ has not rolled out its broad portfolio of products to Singapore and China. It has limited marketing and is not well known outside Japan.
■ IIJ is more successful in the midmarket company segment, with limited experience of supporting a broad range of complex enterprise applications.
NTT Communications
NTT Communications is a global CSP, and a wholly owned subsidiary of NTT Group in Japan. Its major focus is large enterprise and MNCs. The company offers multitenant and single-tenant CEMH, and related managed services. The service, Enterprise Cloud, is available in its cloud data centers in Japan, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Thailand. These data centers are connected to its cloud data centers in the U.S. and Europe to provide a global cloud platform. Strengths
■ NTT Communications provides good geographic coverage, with cloud data centers in six markets — including all the regional hubs. It plans to expand its presence to India and China during 2015. It is well positioned to support the MNC segment as well as local country requirements where it has data center presence.
■ NTT Communications provides a broad portfolio of managed services, including support for middleware and applications, and databases. It has increased its number of professional services staff to 200 during the past year, to provide consulting for large or complex projects. ■ NTT Communications has strong security capabilities, providing both professional services and
managed security, which are important for enterprises with business-critical requirements. ■ NTT Communications invests aggressively in product development. It has a strong road map for
product enhancements, including on-demand hosted private cloud, integrated portal for cloud and network management, and hybrid cloud management.
Cautions
■ Although NTT Communications is continuously enhancing its cloud platform and managed services, due to a strong focus on product development, it needs time to gain maturity in both capabilities.
■ NTT Communications is building a global remote infrastructure management capability through six delivery centers worldwide, but it has limited professional services outside Japan — which are needed to tap local opportunities in the markets where it has a cloud data center presence.
■ NTT Communications is gaining experience in supporting some mission-critical applications or use cases. However, it lacks experience in supporting a broad range of enterprise applications, which puts it at a disadvantage when competing against large IT providers.
Orange Business Services
Orange Business Services is a global CSP with extensive presence in Asia/Pacific. It targets midsize to large MNCs and Asian enterprises. It offers CEMH, with multitenant, single-tenant and customer premises options, and related managed services. It also offers colocation. Orange's cloud data centers are located in Sydney in Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong, and are connected to its data centers in Europe and the U.S. to form a global cloud platform.
Strengths
■ Orange was among the earliest CSPs to provide data center consolidation, virtualization and managed services in Asia. It has gained significant experience, which it is now using to extend into cloud services.
■ Orange has a well-developed catalog of services, which gives it the flexibility to customize individual solutions for customers. It has a sizeable consulting and professional services team, supported by well-defined methodologies and processes, to support customers with cloud migration.
■ Orange provides end-to-end service management and responsibility, with quality of service and SLAs for network, IaaS and OS and applications. It also provides a choice of centralized billing or local billing in various currencies.
Cautions
■ Orange's cloud service is relatively new in Asia, although it has gained significant experience with data center consolidation and virtualization and managed services for a small number of large customers in Asia since 2009.
■ Orange has limited experience and professional services for supporting complex enterprise applications, but it has partnerships with strong IT service providers to deliver a complete solution.
■ Most of Orange's early customers have been large domestic enterprises in Asia. Being highly focused on the MNC segment, it is not clear if Orange's head office wants to fully address local domestic opportunities — which would require substantial investment to compete at country level.
Rackspace
Rackspace is a U.S.-based hosting provider with a track record in the managed hosting market in the U.S. and the U.K. It targets enterprises, including MNCs. Rackspace offers multitenant and single-tenant CEMH plus related managed services. Its cloud data centers are located in Australia and Hong Kong, complementing its presence in the U.S. and the U.K..
Strengths
■ Rackspace provides superior, high-touch service and support, which is validated by customers in Asia as well as in the U.S. and the U.K. Consequently, customer loyalty is strong, putting it in a sound position to gain market share.
■ Rackspace is price competitive. It also offers a simple and customer-friendly pricing scheme that allows customers to buy managed services on a consumption basis and breaks down the prices of its managed services transparently.
■ Rackspace has an innovative DevOps automation service, which is also priced at a flat rate. It is expanding its choice of services with a VMware offering and a bare-metal service, in addition to its existing Citrix XenServer-based offer.
■ Rackspace has a respectable mind share among Western MNCs, with many choosing it for their requirements in Asia. It has increased its number of sales and technical staff significantly, and sales are increasing.
Cautions
■ Rackspace's presence in Asia is small, being limited to Hong Kong and Australia, which is affecting its growth. It has stepped up its investments during the past year, but it will take time to close the gap on its competitors.
■ Rackspace's cloud data centers in Hong Kong and Australia are relatively new. It also lacks presence in Singapore, an important regional hub for MNCs. It has signed up channel partners in China and India, but will not gain traction in these markets without a direct presence.
■ Rackspace has many platforms, between its virtualized noncloud offerings and its IaaS environments, and its managed service offerings vary across these platforms. Although it provides effective advisory services as part of its managed services at no extra charge, it lacks a discrete professional services team in Asia — which limits its ability to support large or complex requirements.
Sify
Sify is a major managed hosting and network services provider in India. It targets enterprises and midmarket companies. It offers CEMH, with a choice of multitenant and single-tenant options, and related managed services. Its cloud data centers are located in Mumbai and Bangalore, India. Strengths
■ Sify delivers its service from high-grade data centers, an important consideration for enterprises due to the lack of sound infrastructure in India. It is strong in service management and its
■ Sify offers a wide range of managed services, including security, database management and middleware management. It provides end-to-end service management, with SLAs for cloud platform, network infrastructure and application performance.
■ Sify has strong software development skills and invests significantly in R&D. It has developed its own hybrid cloud management platform using technologies from multiple vendors and open-source software.
■ Sify's service, cloudinfinit, has a well-designed cloud management portal that provides ease of use and a useful choice of features. It provides end-to-end service management, with SLAs for cloud platform, network infrastructure and application performance.
Cautions
■ Sify is an India-only player, because it lacks infrastructure and presence outside its home market. This limits its ability to address opportunities that are emerging in other markets in Asia. It has recently set up a presence in the U.S., to support U.S. companies with hosting
requirements in India.
■ Sify's capabilities are not well understood, due to its limited marketing; consequently, it has yet to gain traction with enterprises in India.
■ Customers say that Sify's operational processes are thorough, but it lacks a single point of contact for handling service issues. It also needs to improve on architecture design and be proactive in service usage reporting.
SingTel
SingTel is the leading CSP in Singapore. It is an early provider of cloud and hosting services in its home market. It also has strong presence in Australia through SingTel Optus. Its target customers are enterprises, MNCs and government organizations. It offers CEMH, with a choice of multitenant and single-tenant options, and related managed services. It also offers colocation. SingTel operates cloud data centers in Singapore, Australia and Hong Kong.
Strengths
■ SingTel can serve enterprises in Singapore and Australia, as well as MNCs with regional requirements, through its cloud data centers in Singapore, Australia and Hong Kong. ■ SingTel provides a choice of VMware and Microsoft hypervisors, although these run on
separate cloud platforms. It is among the few providers in Asia with a direct network connection to Microsoft Azure — as a precursor to more hybrid cloud capabilities.
■ SingTel has a good portfolio of managed services, including database management, security, and consulting and professional services. It has a large IT services arm, which enables SingTel to handle large and complex environments.
■ SingTel has experience in the government sector in Singapore. It operates a
security implementations on its cloud platforms based on what it has learned from the government cloud project.
Cautions
■ SingTel's presence in Hong Kong is small and its profile, as a cloud provider, in Australia is also low. As such, it has not realized its ambition to be a regional cloud player.
■ SingTel has multiple cloud platforms, which makes it difficult for enterprises to choose the appropriate platform for their needs.
■ SingTel is integrating its platforms with a common cloud management portal, but it is not yet clear when this will be introduced.
Telstra
Telstra is the largest CSP in Australia, and an early managed cloud service provider there. It is now expanding its presence in Asia, the U.K. and the U.S. — targeting enterprises, including MNCs, with multitenant and single-tenant CEMH and related managed services. Telstra operates cloud data centers in Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong, which are connected to its data center in the U.K. to form an international cloud platform.
Strengths
■ Telstra has a strong presence in Australia, and can support MNCs with regional requirements through its cloud data centers in Singapore and Hong Kong. Its cloud data center in the U.K. serves as a gateway for U.K. companies with hosting requirements in Asia.
■ Telstra provides end-to-end service management, with SLAs for cloud platform, network
infrastructure and applications. It provides a choice of hourly and monthly pricing, and supports pricing and billing in multiple currencies outside Australia.
■ Telstra focuses on providing a great customer experience, a user-friendly cloud customer portal and a globally consistent product. It has won a significant number of MNC clients despite its relatively new international presence.
■ Telstra will soon offer Cisco's InterCloud platform (currently in live beta) in addition to its VMware platform. Telstra also has a strategic partnership with Accenture to deliver more complex requirements.
Cautions
■ Telstra's portfolio of managed services is relatively small, covering key services such as security, backup and disaster recovery, and OS management. Its options are limited for Web servers and databases.
■ Telstra's service lacks differentiation. It also lacks a road map for its own cloud platform development, preferring to pursue a hybrid cloud strategy through strategic partnering with Cisco.
■ Telstra's cloud platform in Singapore and Hong Kong is relatively new; to be a strong regional player, it needs to build up its local service and support capabilities in these markets.
Verizon
Verizon is a leading CSP, as well as a strong managed hosting provider, in the U.S. MNCs are its target market. It offers CEMH, with virtual and dedicated servers over a multitenant infrastructure, and related managed services. Verizon's cloud data center is in Hong Kong, and is connected via its network to its data centers in the U.S. and Europe to form a global cloud platform.
Strengths
■ Verizon has strong technology skills and managed hosting experience in its home U.S. market, which will provide the foundation for its expansion into Asia.
■ Verizon has long-standing experience of operating an enterprise-class, VMware-virtualized cloud platform, with good redundancy, security and automation capabilities.
■ Verizon has a strong security practice, which is a key differentiator for supporting large and complex cloud migration projects.
■ As a global network services provider with a strong presence in Asia, Verizon is leveraging its regional sales, professional services, and service and support capabilities to grow its cloud hosting service in the region.
Cautions
■ Verizon's customer base is small, even though it was an early provider of managed hosting in Asia. It is beginning to put more emphasis on the product, but this is at an early stage of execution.
■ Verizon's cloud data center coverage is limited to Hong Kong. This is not sufficient for
addressing the MNC market, which requires at least two locations — the other being Singapore. To address this issue, Verizon is extending its coverage to Australia in 4Q14 and Singapore and Hong Kong in early 2015.
■ While Verizon has multiple cloud platforms (recently consolidated under an umbrella portal branded "Verizon Cloud"), the only platform available in the Asia/Pacific region is Enterprise Cloud Managed Edition. Although Verizon intends to bring its new Verizon Cloud platform to the Asia/Pacific region, it is unclear if it will also introduce its other platforms here.
Vendors Added and Dropped
We review and adjust our inclusion criteria for Magic Quadrants and MarketScopes as markets change. As a result of these adjustments, the mix of vendors in any Magic Quadrant or
MarketScope may change over time. A vendor's appearance in a Magic Quadrant or MarketScope one year and not the next does not necessarily indicate that we have changed our opinion of that vendor. It may be a reflection of a change in the market and, therefore, changed evaluation criteria, or of a change of focus by that vendor.
Added
■ No vendors were added
Dropped
■ No vendors were dropped
Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria
To be included in this Magic Quadrant, providers had to meet the following criteria:
■ Products and services. The provider must offer a CEMH service that meets Gartner's market definition. It must offer this service as a multitenant offering in its own data center, and may offer a single-tenant option.
■ Technical and business capabilities in Asia/Pacific. The provider must operate a CESI platform in at least one major market in Asia/Pacific, with associated technical support, managed and professional services, and sales capabilities in the country.
■ Market traction and momentum. Because the market is evolving rapidly and has many players, we include only a select number of early market movers, innovative providers and potential market makers in this Magic Quadrant. To be included, a provider needs to be a key player in a major market — supported by CESI and associated capabilities in the region. The provider must sell CEMH as a stand-alone service, with no requirement to bundle it with application development, application maintenance or other IT outsourcing and/or DCO services. The provider's qualifying offering(s) must offer customers direct or mediated self-service for OS instance provisioning on a CESI platform, with usage-based billing and resource-metering
increments of no greater than one month, as well as OS management services that are coterminous with the underlying compute resources.
The service(s) evaluated must be enterprise-class, offer 24/7 customer support (including phone support) and have infrastructure availability SLAs.
Products and Services Excluded From This Evaluation
This Magic Quadrant is for CEMH hosting only. Therefore, the following adjacent services are excluded from our evaluation:
■ Colocation. Although many CEMH providers also offer colocation, the quality of colocation offerings is not evaluated in this Magic Quadrant so it should not be used to select colocation vendors.
■ Self-managed cloud IaaS. Many businesses want a self-provisioned, self-managed,
dynamically provisioned infrastructure; they want to take advantage of the cost-efficiencies of a provider's scale and automation tools, but do not want to relinquish control. If your interest is primarily in self-managed cloud infrastructure, consult "Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service."
■ Traditional managed hosting. Although the managed hosting market is established, this Magic Quadrant focuses on providers that have evolved to offer customers consumption offers that are more cloud-like, including on the managed services tier. Many providers in this Magic Quadrant may still offer traditional managed hosting services, but this analysis does not consider those legacy offerings in this analysis.
■ DCO and remote infrastructure management (RIM). Although many DCO providers may manage the infrastructure for Web applications as part of a DCO contract, this Magic Quadrant evaluates only managed hosting that is sold as a stand-alone service within provider-owned data center facilities. It explicitly excludes hosting that may be part of a more general DCO or RIM contract. DCO providers are covered by "Magic Quadrant for Data Center Outsourcing and Infrastructure Utility Services, North America," "Magic Quadrant for Data Center Outsourcing and Infrastructure Utility Services, Europe" and "Magic Quadrant for Data Center Outsourcing and Infrastructure Utility Services, Asia/Pacific."
■ Application management services. While some managed hosting providers may have expertise in understanding how best to run the infrastructure underlying specific applications, we consider that managed hosting services stop below the application layer. Application layer services are part of the application management market, for which see "Magic Quadrant for Oracle Application Management Service Providers, Worldwide" and "Magic Quadrant for SAP Application Management Service Providers, Worldwide."
■ Cloud management platforms. Cloud-building hardware and software (software such as BMC's Cloud Lifecycle Management, Citrix's CloudPlatform and OpenStack, and turnkey solutions such as HP's CloudSystem Matrix) are not evaluated in this Magic Quadrant, which is restricted solely to services.
Evaluation Criteria
Ability to Execute
This Magic Quadrant is aimed at businesses operating in Asia/Pacific, including MNCs with regional hosting requirements and Asia/Pacific businesses with domestic hosting requirements. As Asia/ Pacific is a large region with 13 major markets, providers need to demonstrate that they can address multiple markets within the region with the support of a competitive cloud platform and associated managed and professional capabilities.
We gave high weightings to two criteria: Market Responsiveness/Record, which includes a provider's history and ability to respond to market needs and opportunities in the region; and Product or Service, which includes a provider's cloud platform, range of services, managed and professional services, and service availability in all key markets.
Table 1. Ability to Execute Evaluation Criteria
Evaluation Criteria Weighting
Product or Service High
Overall Viability Medium
Sales Execution/Pricing Medium Market Responsiveness/Record High Marketing Execution Medium Customer Experience Medium
Operations Medium
Source: Gartner (December 2014)
Completeness of Vision
This Magic Quadrant is aimed at businesses operating in Asia/Pacific, including MNCs with regional hosting requirements and Asia/Pacific businesses with domestic hosting requirements. Due to the region's large size and fragmented geography, providers need a strong Market Understanding of their target segments, because this will determine their Geographic Strategy, supported by a competitive Offering (Product) Strategy. We gave high weightings to these three criteria.
Ideally, a leading provider should offer services in all 13 major markets within Asia/Pacific. However, we recognize that this is not yet feasible due to the tremendous level of resources that would be required to address all these markets at a local level. We therefore looked for providers that can support multiple markets today, and have the potential to become fuller regional providers in the future.
Table 2. Completeness of Vision Evaluation Criteria
Evaluation Criteria Weighting
Market Understanding High Marketing Strategy Medium
Sales Strategy Medium
Offering (Product) Strategy High
Business Model Medium
Vertical/Industry Strategy Low
Innovation Medium
Geographic Strategy High
Source: Gartner (December 2014)
Quadrant Descriptions
It is important to note that the most appropriate provider for an enterprise's particular situation could appear in any of the four quadrants. For example, if a Niche Player's capabilities match an enterprise's specific needs, it may be the best choice.
Leaders
Providers require a strong strategy to become a Leader in Asia/Pacific. They need to invest in their products, geographic coverage and delivery capabilities, to such an extent that they can become strong regional players. To build their market positions, they must have the ability and willingness to invest for the future.
There are no Leaders in this Magic Quadrant, because all the providers are still in the early stages of execution and have not made enough progress with their offerings or geographic coverage to be placed there.
Challengers
Challengers typically have a strong Ability to Execute, but trail the market in terms of geographic coverage or product evolution. They have experience in traditional managed hosting services, but they have not exploited technology and market demand to build highly competitive CEMH services. They could become Leaders if they extend their vision and strategy, but they could also fall quickly behind in this fast-moving market if they focus only on the short term.
Visionaries
Visionaries are, typically, early movers with an innovative or disruptive approach to the market. However, they have limited geographic coverage, or services that are new and unproven. They may become Challengers or Leaders if they can execute strongly on their vision and the market accepts their services.
Niche Players
Niche Players typically perform well in a particular segment of the market, but have a limited ability to outperform other providers in the region as a whole. Their focus on a particular segment or geography limits their ability to address the broader market. They tend to be relatively unknown outside their target market.
Context
This Magic Quadrant focuses on CEMH services for businesses in Asia/Pacific. These are
standardized products that combine a CESI with managed services. This Magic Quadrant focuses on services for Western MNCs operating in Asia, and for Asian businesses.
The aim of this Magic Quadrant is to help enterprises sourcing CEMH services by establishing which providers are best placed to serve the needs of Asia/Pacific's broad market. We evaluated a select number of providers that focus on the region's developed markets, particularly the key regional hubs. We also included providers from India, because this country serves as the IT back-end for many MNCs. We also looked at providers in China, because there is a growing need for MNCs to host in this country as business expands there. China's service provider market is, however, very immature, so we did not include any provider from China.
We gave higher weightings to providers that:
■ Serve multiple country markets, including the regional hubs, to meet the requirements of MNCs. ■ Offer CEMH that is competitive in terms of range of services, cloud platform, service features,
managed and professional services, and local service and support.
■ Have a track record in managed hosting — we take experience in managed hosting in this region as a proxy, since CEMH is an extension of traditional managed hosting.
Because this market is in its early stage of development, most providers lack a clear strategy to address the requirements of enterprises in Asia/Pacific. Most are in the early stages of execution in terms of their cloud platform development, geographic coverage and experience of supporting enterprises. For these reasons, we have kept the level of Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute low — to reflect the current state of development. As the market progresses, we will raise the levels to reflect this progress.
We expect the market to evolve greatly during the next few years. Enterprises should select the provider that best matches their needs in the near term, and keep to shorter contracts. This will give
enterprises the opportunity to select another provider as the market matures (see "Best Practices for Selecting Cloud-Enabled Managed Hosting Providers in Asia/Pacific").
Market Overview
Asia/Pacific does not have an established managed hosting market, due to the lack of strong hosting providers. As such, many enterprises have traditionally kept their infrastructure in-house or colocated with an external data center provider. Managed hosting, where deployed, is typically part of a bigger IT services or outsourcing contract.
The market is, however, changing rapidly. The arrival of cloud IaaS, coinciding with the trend for data center consolidation and virtualization, has attracted many players. These players have, typically, focused on cloud-enabled managed hosting for enterprises, rather than public cloud services. With wider and easier availability of services, adoption is growing rapidly in Asia/Pacific, albeit from a low base.
Adoption is led by developed markets such as Japan, Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong, but it is also emerging in developing markets, particularly in India where there is a growing choice of strong local providers. Initial adoption is led by midmarket companies, but is now extending to enterprises and government organizations as well (see "Market Trends: Cloud-Enabled Managed Hosting Gains Momentum in Asia/Pacific").
For aspiring regional providers, the big challenge is Asia/Pacific's geography. It is a large region with a fragmented market and considerable diversity in terms of economic development and IT maturity. It is difficult for even large providers to address all the country markets at once.
Consequently, they focus on a small number of markets initially — such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan and Australia — and expand progressively to other markets over time. This leaves a large part of the region underserved.
There is a wide range of players, including cloud and managed hosting providers (mostly from the U.S.), established IT services providers, and global and regional CSPs.
In general, cloud and managed hosting providers have more mature cloud platforms, lead in technical innovation and have better managed services capabilities, but they tend to lack a strong regional presence. Established IT services providers have more managed hosting experience, typically as part of larger IT services or DCO deals, and deep presence in some country markets. CSPs lead in network and hosting services, typically offering end-to-end service management that includes network, cloud infrastructure and application performance; they have a strong presence in their home markets and can support MNCs with regional hosting requirements.
The CEMH market in Asia/Pacific is growing and evolving rapidly. We expect it to mature at an accelerated pace compared with other more typical technology markets.
Acronym Key and Glossary Terms CEMH cloud-enabled managed hosting CESI cloud-enabled system infrastructure CSP communications service provider DCO data center outsourcing
IaaS infrastructure as a service MNC multinational corporation
Gartner Recommended Reading
Some documents may not be available as part of your current Gartner subscription. "How Markets and Vendors Are Evaluated in Gartner Magic Quadrants"
"Best Practices for Selecting Cloud-Enabled Managed Hosting Providers in Asia/Pacific" "Market Trends: Cloud-Enabled Managed Hosting Gains Momentum in Asia/Pacific" "Magic Quadrant for Cloud-Enabled Managed Hosting, North America"
"Magic Quadrant for Cloud-Enabled Managed Hosting, Europe"
Evaluation Criteria Definitions
Ability to Execute
Product/Service: Core goods and services offered by the vendor for the defined market. This includes current product/service capabilities, quality, feature sets, skills and so on, whether offered natively or through OEM agreements/partnerships as defined in the market definition and detailed in the subcriteria.
Overall Viability: Viability includes an assessment of the overall organization's financial health, the financial and practical success of the business unit, and the likelihood that the individual business unit will continue investing in the product, will continue offering the product and will advance the state of the art within the organization's portfolio of products.
Sales Execution/Pricing: The vendor's capabilities in all presales activities and the structure that supports them. This includes deal management, pricing and negotiation, presales support, and the overall effectiveness of the sales channel.
Market Responsiveness/Record: Ability to respond, change direction, be flexible and achieve competitive success as opportunities develop, competitors act, customer needs evolve and market dynamics change. This criterion also considers the vendor's history of responsiveness.
Marketing Execution: The clarity, quality, creativity and efficacy of programs designed to deliver the organization's message to influence the market, promote the brand and business, increase awareness of the products, and establish a positive identification with the product/brand and organization in the minds of buyers. This "mind share" can be driven by a combination of publicity, promotional initiatives, thought leadership, word of mouth and sales activities.
Customer Experience: Relationships, products and services/programs that enable clients to be successful with the products evaluated. Specifically, this includes the ways customers receive technical support or account support. This can also include ancillary tools, customer support programs (and the quality thereof), availability of user groups, service-level agreements and so on.
Operations: The ability of the organization to meet its goals and commitments. Factors include the quality of the organizational structure, including skills, experiences,
programs, systems and other vehicles that enable the organization to operate effectively and efficiently on an ongoing basis.
Completeness of Vision
Market Understanding: Ability of the vendor to understand buyers' wants and needs and to translate those into products and services. Vendors that show the highest degree of vision listen to and understand buyers' wants and needs, and can shape or enhance those with their added vision.
Marketing Strategy: A clear, differentiated set of messages consistently
communicated throughout the organization and externalized through the website, advertising, customer programs and positioning statements.
Sales Strategy: The strategy for selling products that uses the appropriate network of direct and indirect sales, marketing, service, and communication affiliates that extend the scope and depth of market reach, skills, expertise, technologies, services and the customer base.
Offering (Product) Strategy: The vendor's approach to product development and delivery that emphasizes differentiation, functionality, methodology and feature sets as they map to current and future requirements.
Business Model: The soundness and logic of the vendor's underlying business proposition.
Vertical/Industry Strategy: The vendor's strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to meet the specific needs of individual market segments, including vertical markets.
Innovation: Direct, related, complementary and synergistic layouts of resources, expertise or capital for investment, consolidation, defensive or pre-emptive purposes.
Geographic Strategy: The vendor's strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to meet the specific needs of geographies outside the "home" or native geography, either directly or through partners, channels and subsidiaries as appropriate for that
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