22 Jul 2019

FRAMINGHAM, Mass. July 22, 2019 – International Data Corporation (IDC) has published a new assessment profiling ten providers of managed cloud services worldwide. The IDC MarketScape report uses a comprehensive framework to assess the vendors relative to a set of criteria that explain success in the managed cloud services market and highlights the factors expected to be the most influential for success in both the short term and the long term. A significant component of this evaluation are the perceptions of buyers surveyed by IDC of both the key characteristics and the capabilities of these providers.

The ten managed cloud services providers profiled in this report are: Accenture, Atos, Cognizant, DXC, HCL, IBM, NTT DATA, Rackspace, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), and Wipro.

Cloud has become the de facto means of delivering IT capabilities for enterprises. Managed cloud services are becoming a primary means for enterprises to get critical support from third-party managed service providers (SPs) to help them manage their cloud environments. This is being driven by the enterprise need to utilize managed services to meet critical firm requirements including demanding more agility and/or speed from IT, increasing revenue by enabling enterprises to build new revenue-generating products and services faster, and simplifying and standardizing IT infrastructure and applications platforms. Further, in gaining the business and technical benefits of managed cloud services, enterprises are using managed SPs in transforming their IT to a set of cloud-based capabilities that require supporting areas, such as application portfolio rationalization and modernization, expertise with public cloud services providers, and legacy application technology expertise. However, enterprises also indicate that they are challenged in using managed cloud services in some key areas and are concerned that cloud cannot support the operational/performance requirements of critical applications.

"Expanding adoption of cloud capabilities involving private, public, and hybrid options as well as the use of a multitude of vendors to meet critical business and technology objectives is creating increased complexity for buyer organizations in ensuring the performance of their clouds. Ensuring successful use of managed cloud services from managed service providers to deliver optimal performance of client cloud requirements requires buyers to assess a broad set of factors involving strategic planning, talent, governance structure, risk management, track record, and engagement process," said David Tapper, program vice president, Outsourcing and Managed Cloud Services.

In evaluating the ten providers, IDC found that while each of these managed SPs exhibited many similarities in their capabilities supporting a broad portfolio of managed cloud services, players do differentiate and are differentiated by key factors involving degree of focus on technologies across applications and infrastructure, innovative capabilities, and financial models, which is coupled by feedback from buyers providing validation in the effectiveness by which managed SPs for managed cloud services execute these capabilities.

"Organizations that are focused on using managed cloud services can leverage this IDC MarketScape as a companion tool to compare and contrast the providers under consideration to support their use of these services," said Peter Marston, research director, Application Lifecycle & Cloud Services.

The report, IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Managed Cloud Services 2019 Vendor Assessment (IDC #US43251618), represents a vendor assessment of providers offering managed cloud services through the IDC MarketScape model. The assessment reviews both quantitative and qualitative characteristics that define current market demands and expected buyer needs for managed cloud services. The evaluation is based on a comprehensive and rigorous framework that assesses how each vendor stacks up, and the framework highlights the key factors that are expected to be the most significant for achieving success in the managed cloud services market over the short and long terms.