ISG Provider Lens™ Cloud Services Archetype Report 2017
This ISG Provider Lens™ report summarizes the relative capabilities of 21 cloud services providers and their abilities to address the requirements of five typical, frequently encountered categories of enterprise users (“archetypes”). Each archetype represents a distinctive set of business and technological needs and challenges.
In our research, we found no shortage of providers with capabilities adequate to satisfy the cloud transformation requirements of most user enterprises. It is rare to find one cloud services provider that can address all cloud transformation needs across most user archetypes. That is due in large part to four core realities regarding the archetypes:
- The characteristics of each archetype are a moving target over time, because, while the core requirements rarely change, the relative importance of different requirements can vary based on business and/or technological environment changes. Clients are not innovators and not inclined towards digital technologies.
- Multiple archetypes tend to be present in most enterprises, especially in larger firms. As the requirements of each archetype evolve and adapt based on business and technological change, so too does the presence and value of each archetype.
- A good number of providers (especially large ones) come from traditional sourcing backgrounds and their operational scope is focused on “traditional” data centers. The transformation to public cloud comes in phases/steps. As such, from a provider perspective, the archetypes offer a continuum of service opportunities for the entire enterprise as well as in individual business units within the enterprise. It should be noted that the service providers are leveraging their install bases to generate additional revenue through transformation services.
- The “born-in-the-cloud” and “cloud native” clients, as represented by the Next-Gen archetype, present exciting new revenue generating opportunities for service providers. In terms of revenue, this market segment has not reached the scale of the traditional IT sourcing business. The sourcing providers are working with CIOs not only to support the traditional workload base but also to support “cloud native” applications. As such, the leadership of many traditional sourcing companies is involved in a broad scope of activities that extends all the way from transforming traditional IT to serving Next-Gen clients.
Enterprise IT leaders, service owners, procurement managers and others involved in cloud transformation initiatives have an ongoing series of choices for cloud services provider selection. Those making the transformation must strike a balance between optimal business value and relative cost of the provider engagement, integration and management. Market changes, new business models, fluctuating economic factors and other factors will continually conspire to add to and subtract from user needs. Any client enterprise that fits solely within a single archetype will receive limited value over time from cloud transformation services. For service providers, slotting customers into a single archetype and not anticipating that their needs will change can prevent effective value from being delivered, leading to customer frustration and dissatisfaction. Please note: This report presents services providers’ known capabilities in the context of user enterprises’ typical project needs (i.e., archetypes). This report is not meant to rank providers or to assert that there is one top provider whose abilities can meet the requirements of all clients who identify themselves with an archetype.