ISG Provider Lens™ Public Cloud - Solutions & Services - SAP HANA Infrastructure Services - Germany 2022

The Public Cloud Services market is growing due to the many benefits it offers to businesses

With an increasing number of companies moving to the cloud to optimize their business processes, digital transformation of enterprises is gaining traction and resulting in an increasing demand for cloud services and solutions. Services that enable faster deployment are particularly in high demand. The shift toward agility in software development and deployment has led companies to increasingly adopt public cloud services to achieve their business goals.

The adoption of cloud computing is increasing as companies seek to reduce costs and simplify their IT infrastructures. This trend will continue in the coming years, driving the demand for public cloud services. Stakeholders agree that professional consulting and managed services are critical to achieve successful digital transformation. Service providers are increasingly developing industryspecific transformation capabilities to serve industries quickly and appropriately, while still meeting their respective compliance and guidelines. The pandemic has further emphasized the importance of companies leveraging the latest cloud services to reap benefits such as cloudbased remote work environments.

Public cloud partnerships are expected to continue growing in the future. Finding and retaining qualified staff is imperative to serving customers and creating value. However, this is often a challenge that, given the speed of response required, often leads to the use of external partners such as IT service providers.

In 2022, the number of service providers reporting a shortage of qualified personnel increased. This is further compounded by the growing number of providers, especially in the mid-market segment. While cloud hyperscalers have expanded their online training offerings to increase the number of qualified cloud engineers and architects needed to support market growth, this is not enough to meet the demand. Some service providers compensate the shortage of skilled workers with automation to support more customers. The work environment, training opportunities and wellness and clear career paths have become differentiating factors for service providers to attract and retain IT talent.

AIOps, the set of tools to automate cloud operations with AI, is becoming commonplace. Companies are now distinguished by the degree of automation they can achieve, which ranges from 40 to 70 percent. Optimal use of automation not only provides a better UX for customers but also enables service providers to achieve better profit margins.

Public cloud customers are prioritizing self-service infrastructures to dramatically accelerate their agile development teams. DevOps security and configuration inspections should be part of any integrated platform.

Financial control of cloud spending is an increasingly important issue. Additionally, there are many different tools on the market, but no single tool offers all functionalities. Therefore, customers and service providers integrate multiple tools to provide comprehensive dashboards for cost management. Companies that work on multiple clouds need additional integrations to monitor their infrastructure costs.

Multicloud is ubiquitous. Most service providers can support multiple hyperscalers. The market is evolving from Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), where a virtual machine is chosen for all applications, to Platform as a Service (PaaS), where the right cloud is chosen based on a company’s technologies.

Cloud hyperscalers have adapted to multicloud trends and customer requirements for hybrid cloud and are investing more in their portfolios.

Another trend is the increasing investment by hyperscalers in industryspecific solutions and platforms. This hypercomputing movement is exerting pressure on the entire systems integrator market to make similar investments. Although this started with large vendors, it is already impacting mid-sized vendors.

Consulting and Transformation Services

Companies are striving to establish new business models and tackle digital transformation. CX management has become the common denominator, which has made catering to customer needs and satisfaction all the more important to succeed. It is further complemented by increasingly data-driven decision making/preparation. The changing market is dictated by fast-moving and unique customer demands. Responding to such demands requires the intelligent use of advanced cloud-native technologies. For an enterprise to transform into a data-centric entity, it also must bring about changes in culture, which would subsequently require change management tools.

Companies must also change their organization and adopt methods, such as design thinking or Scrum, to meet customer requirements in small-sprint work cycles.

The biggest challenge in agile is the lack of security. Ensuring security is crucial, especially when end-to-end development and maintenance processes or software governance are made agile. Native cloud technologies can help enterprises protect attack surfaces, which differ greatly from the traditional application portfolio. The enterprise client’s core applications are often proprietary or monolithic and/or, with respect to the licensing model, may not be easily migrated to a virtualized/ container-based environment or to microservices-compliant public clouds by lift and shift. In future, platforms with key hyperscale capabilities will address such issues.

Leading providers for large customers are Accenture, Arvato Systems, Atos, Capgemini, HCLTech, IBM, Infosys, NTT DATA, TCS and Wipro. EPAM has qualified as a Rising Star.

The leading providers for SMBs are All for One Group, Axians, CANCOM, Claranet, Deutsche Telekom, NTT DATA and Reply. Nordcloud has been positioned as a Rising Star.

Managed Public Cloud Services

Outsourcing cloud management to service providers is gaining traction as they can offer unique solutions that an individual company could only afford at the cost of significant investments. The benefits are obvious — focus on key tasks and products and reduction of complexity and costs.

Employing MSPs for business process automation is growing steadily and offers many advantages. Service providers have specific cloud management platforms (CMPs) that meet the needs of these businesses. Thanks to this trend, outsourcing cloud management has become more attractive, and building innovative solutions for customers has regained focus. DevOps and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) practices, use of advanced automation technologies and AI and auto-repair features with pre-configured API integration capabilities enable MSPs to effectively manage their customers’ businesses.

Many managed service contracts go hand-in-hand with the migration of applications to innovative standardized solutions. This requires synchronizing every customer relationship with the development and operation teams, finding the release cycles and individual updates and placing software and apps at the center of digital transformation, without neglecting their operations.

Leading providers for large customers are Accenture, Arvato Systems, Atos, Capgemini, HCLTech, Infosys, Kyndryl, Rackspace Technology, T-Systems, TCS and Wipro. Nordcloud has qualified as a Rising Star.

The main providers for SMEs are CANCOM, Claranet, Deutsche Telekom, NTT DATA, PlusServer and Skaylink. Syntax has been positioned as the Rising Star.

Hyperscale Infrastructure and Platform Services

The need for flexible and scalable infrastructure continues to grow. Companies of all sizes are looking for solutions to increase their competitiveness. The pandemic has accelerated changes in the workplace, which require new approaches. In many cases, traditional office workstations have become outdated, and flexibility is the new order of the day. This means that access to data must be possible from anywhere, inside and outside the company. This new structure cannot be implemented with an in-house data center. Cloud providers have adapted to this situation and offer a multitude of services with their IaaS/PaaS offerings that the customer can choose from. The Infrastructure-as-a-Service offer includes everything necessary for a business, such as powerful servers, storage systems, network, connectivity and protection against cyberattacks, all of which can be scaled at any time.

Leading providers are AWS, Google, IONOS, Microsoft and T-Systems. gridscale and OVHcloud are the Rising Stars in this quadrant.

SAP HANA Infrastructure Services

The reluctance to move SAP solutions to the cloud has decreased significantly. The move from legacy SAP systems to SAP S/4HANA has given companies a pause. The cloud providers benefit the most as the move eliminates the need for investment in in hardware or SAP experts, who are difficult to acquire in the market. The provider not only offers the complete infrastructure but also takes care of the operations on an SAP-certified platform.

Leading providers are AWS, BTC, CANCOM, Google, Microsoft, Syntax and T-Systems.

Secure Enterprise Filesharing Services

The changing structure of work has meant that employees no longer work exclusively in the office, but also outside and wherever they are. As a result, documents are no longer stored on local computers, but on a central file-sharing platform, which can be accessed and modified from anywhere at any time. All you need is a mobile or fixed terminal, a cable connection and a server.

Leading providers are Box, Brainloop, DRACOON, Dropbox, FTAPI and Microsoft. netfiles has been named a Rising Star.

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