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MARKETLANDSCAPE

ITCLOUDMANAGEMENTMARKETLANDSCAPE DECEMBER2017

In this report, Taneja Group presents an evaluation of the current IT CloudManagementmarketlandscapeforenterprisecustomers.Welookatthislandscapeas an evolution of IT operations management grown up into the cloud era. Inaddition to increasingly smart and capable operational monitoring and systemsmanagement, good cloudmanagement also requires sophisticated capabilities inbothautomationandorchestrationat scale to supportend-userprovisioningand

agility, and detailed financial management services that reveal multi-cloud costs for analysis andchargebackorshowback.Endusersarealsoseekingmanagementsolutionsforhybridcloudandforthe development and deployment of cloud-native apps. Our objective is to evaluate cloudmanagementofferingsfromleadingvendorsacrossthesefivedimensionstoenableseniorbusinessandtechnologyleaderstodecidewhichvendorsofferthebestoverallsolution.

In this study, we evaluated vendors with offerings in one or more of the five fundamental areas.Severalwell-knownvendors(VMware,Microsoft,ServiceNow,CiscoandRedHat)havesolutions inallfiveareas.Othervendorsfocusononlytwoorthreeareas,andbecauseit’spossibletocomposeabroadersolutionfromparts,we’veevaluatedpopularnichesolutionswithineacharea.AllcompanieswererequiredtohavesolutionsthatweregenerallyavailableasofSeptember2017.Tofairlyassessthe offerings,we looked at a set of differentiating factors in eachof the categories thatwebelieveenterprisecustomersshouldusetoqualifycloudmanagementsolutions.

Within each of the five areas—Cloud Orchestration, Operations Management, Hybrid CloudManagement, Cloud Native Apps, and Cloud Costing and Business Management—we’ve appliedcategories of factors for scoring as determined by our team of experts, based on customer buyingcriteria,technicalinnovation,andmarketdrivers.

TheCloudManagementMarket:RankingofFullSuiteSolutionVendors(4=HighestScore;0=LowestScore.HarveyBallscoresroundeddowntonearestwholenumber.)

Evaluation Scores VMW MSFT SVN CSCO RHT

Cloud Orchestration 3 3.6

3 3.0

3 3.0

3 3.1

2 2.9

Operations Management 3 3.8

2 2.5

1 1.5

1 1.4

1 1.9

Hybrid Cloud Management 3 3.0

2 2.8

2 2.0

2 2.0

2 2.0

Cloud Native Apps 1 1.8

3 3.3

1 1.0

1 1.3

2 2.0

Cloud Costing & Business Management

3 3.8

3 3.5

2 2.5

2 2.0

Not Evaluated

Summary Score 3.2 3.0 2.0 1.9 *2.2

Legend:VMW=VMware,MSFT=Microsoft,SVN=ServiceNow,CSCO=Cisco,RHT=RedHat


ITCloudManagementMarketLandscape

TanejaGroupOpinionWeshowinFigure1avisualofourdetailedevaluationresultsforfull-suitevendorsmappedontoanassessment of Enterprise Maturity versus Cloud Innovation. Enterprisematurity is based on eachvendor’s ability to address established management requirements, in areas such as cloudorchestrationandoperations.Cloudinnovationisbasedonemergingmanagementsupport fornewornext-gennative/hybridscenarios,encompassingareassuchashybridcloudandthedevelopmentand deployment of cloud-native applications. This holistic, forward-looking view of the marketillustrates that competition is fierce and constantly changing, as these strategic players havedeliveredsignificantportfoliostooffercompleteITcloudmanagementsolutions.Eventhoughmostsolutionsareinornearthetoprightquadrantandcandeliverdeepvalueinmanyareas,thereisstillobviousdifferentiationbetweenofferings.

AsITcloudmanagementmaturesintoawell-definedsetofenterprisecapabilities,wefindVMwareiswell-positionedwithitsenterprisegradeplatform,market-defininginnovation,expertiseandvision,and a capably deep and broad solution built expressly to simplify IT over an ever growing scope,scale,and levelofsophistication.Thisdidnothappen inonestep; rather it is theresultofyearsofdevelopment and acquisition, yet unlike many of its other landscape competitors the VMwarevRealize Suite is a coherently focused solution consisting of integrated components addressingautomation,operationsandbusinessmanagement,alongwithmanagementsupportforcloud-nativeapps and hybrid cloud. Architecturally, unlike many other vendor solutions, it doesn’t look likespaghetti thrown up on the wall – and that directly translates into lowered OPEX. VMware hasexecutedeffectivelytowardsacommonarchitecturalandmanagementframeworkfortheITadminwho, as the data centermarches towards an inevitable hybrid cloud future, is required tomaturefromasilo focus tovirtualdatacenteradministrationandcloudmanagement.VMware isnowalsoaiming to support line of business and developer personas with solutions for DevOps and cloud-nativeapplicationmanagement.

Manyofthesolutionsevaluatedinthisreporthavegrownorganicallyovertime,andarefeelingtheirlegacy weight in this new era of cloud scale automation, hybrid operations, and new economicmodels.Mostof the largervendorshaveembarkedonaprogramtobuildnewer,simplifying front-ends, but these are by and large a work in progress, often dragging much legacy wiring andcomponentryalongtofillinalltherequiredfunctionality.Forcustomerslonginvestedinaparticularvendor’smanagement solutions, these effortsmay provide some hope of a “layer up” way to addcloudlevel functionality,butasthisevaluationunderscores,allcomplexityandfrictionat thecloudlevel of operations needs to be eliminated. Given that data centers are inevitablymoving towardseven more complex and dynamic hybrid cloud architectures, achieving successful end-to-endoperationswill soon become a very hard if not impossible task for anymanagement vendors notcompletelyfocusedoncloudmanagement.



Figure1:TheCloudManagementMarketFull-SuiteVendorLandscape:EnterpriseMaturityvs.CloudInnovation

KeyTakeawaysforITandBusinessLeadersWhile the detailed sections of this report go into significant depth evaluating the various cloudmanagementofferings,herewepresentsomekeyfindingswe’venotedduringouranalysis.Therearefiveoveralltakeaways,plusthreeforeachfunctionalareaofevaluation.

OverallCloudManagementTakeaways

• Cloud service advancements continue to outpace cloudmanagement.Thegrowthandsophisticationlevelofbothpublicandprivatecloudtechnologiesandserviceshasoutrunthetools and capabilities available to manage them. Cloud management vendors and serviceprovidersareplayingcatch-up,andgiventhecontinuingrateofinnovationinIaaSandPaaScapabilities, cloud management functionality will continue to lag user needs for theforeseeablefuture.Giventhisreality,lookforvendorswithatrackrecordofcloudinnovation,a strong product portfolio and an overall strategy that will allow them to deliver a cloudmanagementframeworkcapableofmeetingtheneedsofyourbusinessoverthelongterm.

EnterpriseMaturity

Cloud

Inno

va4o

nEvalua4onofCloudManagementSuites

VMware

Microso<

CiscoServiceNow

RedHat

Source:TanejaGroup

Evalua4onofFull-SuiteCloudManagementPlaGorms



• Comprehensive cloud management platforms are rare. Look for cloud managementsolutionsthatareintegratedacrossoperations,automationandbusinessdisciplines.Thisisararecapabilityinthemarkettoday,butwillbecriticalgoingforwardinprovidingyouwithaholisticcloudmanagementsolution.Withoutrobustbuilt-in integrationandacommonlookand feel, youwill be dealingwith a set of fragmented point tools that you’ll have to stitchtogetherorsimplyuseindependently.Askvendorstodemotheirfullcloudmanagementsuite– if a vendor can’t show you how their various solutionmoduleswork together, then youprobably won’t find it easy to deploy and manage their full product suite due tooverwhelmingcomplexity.

• Lackofstandardsmakescloudinteroperabilityachallenge.Thelackofcloudportabilityand cross-cloud management standards makes it difficult for vendors (incl. cloud servicebrokers) toeffectivelymanageresourcesacrossmultiple flavorsofclouds. (OpenStack isanattempt to standardize, but even some different OpenStack cloud implementations cannoteffectively interoperate, as vendors add proprietary enterprise functionality to their ownOpenStack-based clouds.) Query your vendor/provider on their workload portability andmanagementcapabilityacrossdifferentcloudstoensuretheirofferingswillmeetyourneeds.

• Hybrid cloud management is still a work in progress. In general, hybrid cloudmanagement—even on a single vendor’s platform spanning on-premises and externalclouds—is still a work in progress and largely unproven in the enterprise. Few offeringsenable intelligent workload placement, elastic resource management, and compatibleautomation frameworks acrosspublic andprivate cloudboundaries. Focusonvendors thatcandeliverthesecapabilitiestodayandintothefuture.

• Prioritize offerings that enable cloud-native development without compromisingoperational control. The shapeof cloudmanagement is largelydrivenby the applicationsthatruninthecloud,andwillbeespeciallyinfluencedbythenewbreedofcloud-architectedmicroservicesthatarealreadydominantontheworld’sleadinghyperscaleclouds.Giventhis,prioritizeofferingsthatenablecloud-nativedevelopmentandsupportingDevOpscapabilitiesto boost workload agility and mobility, along with the governance and control that ITprofessionalsneedtoenforceusageandcostpolicies.

CloudOrchestrationTakeaways

• LookforvendorsthathaveacomprehensiveapproachtoITusecasesupport.Whenitcomes to pre-packaged applications that are easy to consume, look for vendors thatcomplementmulti-tierorchestrationwithmarketplaces, intelligentworkloadplacementanddigital workspaces. These additional capabilities broaden the range of usage scenariossupportedbyenablingvirtualdesktopinfrastructure(VDI),multi-cloudorchestrationandtheabilitytoselectfrompre-definedsolutionsthataresharedwithinacollectivecommunity.

• Insist on template andorchestration functionality that supportsboth traditional andcloud-nativeapplicationdesign.Giventhenumerousapplicationtypesandbuildscenarios,companiesneedavisualdesigncanvasandapplicationtemplatesthatprovideorchestrationfortraditionalapplicationstacks.Theyalsoneedvendorstosupporttemplatelanguagessuchas JSON and YAML to satisfy developers building cloud-native applications. In addition,orchestration tools should provide integration with third party systems for end-to-endautomation and provide access to an extensive library of out-of-the-box components andworkflowstofast-trackthecreationofstandardservices.



• Makesecurity,complianceandgovernanceaprioritywhendesigningapplications.Allthemajorvendorsinthisstudyhaverecognizedtheimportanceofincorporatingsupportforload balancing, virtual network devices and security groups into template design andapplication orchestration. However, you’ll want to pay attention to differences in thegranularity levelofcontrols,andyoumaywant toconsidermicrosegmentation frameworksforadded flexibility.Allvendorsproviderole-basedaccesscontrolandapprovalworkflows,buttheflexibilityofsecuritypoliciescanvary.Whilethevendorsinthislandscapeassessmentoffer logs for audit trails, you should carefully examine the level of configuration auditing,changetrackinganddriftanalysis,asthesecapabilitiesdifferfromvendortovendor.

OperationsManagementTakeaways

• AtcloudscaleandspeedofIToperations,avoiddeployingormakingdowithmix-and-matchsolutions.Everydisparatecomponent,everyintegrationrequired,everyvendorinthemix introducescomplexityand friction,ultimately increasingOPEX.Bewareof toutedsinglepanes of glass that are really only lightweight dashboards in front of multiple disparatetoolsets.Thirdpartyextensionsandvalidatedplug-insaregreat,buttheytooaddcomplexityandrisk.

• Automatedanalysisofconfigurationfiles,performancedata,andhybrid-spanninglogsarea“musthave”.ComprehensivelogfileindexingandsearchsolutionsacceleratenumerousIT investigative and reporting based tasks, provide immediate drill-down insight from themore structured event management components, and generate sophisticated query-basedproactive alerts/events. Look for advancedmachine learning analytics over both historicalandreal-timedatastreamsdesignedspecificallytoeaseIToperationaloverhead.

• Success with cloud operations depends on managing complete lifecycle workflows.Look forsolutionsthatare fully integratedandsharecritical informationbackandforth in-bandbetweenoperationalactivities.Datafromplanningactivitiesshouldinformoperationalalerting, andprovisioning actions andoperational servicedeliverymetrics should feed intocosting.Theintelligentautomationofpolicieshelpsdriveandscaleoperationseffectively.

HybridCloudManagementTakeaways

• Intelligent workload placement and bi-directional migration capabilities are core toenabling hybridity.Hybridcloudsextendthescalability,agilityandpay-as-you-gobenefitsofthepubliccloudtoyourdatacenter,andatthesametime,shouldopenupnewdeploymentchoices.Totakeadvantageofthisnewflexibility,focusonmanagementsolutionsthatenableyourworkloadstobeintelligentlyplacedinthepubliccloudoronpremises,basedonpoliciesthat seek to optimize cost, compliance, and/or service levels. Platform-agnostic migrationcapabilitiesextendthisbenefitonestepfurther,byenablingyourworkloadstomovebetweenonpremisesandpubliccloudasneededtosupportarangeofhybridcloudusecases.

• Prioritize solutions that allow you to elastically control resources to optimizeutilization and reduce costs. Many hybrid cloud applications must scale out rapidly tosatisfydemandorservicelevelcommitments,andcontinuetoconsumecostlyresourcesoncetheir job is done. These types of use cases require elastic resourcemanagement, includingauto-scalingtospinupinstancesupondemandandspinthemdownwhenthey’renolongerneeded. Look for policy-driven solutions that optimize resource utilization, by reclaiminginactiveresourcesanddynamicallyre-balancingworkloadsalongtheway.



• Don’t assume that security, compliance and governance are a given. A networkeddeploymentthatspansyourdatacenterandpublicclouddemandsextravigilantsecurity,andnotallhybridcloudmanagementofferingsareup to the task.Putyourmoneyonsolutionsthatdelivercomprehensive,end-to-endsecuritytoprotectyourworkloads,alongwithpolicy-basedframeworksthatwillhelpyoumeetcomplianceandgovernanceneeds.

CloudNativeAppsTakeaways

• Containermanagementsolutionsarestillevolving. It’sclearthattheITworldismovingfasttowardsincreasinglypackagedapplicationdeployment.However,bothbestpracticesandavailable enterprise-quality implementations of container platforms and containermanagement solutions are still evolving rapidly. While it is necessary to start supportingcontainerized applications in production, IT should stay flexible – luckily, high agility andportabilityarecorecontainerarchitecturefeatures.

• Containersareamethodofpackagingapplications.Developers reallywantPlatform-as-a-Service(PaaS)thatautomatespackagingatalowerlevel.Whilethosestraddlingdevand ops – DevOps – may find containers compelling, many developers would still rathersimply hand over their code and not deal with the details of operational packaging. PaaSsolutions provide platforms in which developers can more directly program and deployproductioncode,lettingtheplatformhandleoperationaldetailsautomaticallyatalowerlevel.

• Persistent container storage still requires storage experts. Even as containerizedenvironmentsevolvebettermechanismstomigratebothcontainersandtheirdata(oratleastenabledataaccess),fulfillingenterpriserequirementsfordatasecurity,integrity,protection,backup/recovery,andbusinesscontinuitystillcallsforseriousstorageexpertise.Thesetasksmay be compounded for quite some time yet by the sheer potential scale of containerizedoperationsandmulti-cloud/hybridenvironmentchallenges.

CloudCostingandBusinessManagementTakeaways

• Look for vendors that embrace both cloud and traditional business management.Enterprises can benefit tremendously from cloud services but many IT resources andservices—such as facilities, physical infrastructure, service desks and consulting fees—maynotbecloudbased.PrioritizebusinessmanagementsolutionsthatembracebothtraditionalITresourcesandprivate/publiccloudservices,anddeliveraunifiedcostmodelandanalyticsthatshedlightonandhelpyoutooptimizeyourentirecomputinglandscape.

• Cloudservicebrokersmaynotbeoptimizedforyourcloudenvironment.Independentcloud service broker companies do some things verywell, but their offerings are typicallyreliantoninformationfromplatformvendors’elementmanagers(e.g.VMwarevCenter),andtheyinvariablycan’tbeoptimizedforparticularbrandsofvirtualizationorcloudplatforms.Ifyou consider these vendors, ask them to show you how well their features address yourprivateandpubliccloudplatformsofinterest.

• Focusoncloudmanagementsolutionsthatofferstrongdecisionsupport.Mostbusinessmanagementsolutionsofferanalyticsthatprovidegoodcostandconsumptionvisibility,buttheir intelligent workload placement and financial planning capabilities may fall short ofexpectations.Tooptimizeresourcemanagementinincreasinglycomplexandeverexpandingmulti-cloud environments, look for cognitive computing solutions that offer self-learningbased on data mining and pattern recognition. These techniques can enhance decision



support byoffering insights youwould findhard to recognizeusing customarydashboardsandreports.



GUIDETOTHECLOUDMANAGEMENTLANDSCAPEASSESSMENTOurcomparativeevaluationoftheenterprisecloudmanagementmarketlandscapeisdividedintothefollowingmainsections:

• MarketDescriptionandVendorLandscape.Asamarketoverview,wedescribetheCloudManagementmarket,discussprimarymarketdrivers,andthenbrieflydescribe thebroadersolutionvendorlandscapecoveredinouranalysis.

• VendorsandSolutionsEvaluated.Inthissectionweoutlineeachofthesolutionareas,ourvendor selection criteria, and the vendors and solutions we have evaluated within eachcategory.

• Solution Area Evaluations. In each solution market space we comparatively score thevendorofferingsforeachspecificevaluationcategory,andthendiscussourrationaleforthescoreswehavegivenineachcategory,basedonhowwelleachvendor’ssolutionsstackedupagainstourdetailedevaluationfactors.

o CloudOrchestrationo OperationsManagemento HybridCloudManagemento CloudNativeApplicationso CloudCostingandBusinessManagement

• CloudManagementMarketSummary.Wethenrollupscoresacrossthefivecategoriesandpresentoverallvendorscoresinaconcludingsummarysection.

MARKETDESCRIPTIONANDVENDORLANDSCAPE

ITCloudManagementThe IT Cloud Management market has matured well beyond its early days when it was simplyconsideredanextensiontoexistingtraditionaloperationalmonitoringtools.Managementsolutionshavehadtokeepupwiththemodernizationofdatacenterinfrastructure,whichhasbeenredefinedand re-imagined through waves of virtualization, increasing convergence, and software-definedtechnologies. The latest breed of cloud management solutions must serve the needs of bothdevelopers and end users, enabling more rapid and streamlined development and deployment ofcloudapps,while stillproviding ITwithvisibility, governanceandcontroloverboth infrastructureandoperations.

Whenwe lastsurveyedthismarket landscape in2016,wefocusedonthreetraditionalpillarsof ITcloudmanagement: automation and orchestration, operationsmanagement, and cloud costing andbusinessmanagement. In thisyear’supdate,weareadding twocategories thathaverecentlycomeintotheirown:hybridcloudmanagementandcloud-nativeapps.

While still evolving, the hybrid cloud has become a reality inmany organizations, which are nowrunning infrastructure and apps both on-premises and across one or more public clouds. Hybridclouds havemanagement needs that extend beyond IT operations and orchestration, to workloadportability, elastic resource control and intelligentworkloadplacement.Hybrid cloudmanagementsolutionsmust effectively balance thebusiness user’s needs for self-service and agilitywith the ITpractitioner’srequirementsforstrongsecurity,complianceandgovernance.



Theneedforspeed,agilityandefficiencydrivesthecapabilitiesforoursecondnewcategory,focusedonmanagementofcloud-nativeapps.Evenasenterprisesliftandshiftsomeoftheirexistingbusinessappstothecloud,developersareincreasinglyfocusedonauthoringappsthatrunincontainersandamicroservices architecture. Solutions that manage cloud-native apps must address DevOps andapplication lifecycle management needs, spanning the lifetime of an app from creation toimplementation,tomaintenanceandsupport.SuchsolutionsshouldembracePaaSframeworksthatfacilitatecross-cloudportabilityandpolicy-baseddeployment,andmustdeliverserviceassurancetoensureappresiliencyandperformance.Theseareamongtheevaluationfactorsweconsideredinourassessment.

Asclouddeploymentscontinuetogrowintheenterprise,ITstaffarewellontheirwaytobecoming“internal”serviceproviderstotheirbusiness“clients”.Inthisnewmodel,ITistransitioninginmanycompanies from cost center to revenue accelerator, and from technology gatekeeper to a truebusiness partner. The best cloudmanagement solutionswill help IT to play a transformative role,capitalizingonallthatthecloudenablestohelptheirorganizationsachievenewlevelsofefficiency,agility and competitiveness, allowing their companies to grow faster and return a greater share ofinvestmenttothebottomline.

In other words, IT operations in world-class organizations are rapidly evolving from primarilykeepingthelightsontooptimizingIT-as-a-servicetobenefittheirbusinesses.Inthisevaluationwe’vetherefore looked at IT Cloud Management as a cohesive, and increasingly converged, set ofcapabilities that includes automation and orchestration, operations management, and cloudcosting/businessmanagement,aswellasmanagementofhybridcloudsandcloud-nativeapps.

SolutionVendorLandscapeAtahigh level the ITCloudManagementmarket landscapedivides intotwomaincamps–vendorsoffering a full end-to-end suite (or platform with a matrix of portfolio products) that can beimplementedasasinglevendorsolution,andnichevendorsthatoffersolutionsinonlyspecificareaswithincloudmanagement.

Thefullsuitevendorsarelarger,morematureandhavebroadITsolutionsintheirportfolios.Theirsolutionsarebattle-tested,areoftentheresultofyearsofdevelopmentandbest-in-classacquisitions,and have both extensive services support and established partner ecosystems. However, becausethesesolutionshavebeendevelopedovertimetherearelegitimateconcernswithlegacyapproachesbeingappliedtonewITchallenges; increasedsolutioncomplexityto integrate,deploy,supportandoperate;andmountinglicensingcosts.

Comparedwithfullsuitevendors,nichevendorsaresmallerbutlargelyseenasmoreentrepreneurialand innovative within their respective areas. Some enterprise IT organizations will seek out newdisruptive technologies that can give their organizations an edge over their competition.However,the enterprise adoption of niche solutions literally increases the number of vendors ITmust dealwith, leading to greater costs for support and services, integration complexity, and a need forincreased staff training and expertise. Moreover, enterprises are well aware that as startup nichevendorsdemonstrate success, theyareoftenacquiredand folded into the larger full suitevendors,andmanywillthereforewaitforthateventbeforetheninvestingwiththemoreestablishedacquiringvendor.

CloudManagement vendors likeRedHat andCisco arebecoming full suiteproviders.RedHat is avendor with its own Hypervisor/Cloud offerings and is quickly assembling a comprehensivemanagementsuiteoutofthemultiplyingopensourcetoolspacetheylivewithin.Ciscohasdesignson

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becomingknownmoreasaFullStackITVendor,withrecentacquisitionsandpartneringextendingtheirnetworkingleadershipandUCSserverswithstorageandhyperconvergedsolutions.

We also note another interesting division in the cloud management market – that between on-premisedeployment and SaaSbasedmanagement (remote cloudhosted services). ServiceNow, forexample, is SaaS based, which provides certain customer advantages in scalability, agility, pace ofinnovation, and lowered tool support and operations OPEX. Yet SaaS management has somechallengestoproveoutintermsofreliability,ultimatesecurity,andevenlong-termcost.

We see many on-premise vendors now offering parts of their cloud management solutions as-a-service. VMware, for example, has this year released at least seven new SaaS systemmanagementservices (VMware Managed Services). In the broader IT management market, we see multiplestartupsofferingdifferentpiecesofITmanagementasremotecloudservices(e.g.assetmanagement,help desk, storagemanagement).We expect thatmany if not all on-premise solution vendorswillcome to offer cloud-hosted SaaS management options across most of their portfolios as a SaaSmanagementmodelbecomesmorewidelyacceptedbyenterprisecustomers.

VENDORSANDSOLUTIONSEVALUATED

VendorComparativeCategoriesToorganizeouranalysisandfacilitateaccuratecomparisonswithvariousofferings,wehavegroupedsolutionsintofivemainmarketsegments:

• Cloud Orchestration – IT Use Case Support; IT-as-a-Service; Template Support; Security,Compliance and Governance; Orchestration and Workload Placement; Resiliency andElasticity;Discovery,DeploymentandMaintenance;AutomationExtensibility.

• Operations Management – Monitoring Coverage; Performance Management; CapacityManagement; Infrastructure Optimization; Workload Hosting Optimization/Placement;Extensibility;LogfileManagement;IntegrationwithThirdPartyEcosystem;Policy/QoSBasedManagement;PlatformSupport;SinglePointofInteraction.

• HybridCloudManagement–WorkloadPortability;IntelligentWorkloadPlacement;ElasticResourceControl;UnifiedManagement/Monitoring;Security,Compliance,Governance.

• Cloud-Native Apps – Agile Application and Performance Management; ContainerManagement;RemoteManagement-as-a-Service;Platform-as-a-ServiceSupport.

• CloudCostingandBusinessManagement–CostandConsumptionTransparency;BusinessManagement;DataCenterPlanning;CloudCostOptimization.

VendorSelectionCriteriaAs a baseline, all selected vendors were required to have at least some solutions in one or morecategoriesthatweregenerallyavailableasofSeptember2017.Weprimarilyscoredfactorsbasedonalready available solutions in our head-to-head comparisons, though we did consider impendingfunctionalityinpublicbeta/fielddeploymentwhenjudginginnovationandroadmaprelatedfactors.Inaddition,wetookintoaccountsignificantupcomingofferingsinourevaluationofvendorstrategyandthekeytakeawaysthatwe’veofferedasaresultofassessingvendorsolutionsineachcategory.We have included popular niche vendors because they offer good feature competition in theirrespective areas aspoint solutions (althoughenterprise IT shops shouldbe cautious aboutpiecingtogetheraheterogeneouscloudmanagementlayer).



VendorsandSolutionsEvaluatedIn this comparative study, we evaluated the cloudmanagement offerings of 10 vendors.We havelisted for each vendor the solutions evaluated across the relevant market segments in the tablebelow.

Vendor Solution(s) Evaluated

Cloud Orchestration Operations Management Hybrid Cloud Management

Full Suite Vendors

Microsoft (MSFT)

Microsoft Azure Stack, Azure Resource Manager (ARM)

Microsoft Azure Stack Management Pack, Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2016, Operations Management Suite

Microsoft Azure Stack, Microsoft Azure Resource Manager (ARM), Azure Portal, Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2016

ServiceNow (SVN)

ServiceNow IT Operations Management, ServiceWatch Suite, Orchestration, Discovery, Cloud Provisioning

ServiceNow IT Operations Management (Event Management, Service Mapping, Operational Intelligence, et.al.)

ServiceNow ServiceWatch Suite, Orchestration, Event Management, Discovery, Cloud Provisioning

VMware (VMW)

VMware vRealize Suite, vRealize Automation, vRealize Orchestrator, VMware Cloud on AWS

vRealize Operations, vRealize Lifecycle Manager, VMware Cloud Managed Services

VMware Cloud on AWS, VMware vRealize Enterprise Suite, vRealize Automation, vRealize Orchestrator, vRealize Operations, vRealize Log Insight, VMware Wavefront

Cisco (CSCO) Cisco CloudCenter, Cisco UCS Director, Cisco UCS Manager

UCS Director, Performance Manager, Workload Optimization Manager

Cisco CloudCenter, Cisco UCS Director, Cisco ONE Enterprise Cloud Suite

Red Hat (RHT) Red Hat CloudForms Red Hat CloudForms Red Hat Cloud Suite, Red Hat

CloudForms, Red Hat Satellite, Red Hat Insights, Ansible Engine/Tower

Single Solution Vendors

CloudBolt Software (CB)

CloudBolt (cloud management platform), Cross-Cloud Blueprints

CloudBolt (cloud management platform), Cross-Cloud Blueprints

Embotics (EMB) Embotics vCommander Cloud Management Platform

Embotics vCommander Cloud Management Platform

Morpheus Data (MOR)

Morpheus (Cloud Application Management Platform)

Morpheus (Cloud Application Management Platform)

RightScale (RSC)

RightScale Cloud Management Platform CMP

RightScale Cloud Management Platform (CMP), incl. Self Service (automation), Cloud Management (ops), and Optima (cloud costing)

Turbonomic (TUR)

Turbonomic Operations Manager, Cloud Control Module

Turbonomic Premier Edition, Turbonomic Hybrid Cloud Management Platform, Turbonomic Operations Manager, Turbonomic Cloud Control



Vendor Solution(s) Evaluated

Cloud Native Applications Cloud Costing

Full Suite Vendors

Microsoft (MSFT) Microsoft Azure Stack Management Pack, Azure Pack

Microsoft Azure Cost Manager (by Cloudyn), Microsoft System Center 2016 Service Manager

ServiceNow (SVN)

ServiceNow Suite ServiceNow Financial Management

VMware (VMW) vSphere Integrated Containers, Pivotal Container Service (PKS)

vRealize Business for Cloud

Cisco (CSCO) Cisco CloudCenter Cisco CloudCenter, Cisco UCS Director

Red Hat (RH) Red Hat OpenShift, Red Hat CloudForms

[not evaluated]

Single Solution Vendors CloudBolt Software (CB)

CloudBolt Cloud Costing and Management

Embotics (EMB)

Embotics vCommander Metering and Billing, Resource and Cost Optimization, Cloud Expense Management, Cloud Cost Reporting

Morpheus Data (MOR)

[not evaluated]

RightScale (RSC)

RightScale Optima

Turbonomic (TUR)

Turbonomic Hybrid Cloud Management Platform



CLOUDORCHESTRATIONLANDSCAPEInthissectionwepresentthecategory-levelscoresforcloudorchestrationsolutions,alongwithourrationalebasedonourassessmentof thevendors’offeringsagainstevaluation factors.Toarriveatoverall marks, we computed a weighted average of the 8 category scores, and then adjusted thescores based on our own judgment of each vendor’s market position, focus and expertise. Thevendors included in this section are VMware (VMW), Microsoft (MSFT), ServiceNow (SVN), Cisco(CSCO),RedHat (RHT),RightScale (RSC), CloudBolt Software (CB),Embotics (EMB)andMorpheusData(MOR).

The categories covered in this sectionare ITUseCase Support; IT-as-a-Service;Template Support;Security, Compliance and Governance; Orchestration and Workload Placement; Resiliency andElasticity;Discovery,DeploymentandMaintenance;andAutomationExtensibility.Foreachcategorywehaveprovidedasummarythatdiscussesthekeyfactorsweusedtoevaluatevendorofferingsaswellassignificantobservations.

CLOUDORCHESTRATIONCOMPETITIVELANDSCAPE(4=HIGHESTSCORE)

Cloud Orchestration Factors VMW MSFT SVN CSCO RHT RSC CB EMB MOR

IT Use Case Support 4 3 3 4 2 3 2 2 1

IT-as-a-Service 4 3 4 2 3 4 3 2 3

Template Support 4 3 3 4 3 3 3 3 3

Security, Compliance and Governance 4 3 3 3 3 2 2 2 1

Orchestration and Workload Placement 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 2

Resiliency and Elasticity 3 3 3 4 3 3 2 3 3

Discovery, Deployment and Maintenance 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 2 3

Automation Extensibility 3 3 2 2 3 3 3 2 2

OVERALL SCORES: 3 3.6

3 3.0

3 3.0

3 3.1

2 2.9

3 3.0

2 2.6

2 2.4

2 2.3

EvaluationofITUseCaseSupportMany companies are on a simplification journey that is affecting how application owners,administrators and developers consume applications and IT infrastructure. It’s no longer goodenough to automatically provision a single virtual machine or issue a ticket to IT every timeadministrators want to deploy an application stack. Users want pre-packaged applications andenvironmentsthataresupereasytoconsume.

Giventhis,companieswantautomateddeploymentoffullapplicationstackslikeSQLServerandVDIon virtualized or containerized infrastructure and they want to leverage both private and publiccloud instances, e.g., SQL Server-as-a-Service, VDI-as-a-Service, etc. Companies have found thatautomatingthesewell-knownapplicationpatternsdrivesfastertime-to-valueandallowsITteamstofocusonthingsthatimprovethebusiness,ratherthanrepetitivetasks.



All vendors we evaluated enable users to automatically deploy entire business services (SAPFinancials,PeopleSoftCRM,SecuritiesLending,etc.)anddevelopmentenvironments(Ruby,Python,PHP,etc.)andtheassociatedapplicationstackcomponents(MySQL,DB2,PostgreSQL,webservers,application servers, load balancers, VM or cloud instances, networking, storage, etc.) using catalogitemspublishedtoaself-serviceportal.Catalogitemsarecreatedfromtemplatesthatautomaticallyprovisiontheentireapplicationandmulti-tierstackincludingalldependenciesbasedonpre-definedrules.Asubsetoftheserulescanbemodifiedtore-configureapplicationstosupportvariousneeds,suchaslatencyconsiderations,budgetconstraints,compliancecontrolsorapprovalworkflows.

WebelievethestrongestusecasesupportcomesfromVMwareandCisco.Thesevendorsstandoutbecause they complement multi-tier orchestration with marketplaces, intelligent workloadplacementanddigitalworkspaces.Theseadditionalcapabilitiesbroadentherangeofusagescenariossupportedbyenablingvirtualdesktopinfrastructure(VDI),multi-cloudorchestrationandtheabilitytoselectfrompre-definedsolutionsthataresharedwithinacollectivecommunity.

Microsoftdeservesspecialmentionaswellgiventheirability todeliverdesktopvirtualizationwithRemoteDesktopServices(RDS)andtoeasilyprovisionpopularMicrosoftcollaborativeapplications,such as SharePoint and Exchange using Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Azure Stack. However,Microsoft Azure Stack only offers basic workload placement with no cost considerations, whichinhibitsmulti-cloudorchestration.

EvaluationofIT-as-a-ServiceIT-as-a-Service(ITaaS)canbeoneofthemostvisiblefactorsintransformingITfromacost-centertoastrategicpartnerwiththebusinessbydrivingimprovementsinproductivityandperformance.Thecore components are a common self-service portal and service catalog that provide developers,application administrators and business users with a secure, self-directed experience for finding,requesting, provisioning and managing the application stacks, virtual infrastructure and cloudservicestheyneed.

All vendors provide basic self-service and service catalog capabilities, including branding,personalization, policy-based governance, approval workflows, dynamic provisioning, costtransparency,andintegratedlifecyclecontrols.Thedifferencesshowupinthemarketplacesupportandtheabilitytoprovisionacrossmultiplecloudproviders.

A marketplace is a key value for companies because it provides shared access to out-of-the-boxsolutions that can considerably shorten the time to value. ServiceNow, RightScale and VMware allmaintaintheirownmarketplacecommunities.Forexample,theVMwareSolutionsExchangemarketsVMs, virtual and physical appliances and cloud services that have been published by VMware,partnersanddevelopers.Othervendors,suchasMorpheusData,don’toffertheirownmarketplace,but they do offer integration with marketplaces provided by cloud vendors, such as the AzureMarketplace.

Theabilitytoprovisionacrossmultiplecloudsisthekeyareaofdifferentiation.Althoughallvendorsweevaluatedprovide support formultiple cloud services,most fall shortof customerexpectationswhenitcomestohavingthesamearchitecture,operational toolsandseamlessworkloadmigrationacrossmulti-cloudenvironments.

Provisioningworkloads tomultiple cloud services is the first task. Several vendors provide cloud-specific templates that facilitate provisioning to multiple cloud services, such as AWS, MicrosoftAzureandtheGoogleCloudPlatform.Forexample,RedHatenablesdeploymentofcompletemulti-tierapplicationsusingAnsibleAutomationwithRedHatCloudForms.WithAnsibleAutomation,users



accessprovider-specific templates forcloudresourcemanagement, includingAWSCloudFormation,AzureResourceManger (ARM),OpenStackHeat, GoogleComputeEngine andCloud-init templates.ServiceNow, CloudBolt, Embotics and Morpheus also offer template-based provisioning acrossmultiplecloudenvironments.

VMwareandMicrosoftgoastepfurtherbyofferingthesamearchitectureandoperationalexperienceon premises and in the cloud. VMware offers this capability through their VMware Cloud on AWSoffering. Microsoft offers this capability betweenMicrosoft Azure andMicrosoft Azure Stack. Thisadditional level of compatibility offers the promise of advanced operational functions, such as livemigration of running virtualmachines (the initial release of VMware Cloud onAWS only supportscoldmigrations).Cross-cloudvMotionwillbeavailableinafuturerelease.

EvaluationofTemplateSupportApplication templates anddesign tools are considered the core componentsof cloudorchestrationbecause they provide end-to-end service automation for both simple and multi-tier applicationstacks. The key benefits of service templates are built-in best practices, greater standardization,efficiencygains,fasterupdatesandrapidcustomization.

We found thereare twoapproaches to templatedesign.Somevendors, suchasMicrosoft,RedHat,CloudBoltandMorpheusoptimizetemplatedesignfordevelopers.Therefore,templatebuildingandediting requires knowledge of task automation and configuration languages, such as PowerShell,JSON and YAML. This approach provides a high degree of flexibility, but the programming skillsrequiredaremoreprevalentinITshopsbuildingcloud-nativeapplications.

Companies managing traditional infrastructure have IT administrators that often have a lowerimplementationskilllevel.ThesecompanieswanttomodernizeandautomateexistingIToperations,butmayalsobebuildingcloud-nativeapplications.Giventhis,theywantworkflowdesigntoolsthatcan utilizeOOTB task libraries and a visual template design canvas that provides assistance and amoreguidedexperience.

Cisco,VMwareandMorpheusfollowthisvisualtemplatedesignapproachandenableuserstobuildservers, composemulti-tier application stacksandassemblemulti-VMworkflowsusingagraphicalcanvas and a drag-and-drop interface. Users select components from a palette, assemble thecomponents on the canvas, define build/deployment dependencies and ultimately publish serversand application stacks to a service catalog. Designer components include infrastructure resources,networking, scriptsandsoftwarecomponents, suchasoperatingsystems, front-end loadbalancers,applicationserversandbackenddatabaseservices.ServiceNowalsooffersavisualtemplatedesigner,but the ServiceNowdesigner is built for single VMprovisioning, automating lifecyclemanagementandroutineadministrativetasks,suchasincreasingthesizeofahomedirectoryormailbox.Supportformorecomplexworkflowsrequiresscripting.

Out-of-the-box workflows are another important part of a strong overall automation capabilitybecausepre-definedapplicationtemplatesfast-trackthecreationofstandardservices.WefoundthatRightScale,ServiceNow,VMware,RedHat,MicrosoftandCiscoallofferextensivetemplatelibraries.However, pre-defined templates often differ from vendor to vendor. For example,Microsoft offerstemplatesgeared towarddeploymentofMicrosoft applications,whileRightScaleoffers avarietyofdifferent ServerTemplates that have been published by RightScale, ISV partners, and others. Forexample,servertemplatesareavailableforseveralcommonservertypessuchasaPHPapplicationserver,LAMPall-in-oneserver,MicrosoftSQLserver,etc.



Resourcecontrolsalsosetvendorsapart fromthecompetition.This isanareawhereVMware,RedHat,CiscoandServiceNowshineabovethecompetitionbyofferingextensivestorage,dataretention,network and container support. For example, VMware recently released a plugin that integratesstoragepolicy-basedmanagement(SPBM)intovRealizeAutomation.ThepluginexposesvSphereVMstoragepoliciestothevRealizeAutomationservicecatalogallowingtheabilitytodynamicallyassignindividual VM storage policies to virtual disks based on their storage requirements (performance,availability,security,etc.).UserscanmanagevSAN,VVolandVMFSdatastores.

Microsoftalsoofferssoliddataretention,networkandcontainersupport,butManagedDisksarenotyet supported in Azure Stack. Azure Managed Disks simplify disk management by managing thestorageaccountsassociatedwith theVMdisks.WithManagedDisksusersonlyhave to specify thetype(PremiumorStandard)andthesizeofdiskneeded,andAzurecreatesandmanagesthediskforthem.

EvaluationofSecurity,ComplianceandGovernanceThegoalofeverycloudmanagementvendoristoprovideaunifiedtemplatedesignenvironmentthatincorporates all resources and components needed to deploy enterprise-ready cloud applications.This streamlines the process of designing application workloads with the proper networkconnectivity,security,performance,complianceandgovernance.

Severalvendorsarepackedat the topof thiscategory; theyareMicrosoft,VMware,Cisco,RedHat,andServiceNow.Allof thesevendorshave recognized the importanceof incorporating support forload balancing, virtual network devices and security groups into template design and applicationorchestration.Differencescome intoplayaround theavailabilityofgranular controls.Forexample,VMwarerecentlyenhancedloadbalancercontrols,suchascustomizingloadbalanceralgorithmsandmodifyingloadbalancerpolicies.

Leadingvendorsallsupportvirtualnetworkingandsecuritygroups,butVMwareandCiscooffertheleading microsegmentation frameworks (VMware NSX and Cisco ACI) for secure applicationdeployment.Microsegmentationisusedtosetupgranularnetworksecurityandachieveapplicationisolation by prohibiting intruders that have compromised one node from directly accessing othernodes on the sameVLAN.Also, in the latest vRealizeAutomation release, VMware introducedNSXcontrolsforday-2operations,suchasaddinganddeletingsecuritygroupsto/fromanapplication.

Security is an essential part of automated application delivery. Given this, all vendors provideparametersforsecuritysettings,role-basedaccesscontrolandapprovalworkflows.However,userswill findthatdifferencescanbefoundintheflexibilityofsecuritypolicies.Forexample,accessandapprovalpoliciesshouldbeabletobeappliedtobothcatalogitemsandcatalogitemcomponents,aswellasday-2actionsthatrequireentitlements.

With the advent of SOX, HIPAA, PCI, FOIA and soon GDPR, ensuring compliance and propergovernancehasbecomeessentialforallcompanies.Publiccloudadoptionisalsodrivinganincreasedneed for data controls, since data inherently becomes more portable once in a public cloudenvironment, which raises concerns around data locality compliance. To ensure compliance andgovernance, leadingvendorsoffer segmenteduser accesswith approvalworkflowsandautomatedpolicy enforcement and remediation. All vendors also offer logs for audit trails, but the level ofconfigurationauditing,changetrackinganddriftanalysisdiffersfromvendortovendor.Asaleadingconfigurationmanagementdatabase(CMDB)vendor,ServiceNowsetsthepaceinthisarea.Thatsaid,othervendorsdoprovideintegrationwithleadingCMDBvendorsolutions.



EvaluationOrchestrationandWorkloadPlacementThinkofpolicy-basedorchestrationasthecloudmanagementcontrolplanethatenforcescorporatepolicies,managesresourceusageandoptimizesworkloadplacement.All thevendorsweevaluatedsupport policy-based orchestration and policy-based eventing; however, intelligent automation,workload placement and support for converged infrastructure are still gaps in several vendorofferings.

Lookingacrossvendorcapabilities,weseethatpolicy-basedorchestrationplaysanimportantroleinthefollowingareas:controllingwhichservicesausercanrequest,approvalguidelines,servicecost,lease periods, service options, service level received, type of machine assigned (physical, virtual,containerand/orcloudinstance)andserviceplacement.Otherimportantpolicygovernancefeaturesaretheuseoftemplatestostandardizeofferingpoliciesfordifferentgroupsandtheabilitytoeasilyconfigurepolicieswithouttheneedforcodingorscripts.

Policy-based eventing enables automated workflows and facilitates integration with externalsystems. For example, a new service request might trigger an automated workflow for obtainingapprovalusingexternal systemsbeforea lifecycleaction suchasdeployinga resourceoffering canoccur. Other examples of integration with external systems include making CMDB updates andpropagatingchangesinregulatoryandoperationalcompliancerules.Vendorsthatemphasizepolicy-basedeventingareServiceNow,RedHat,VMware,RightScale,CloudBolt,EmboticsandMorpheus.

Automated resource reclamation is a capability that isnowpervasiveasvendorshave realized theimportance of avoiding VM sprawl to reduce costs and automating VM reclamation to reduceadministrative burden. The best capabilitywe found in this area is the use of analytics to identifyunderutilized resources that can subsequently be reclaimed. Service leasemanagement is anothercommonvendorcapabilitythatidentifieswhenserviceswillexpire,whichcreatesopportunitiesforleaserenewalorautomaticallydeprovisioningVMsoncetheyarenolongerrequired.

The growth in converged infrastructure (CI) and hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) has drivenvendor adoption of CI/HCI devices to simplify procurement, streamline deployment and improvemanagement of virtual compute, storage and networking resources. Cisco, Red Hat, Microsoft andVMwarehaveallincorporatedCI/HCIdevicesintotheircloudmanagementplatforms.

Intelligentautomationandintelligentworkloadplacementarerapidlyevolvingcapabilities.Thegoalis to connect analytics andautomation tooptimize andautomateplacementofworkloadswithin amulti-cloud environment based on cloud costs, workload requirements and cloud service levels.VMware,RedHat,Cisco,ServiceNow,RightScale,CloudBolt,EmboticsandMicrosoftallhavevaryingcapabilitiesinthisarea.ThiscapabilityiscoveredmoreextensivelyintheCloudCostingsection.

EvaluationofResiliencyandElasticityOneofthemostimportantbenefitsofcloudcomputingiselasticity,ortheabilityofthecloudtoadaptto workload changes by provisioning and de-provisioning resources in an autonomic way. In thesame manner, cloud orchestration should support auto-scaling as well as the ability to automatefailoverandrecoveryforoverallreliability.Thecombinationofauto-scalingandautomatedfailoverenables clouds to move beyond elasticity to being truly resilient in the face of unpredictableconditionsandconstantlychangingusageanddemand.

The most basic tenet of resiliency is data center recovery in the event of an outage or otherunforeseendisaster.Tothisend,leadingcloudmanagementvendorsarefocusedonsimplifyingHighAvailability (HA) and failover through various innovations and integrations. For instance, for



compute, RightScale users can use “MultiCloud Images” that can be launched across regions andhybrid environments. This capability ensures the same implementation of the server in differentcloud regions.Users can also automate theprocess of promoting a slave tomaster. Theprocess isautomated,butdecisiontoruntheprocessismanual.

VMware has also recently simplified HA with NSX Edge High Availability. Leveraging self-serviceoptions in VMware vRealize Automation, application tenants can provision and protectworkloadswithoutITinvolvement.Applicationownersselecttheavailabilityandrecoverytimeobjective(RTO)andrecoverypointobjective(RPO)optionsthatfittheirSLArequirementsandbudget.

Wewerepleasedtoseethatallvendorssupportloadbalancingandthemajorityofvendorssupportauto-scaling. Two exceptions are ServiceNow and Microsoft Azure Stack, which do not supportconfiguringauto-scalingwithinapplicationdesigntemplates.

The final factor we considered when evaluating vendors in this category is the ability to controlsnapshotsprawl.WefoundthatthevendorswiththestrongestemphasisinthisareaareCisco,RedHat,ServiceNow,Embotics,MorpheusandVMware.Keycapabilitieswe identifiedare theability tomanage how long snapshots exist and the ability to manage snapshots in multiple cloudenvironments.Forexample,VMwarecontrolshowmanysnapshotsamachinecanhaveandhowlongthosesnapshotsexistthroughblueprintpolicies,whileMorpheuscanmanagesnapshotsinmultipleprivateandpubliccloudenvironments,includingAWS,VMwareandAzure.

EvaluationofDiscovery,DeploymentandMaintenanceWebelievethereareacoupleofimportantwaysvendorscanimproveproductivityandreducecosts,and it starts with automating resource discovery. We were pleased to see that all vendors weevaluatedoffercomprehensiveresourcediscoveryautomation.

Webelieveeaseofsolutiondeploymentisimportantinthiscategoryandwewerepleasedtoseethatmostvendorshaveimprovedinthisarea.ThreevendorsworthmentioningareCisco,CloudBoltandVMware.WithUCSDirector Release 6.5, Cisco introduced anHTML5 compliant user interface andmultiple guided setup wizards. CloudBolt also provides a quick setup wizard that creates all theobjectsthatCloudBoltrequirestobeginprovisioning,discovering,andmanagingVMs.VMware,withthe vRealize Automation Release 7.3, made it easier to deploy, upgrade and migrate vRealizeAutomation.Specifically,vRealizeAutomation7.3addsandexposesAPIstoprogrammaticallyinstall,upgrade,andmigratevRealizeAutomation.

Another valuable cloudmanagement capability that improves productivity is workloadmigration.Specifically, we believe the ability to migrate workloads seamlessly between private and publicclouds and between public clouds is growing in importance as companies more broadly embracemulti-cloud environments. Multi-cloud workload migration is not covered well by any vendor weevaluatedaspartofthisreportandthiscapabilityappearstostillbetherealmofspecialtyvendors,suchasZertoandHotLink.

That said, it should be noted that VMware is moving rapidly down the path towards automatedworkloadmigrationwithVMwareCloudonAWS.Currently,onlycoldmigrationtoAWSissupported.However,cross-cloudvSpherevMotionmigrationwillbeavailableinfutureVMwareCloudonAWSreleases, as well as per-VM Enhanced vMotion Compatibility, to provide vSphere vMotioncompatibilitybetweenthein-cloudESXihost’sCPUarchitectureandthecustomer’son-premisesESXihost’sCPUarchitecture.



EvaluationofAutomationExtensibilityTherearemanyfacetstoautomationextensibility,buttherearefourmainfocusareas.Thefirstareaisprogrammaticaccess tocloudmanagement functionality throughpublishedAPIsandallvendorsweevaluatedinthisreportpublishRESTAPIs.

The second area is the ability to stand up consistent application configurations in different cloudenvironments. DevOps teams and application administrators need to be confident they areprovisioning the exact same server and application configurations and that the same scriptswererun,irrespectiveofwheretheworkloadisplaced.

The thirdarea is implementingacommonDevOpsapproachacrosshybridcloudenvironments.Allvendors deliver functionality is this area through northbound APIs that provide integration withconfigurationmanagementtools,suchasPuppetandChef,andincreasinglySaltandAnsible;aswellaswith test automation servers, such as Jenkins; andwith continuous integration and continuousdevelopment (CI/CD) tools, such as Jenkins CI, GitHub, and DockerHub, which are used by manyorganizationstobuildcontinuousintegrationpipelines.

Red Hat may have a leg up on the competition in the DevOps area, through their acquisition ofAnsible,butVMwarehasalsosteppeduptheirgamewithvRealizeAutomation7.3,whichaddsnativeintegrationwithexternalconfigurationmanagementtools(startingwithPuppet).Thisenhancementaddstheabilitytodrag-and-dropaPuppetconfigurationobjectdirectlyontoamachinecomponentinthe VMware Converged Blueprint Designer. Once dropped, a user queries a configured PuppetMaster,EnvironmentandRole,anddynamicallyassignspuppetrolestoablueprintcomponent.Theintegrationalsoprovidesday-2actionstounregisterordeleteassignmentsasneeded.

Thefourthareaishavingacentralizedmeansofintegratingwithexternalmanagementsystemsthatare part of a machine’s lifecycle. Common integrations include CMDB platforms, authenticationsoftwareandservicedesksolutions.



OPERATIONSMANAGEMENTLANDSCAPEInthissectionwepresentthecategory-levelscoresforcloudoperationsmanagementsolutions,alongwithourrationale,basedonourassessmentofthevendors’offeringsagainsteachoftheevaluationfactors.Toarriveatoverallmarks,wecomputedaweightedaverageofthe11categoryscores,andthenadjustedthescoresbasedonourownjudgmentofeachvendor’smarketposition,installedbase,productstrategy,andfocusandexpertise.

ThevendorsincludedinthissectionareVMware(VMW),Microsoft(MSFT),ServiceNow(SVN),Cisco(CSCO), RedHat (RHT) and Turbonomic (TUR). For each of the 11 categorieswe have provided asummarythatdiscussesthekeyfactorsweusedtoevaluatevendorofferings,theimportanceofthefactorsandsignificantobservations.

OPERATIONSMANAGEMENTCOMPETITIVELANDSCAPE(4=HIGH)

Operations Management Factors VMW MSFT SVN CSCO RHT TUR

Monitoring Coverage 4 4 2 2 3 0

Performance Management 4 2 2 2 3 0

Capacity Management 4 2 0 1 1 2

Infrastructure Optimization 4 3 1 0 2 3

Workload Hosting Optimization/Placement 3 1 0 1 1 4

Extensibility 4 4 3 3 3 2

Logfile Management 3 3 0 0 0 0

Integration with Third Party Ecosystem 4 3 3 3 2 1

Policy/QoS Based Management 4 0 1 0 0 2

Platform Support 3 3 2 2 2 2

Single Point of Interaction 4 3 2 1 1 3


2 2.5

1 1.5

1 1.4

11.9

1 1.7

EvaluationofMonitoringCoverageThecornerstoneof IToperationsbeginswithbeingable toseewhat isgoingonwhere–onecan’tmanagewhatoneisn’tmeasuring.Inpre-virtualizationdayssimpleelementmanagementruledwithagents installed on every component that forwarded metrics and events to a centralizedinfrastructuremanagerconsole(possiblyoneforeachITsilo).Withtheevolutionofservice-orientedmanagement, IT began monitoring virtual machine performance, end-user experiences andtransactions, application layer components, databases andmiddleware. As cloud and hybrid cloud



architectures have become the norm, IT now also requiresmulti-tenant, cross-cloud perspectives,globalandmobileagility,andthehugescalethatcomeswithcontainerizedapplications.

Some of the criteria below detail how the best operations management solutions bring all thistogetherandmakeit feasible,efficient,andaffordableforITtotakeonaneverbroadening,end-to-end spanof responsibility. In this category specifically,we evaluateboth thedepth andbreadthoffundamental monitoring coverage. Here the traditional platform management vendors might bethought to have a slight edge simply because over decades their legacy tools have grown largercoverage matrices and incorporated best practices in physical IT silo management. But VMware,Microsoft, RedHat and Cisco developed core data center platforms in conjunctionwith intimatelyengineeredmanagementsolutions,andwhilenottryingtobelargeNOCplatforms,thesevendorsaredelivering much of what IT operations customers want, especially in virtualized and increasinglyhighlyautomated“cloud”architectures.

Notethatwehavediscountedtheobviousfactthatalmostanymanagementsolutiontodaycanserveasanumbrellaconsole thatcanbeconfigured torake inexternaleventsanddatastreamssourcedfromotherlayersofmanagementtooling(e.g.themainclaimforbroadcoveragewithServiceNow).Whilethisisseeminglyconvenientwhensilosolutionsarealreadydeployedinanenvironmentandthereisnoappetitetoundertaketransformationalchanges,everylayeroftoolingandeachadditionalvendor supplier adds to the complexity of operations and ultimately degrades responsiveness andreliability.

Inpractice,manylargevendorspresentspaghetti-likewiringdiagramsofmovingpartsthatrequireservices to integrate and are eventually confusing to operate. Significantly,we noted thatmany ofthese vendors are offering newer, more competitively converged and cloud-friendly front-endsolutions thatare intendedtoultimatelyreplace their legacyportfolio-basedapproaches(e.g.CiscoIntersight). These efforts can seem not only late to market, but threaten to drag along legacycomponentsoffunctionalityforalongtimetocome.

EvaluationofPerformanceManagementPerformancemanagementinvolvesreportingandalertingonthestatusandhealthofITcomponents.Thisinvolvestrackingalerts,events,configurationsandstreamsofmetrics,withsubsequentanalysisand/orescalationcapabilitiesthatmayrange incapability fromdetailedelement-levelandreactivetoaggregatedbusinessservicelevelandpredictive.Aprimarygoalofnewergenerationsofsolutionsistoeffectivelysimplifyandfocuswhatispresentedatthetoplevelofinteractioninfavorofhelpingprioritizestaffattention.Thegoalmaynotbetohideallcomplexityasmuchastoreducenoise(falsealerts),provide context (e.g.models,maps, servicegroupings), improve interpretation (root cause)andaccelerateresponse(reduceMTTRorevenenableproactiveautomaticremediation).

UltimatelyITcustomerswanttoreducetheOPEXinvolvedinguaranteeingproduction-levelIThealthandperformance, even as theirworld becomes increasingly complex.Recently,wenote thatmanymanagementvendorsarebeginningtoincorporatebigdatastylemachinelearningalgorithms(oftenpresentedasArtificialIntelligence)overthegrowingvolumeofmachinegenerateddata(e.g.logfiles,events,metrics).

Whileitwasbeyondthisevaluationtolabtestandvalidatetheefficacyofeachvendor’ssolutionsinactual practice, we note that all these vendors have assembled multiple layers of capabilities invariouscomponentsthatmightapplysophisticatedcorrelationsandanomalydetectionfeatures.Thebestsolutionsaddvaluebyintelligentlylearningbaselinesofthedynamicandseasonalbehaviorofworkloads,resources,andbusinesscyclesandthenautomaticallysetting“abnormal”alertthresholds.They also group (and reduce) events and alerts to the user, app or service, correlate with



configurationchanges,andprovidecontextual,knowledge-basedrecommendations.Finally,wethinkcustomers prefer solutions that aggregate information to a service map or model, producingmultivariateKPI’sonhealthandstatus,andapplyingmultiplekindsofcorrelations(e.g.time-based,transaction-based,topology-based).

Notably,VMwarevRealizeshowssophisticatedIT“health”scoring(KPI’s)thatthetraditionalvendorsinthisspace(includingMicrosoft)mightanalogouslyproduceanddisplayonlywithmultiplelayersof components.We should also note that operations balancing solutions like Turbonomic actuallyavoid offering this type of insight in favor of focusing on dynamic optimization (leaving the actualhealthofITtoothersolutions).

EvaluationofCapacityManagementIf performance management is mainly about real-time monitoring, alerting and events, capacitymanagementisaboutproactivelymanagingtheongoingstateofresourceutilization.Theideaisthatwithsolidcapacitymanagementyoucanavoidrunningoutofresources,whichinevitablyresultsinthroughput bottlenecks, latency issues, and provisioning shortages, or over-allocation that wastesinvestment. The hybrid cloud era challenges traditionally slow and static data center planningapproaches,enablingpotentiallyelasticsupplybalancedwithadditionalconcernsaboututilitycostsovertime.

Somesolutionsclaimpredictivecapabilitiesbyforecastingalineartrendlineonresourceutilizationhistorywhile thebest solutionsaccount forbothobserved trendsandcommitted futureplans,andsmartly alert on predicted capacity shortfalls. VMware vRealize presents these separately fromimmediatehealthproblemsas“risk”factorsinitssingledashboard,whilethebigtraditionalsolutionvendorshaveavarietyoflegacycomponentstoaddresscapacity.MicrosoftSCOM’scloud-basedOMShas a plug-in for capacity management, but does not effectively account for future plans inoperational use. ServiceNow is relatively orthogonal to all these issues, while Turbonomic does agood jobofdynamicallyassuringeffectiveuseofavailableresources,andhasgrowntocovercloudinfrastructure, but isn’t integrated into wider hybrid IT cloud operational concerns or actualapplicationperspectiveperformance.

EvaluationofInfrastructureOptimizationWherecapacitymanagementfocusesonmanagingtheremainingcapacityofasystem,infrastructureoptimizationlooksforpossibleefficiencygainsinthereclamationorre-alignmentofresources.Whilewedidn’tincludeofflinecapacityplanningsolutionsinthislargerevaluation(e.g.thosethatinvolvelong-running simulations, non-linear queuing modeling, or actual lab benchmarking), there are anumberofcapacityplanningrelatedoptimizationsthatcloudmanagementoperationssolutionscanautomaticallyproduce.

For example, VMware vRealize Operations produces “efficiency” KPI’s (again separate fromperformance“health”andcapacity“risk”scores)thathighlightwhereavailableinfrastructuretuningopportunitiesexist.Microsoft’sadd-onOMSloganalytics(evaluatedseparatelybelow)canbeusedtofindover-allocatedorunused resources, although this isn’t rolledupautomatically to the top levelinterface.ServiceNowchecksthisoffwithsomeorchestrationprocessingtohelpreclaimprovisionedassets,butitisaseparateunguidedtask.

Partofourevaluationgavecredit for integratedinfrastructureutilizationforecasting inwhichbothfuture workload demands (planned growth and other “reservations”) and planned infrastructureupgradescanbeoverlaid.Aligningworkloadstoinfrastructure,bothcurrentandfuturereservations,



is a core strength of Turbonomic’s dynamic optimization approach. We note that VMware alsosupports the future analysis of planned changes. In particular, we note that VMware vRealizeOperationsautomaticallyfeedscommittedfutureplansbackintoitsotherKPI’stoinformevenmoreintelligentpredictivealerting.

EvaluationofWorkloadHostingOptimizationIfthesystemisingoodhealthandhassufficientfuturecapacity,thenthenexttaskofoperationsistobest align the currently runningworkloadswith the current infrastructure.While determining the“best alignment” can include functions of performance QoS, meeting committed SLAs, minimizingcost, or even considerations tomaximize data protection and security, the evolution into cloud isbringingnewopportunitiestobothmaximizeperformanceandbrokerlowercosts.

Turbonomicdeservesspecialmentionhereasasolutionsquarelyaimedatthedynamicsofmovingvirtualmachinesaroundtobestfitthemintoavailablecapacities(howeverwenotemodelingVMsizeplacementasabest-fiteconomicsproblemisn’tsufficienttoensureactualapplicationperformance).We did note that VMware now not only provides automatic “within cluster” placement (with thenative Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS)), but can also make intelligent cross-clusterrecommendations(withvRealizeOperationsinconjunctionwithDRS),andnowhasanintelligentlypredictiveDRS(pDRS)variantthatlearnsworkloadprofilesovertime.

MicrosoftalsohasVMplacementrecommendationandre-balancingcapability.Althoughmosthintatultimatelyaimingtoprovideactivecloudbrokerage,RedHatandevenCiscocancurrentlymakeVMprovisioningplacementrecommendations(orre-provisioningplans)butdon’tpretendtooperateinreal-timeat thehost, cluster, or cloud levels.At the same time, automation solutions (evaluated inthisreportinaseparatecategory)likeRedHatAnsiblecanbeusedtoautomatereactivelytriggeredre-provisioningtasks.

EvaluationofExtensibilityWhenprovidinganoperationsmanagement solution, it’s important toensureextensibility throughthe exposure of API’s and/or SDK’s that allow the larger IT ecosystem to produce or provideappropriateplug-ins.Weobserved that the largerandmoreestablished thevendor, the richerandmore complete the catalog of thirdparty plug-ins.All of these vendors are large enough to have amultitudeof technicalpartnerships, thoughanyparticular ITshopwouldbewellservedto identifyanyimportantgapsbeforeinvestment.Inallcases,customservicesarealsoavailabletohelpextendorcustom-buildadapterstojustaboutanythinginITthatcanproducemetricsand/orevents(fromtheirownAPI’s,commandlines,ormachinedatalogs).

EvaluationofLogfileManagementNocurrentcloud-scaleoperationsmanagementsolutioniscompletewithoutsomewaytoparseandmine value out of theplentitudeof logfiles producedby almost everybit of IT infrastructure. This“machinedata”maygetprocessedandtranslatedintoeventandmetricstreamsinputintothemorestructuredactivitiesevaluatedabove,butalsodeserves itsown “unstructured”analysis solution tosupport just about every IT management activity including configuration and asset management,softwarelicenseauditing,securitymanagement,anddetailedfeatureusageanalysis.Logfileanalysissolutions collect, store, and index log files from across the IT stack. Theymust intelligently parsethesefilesatvarietyandscale,andsubsequentlyprovideeasyquery/searchaccesstoITusers.Oftenlogfilecollectionsgrowto“bigdata”sizes,somanysolutionsapplynewbigdataanalyticssolutionsandarecloud-hosted.



Splunk is perhaps the most recognized solution in this space, focusing on this capability almostexclusivelyastheircoretechnology.However,Splunkwasnotincludedinthisyear’sreportaswedonot findastandalonemachinedata/searchquerysolutionatallsufficient tomeetbroaderITcloudmanagementneeds.

EvaluationofIntegrationwithThirdPartyEcosystemTheflipsideoftheextensibilitycategoryaboveisoutbound(akanorthbound)integrationwiththirdpartyecosystemsolutions.Ahallmarkof trulywell thought-outmanagement solutions is that theycanbecomedatasourcesinturntothebroaderITecosystembyfeedingintelligentinformationintosolutions like trouble ticketing, help desk, CMDB’s, asset managers, financial management andapplication business health dashboards. Integrations can take several forms including eventforwarding, triggered scripting, exposed reporting API’s or CLI’s, SDK/libraries, or even storedprocedures.

Whileprofessionalservicesareavailable fromeachvendoror itspartners toaccommodatecustomintegrations, the best solutions comewithbuilt-in adapters or readyplug-inmodules for themostcommonout-of-the-boxintegrations(e.g.sendingworkflow/lifecycleeventstoBMCRemedy).

The operations management solution first has to be able to generate workflow/lifecycle events.vRealizeOperations isnotable in that it can initiate cascadingactionsbased in its intelligentKPI’s,andsomeofthoseKPI’s(e.g.certain“risk”factors)inturnaccountforexistingfutureplans(upgradesand/orreservations),helpingcloseafullcycleloopofITinfrastructure“assurance”.

EvaluationofPolicy-based/QoSManagementIn an increasingly agile and cloud-like IT environment, it’s becoming increasingly important to beable to exert proper IT management and governance via policies that can be dynamicallyimplementedbyprovisioningsystemsandautomaticallymonitoredbyoperationalcomponents.Foroperational excellence, it’s key for IT clients tobothdemandandbe assuredof receiving specifiedQoSlevels.Atthescaleofcloudoperations,onlypolicy-drivensolutionscandeliveronQoSpromises.

Moresolutionsacrossthespectrumtodayhavesomeelementofpolicyestablishment,oftentolimitor constrain the provisioning of a certain kind of resource to certain groups of users or kinds ofapplications. The key differences show up in how such policiesmight be operationallymonitored,enforcedorreportedondownstream.WenotethatVMwarevRealizeSuiteenablesacoherentpolicy-based approach throughout the lifecycle, whereas many larger platform vendors have, at best,differentsolutioncomponentswithvariouspolicyimplementations.

For example, the monitoring-heavy vendors can apply custom thresholding based on informationpassedfromorchestrationtasksasamatterof“policy”.Thiswilloftenbedifferent,again,fromwhatmightbereported(e.g.infinancialmanagement).ServiceNow,whenitcomestoQoSassurance,offersonlyaservicelevel“visualization”.

EvaluationofPlatformSupportWe look for today’smanagement solutions to be able to run on-premise and as a cloud or hybridservice, supporting cross-cloud approaches. With multiple data centers, converging resources,shrinkingstaff, andhybridclouddeployments,manyenterprisesare looking to subscribe tocloud-hostedmanagementservices(SaaS)toaugmentorevenreplaceon-premisemanagementtools.



EvaluationofSinglePointofInteractionThe“singlepaneofglass”haslongbeenthepromiseofITsystemsmanagementvendors.ITwantstoincrease adminefficiency andproductivitybyunifying and integratingmultiple interfaces intoonecoherentpoint,orUI,of interaction.Furthermore,theintelligentuseofrollup,oraggregatingKPI’s,shouldextendtheseefficienciesbydistillingmuchdetaildownintoobviousadmin“callstoaction”.Ultimatelytheideaistoreducethenumberofdifferenttools,uniqueUI’s,complexrawmetricsandevendisparateworkflowsintoasimpler,andhopefullysimplifyingpointofprimaryinteraction.



HYBRIDCLOUDMANAGEMENTLANDSCAPEIn this sectionwe present the category-level scores for hybrid cloudmanagement solutions, alongwithourrationalebasedonourassessmentofthevendors’offeringsagainsteachoftheevaluationfactors.To arrive at overallmarks,we computedaweightedaverageof the5 category scores, andthenadjustedthescoresbasedonourownjudgmentofeachvendor’smarketposition,installedbase,productstrategy,andfocusandexpertise.

ThevendorsincludedinthissectionareVMware(VMW),Microsoft(MSFT),ServiceNow(SVN),Cisco(CSCO), Red Hat (RHT), RightScale (RSC), Embotics (EMB), CloudBolt Software (CB), Turbonomic(TUR)andMorpheusData(MOR).

The categories covered in this section are Workload Portability, Intelligent Workload Placement,Elastic Resource Control, Unified Management/Monitoring and Security/Compliance/Governance.Foreachcategorywehaveprovidedasummary thatdiscusses thekey factorsweused toevaluatevendorofferings,theimportanceofthefactorsandsignificantobservations.

HYBRIDCLOUDMANAGEMENTCOMPETITIVELANDSCAPE(4=HIGH)

Hybrid Cloud Management Factors VMW MSFT SVN CSCO RHT RSC EMB CB TUR MOR

Workload Portability 2 2 1 2 2 2 1 1 2 2

Intelligent Workload Placement 2 1 1 1 1 4 3 1 3 1

Elastic Resource Control 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

Unified Management/Monitoring 4 4 3 1 2 3 2 2 2 2

Security, Compliance, Governance 4 4 3 4 3 3 2 2 1 2


2 2.8

2 2.0

2 2.0

2 2.0

2 2.8

2 2.0

11.6 2 2.0 1 1.8

EvaluationofWorkloadPortabilityOneofthekeystomakingahybridcloudworkistoprovideasimpleandstreamlinedwaytomoveapps and data to and from an on-premises data center and the public cloud. In fact, workloadportability helps to enable two of the most fundamental benefits that customers seek in clouddeployments:agilityandfreedomofchoice.

Inthiscategory,weevaluatedtheeasewithwhichvendorsallowuserstomigrateworkloadsto/fromthedatacenteranddifferentclouds,alongwiththeabilitytomoveworkloadsdynamicallybasedonpolicy-basedtriggers.Wealsolookedatvendorsupportofmigration-drivenusecases,suchascloudbursting, liftingandshiftingof legacyapps,andextensionofdatacenter infrastructuretothepubliccloud. The cloud and virtualization platform vendors tended to score better in this category, sincetheyhave thenative tools, functionalityandpolicy frameworks inplace toenablemigration toandfromtheirenvironments.

RedHat,RightScaleandVMwareare focusingonenhancingworkloadportability in theirofferings.RedHatCloudSuitehelpstoautomatethemigrationofworkloadsfromacustomer’sdatacentertoAWSorAzureclouds,andalsosupportsarangeofmigration-enabledusecases.VMwarealsohasa



strongofferinghere,supportingworkloadmigrationtoallowcustomerstoextendon-premisesdatacenters toVMwareCloudonAWS. vRealizeAutomationandOperations togetherhelp toautomateworkloadmovementbasedonpolicy,andVMwaresupportsanumberofmigration-drivenhybridusecases.Whilenotaplatformvendor,RightScalealsoearnedhighscoresforworkloadportability,withitsuseofCloudApplicationTemplatestoenablepolicy-basedmovementandplacement.

Microsoft and Cisco also scored well, with each still building their hybrid cloud offerings andpresence.Microsoft is stillworkingout the incompatibilitiesbetweenGen-1andGen-2VMs,whichimposeconstraintson themovementofworkloadsbetweenAzureStackandAzure.Ciscodoesnotoffer automated workload migration today, but its CloudCenter application profiles and policyframeworkgiveitanopportunitytodevelopsuchacapability inthefuture.Thesmallervendorsinthiscategorytendtobeonestepremovedfromtheplatformsandworkloadstheysupport,andsoarelessabletodeliverorensureportability.

Onecaveatisworthnoting:ifyouadoptpubliccloud-nativeservices,itmightbecomemoredifficulttomigrateyourworkloadsbackoutof thecloud,shouldyouchoose todoso in the future. So it isworth giving some thought upfront about how you will use each public cloud and the specificworkloadsyouwilldeploythere.

EvaluationofIntelligentWorkloadPlacementVendor capabilities in this category will allow you to get the most of out of your hybrid cloudinvestment, by helping to ensure that eachworkload is placed in the cloud, region, cluster and/orhostthatbestmeetscost,complianceorservice-levelrequirements.

In this categorywe assessed thedegree towhich each vendoroffers recommendations for placingworkloads to optimize such factors as IT governance, cost, and the ability to meet service-levelobjectives, based on policy and operational intelligence. Three vendors stood out: RightScale,Turbonomic,andVMware.RightScaleprovidesworkloadassessments,costinsightsandapplication-specific policies to help governwhere aworkload can best be placed tomeet business objectives.Turbonomicmodelingofcloudeconomicsallowsittomakeplacementdecisionsinagivencloudoracrossregionsorcloudstohelpoptimizeworkloadcostand/orperformance.VMwarevRealizeSuiteprovides policy-based placement to meet governance and service-level objectives, as well as costvisibilityandinsightsthroughvRealizeBusinessforCloudtohelpoptimizeplacementbasedoncostandotherbusinessconsiderations.

MicrosoftAzureStackservicesfacilitateVMplacementdecisionstomeetcapacityandconfigurationneeds,butdonothelpcustomerstooptimizeplacementbasedoncosttoday.EmboticsvCommanderofferspolicy-based intelligencetoallowworkloadstobeplacedwheretheycanbestmeetcostandcomplianceobjectives.CiscoCloudCentercanhelpplaceworkloadstomeetgovernancerules.Mostoftheremainingvendorsprovidesomelevelofoperationalvisibilitytoenableadminstomakebetterinformed placement decisions, but do not directly address this need through policy-basedautomation.

EvaluationofElasticResourceControlThiscapabilityiscriticaltothesuccessofahybridclouddeployment.Theabilitytoelasticallymanageand control cloud resources enhances infrastructure efficiency and agility,while helping to ensurethatworkloadsachieverequiredservicelevelswithoutexceedingthebudget.

Here we examined whether each vendor’s software architecture enables distributed resourcemanagementacrossonpremisesandthecloud,andthedegreetowhichthesolutionsupportspolicy-



basedadministrationofresourcesinsupportofITgovernance.Welookedalsoattheabilitytospinuporspindowninstancesondemand,inresponsetopolicy-driventriggers,alongwiththeabilitytoreclaimandre-useinactiveresources,toavoidwasteandinefficiency.MicrosoftscoredwellduetoitsAzure Resource Manager, which provides distributed resource management and a policy-drivenframework. The Autoscale function in Azure enables instances to be spun up or down based ondemand,andalsohelpstoreclaiminactiveresources,buttheuseofAutoscaleiscurrentlyinhibitedinAzureStack,sinceitcannotoperateonVMscalesets(groupsofidenticallyconfiguredVMsthatcanbedeployedwithoutpre-provisioning).

RedHatalsoscoreswellbasedonitsCloudFormsdistributedcross-cloudarchitecture,policyengine,and resource reclamation capabilities, along with the auto-scaling of compute instances in RHELOpenStack. RightScale Cloud Management Platform (CMP) provides distributed, policy-basedresourcemanagement, and provides auto-scaling, but it takes a bit ofwork to set up. ServiceNowpartners with RightScale to deliver elastic resource control, and Cisco CloudCenter provides thedistributed management architecture and delivers auto-scaling for agent-enabled VM workloads.CloudBolt andTurbonomic, two of the smaller vendors in our study, also dowell in this category,based on their distributed management platform architectures, auto-scaling, and partial resourcereclamationcapabilities.

VMware has a well-rounded solution for elastic resource control, powered by Elastic DRS, whichperformsmostofthefunctionswewerelookingforinthiscategory.

EvaluationofUnifiedManagement/MonitoringIn this category, we evaluated some key operations management features and capabilities in thecontext of a hybrid cloud. Specifically, we looked for the presence of a distributed control plane,independentofdataflows,thatextendsbetweenon-premisesandanexternalcloud.Weconsideredtheabilitytoremotelymonitorthehealth,capacityandperformanceofworkloads,andtheabilitytoobtainasingleconsistentviewofoperationsandworkloadsacrossmultiplemanagementinstances.Finally,weassessedeachoffering’slifecyclemanagementcapabilities,applyingbothtohybridcloudapps and services and the management solution itself (e.g. does it enable regular non-disruptiveupgrades,etc.).

Microsoft,ServiceNowandVMwareearnedstrongscores in thiscategory,primarilyon thebasisoftheir distributed control plane architectures, workload monitoring and lifecycle managementcapabilities. In addition, each vendor supports consistent views through multiple distributedmanagementinstances—MicrosoftthroughAzureResourceManagerserviceendpoints;ServiceNowviaServiceWatchonitsCloudManagementPortal;andVMwarethroughHybridLinkedMode,whichlinksmultiplevCenterinstancestogetherandpresentsacommonviewasasinglecontrolplane.

CiscoCloudCenteroffers adistributed controlplane, agent-basedworkloadmonitoring, and strongapplication lifecycle management features. Red Hat CloudForms and Red Hat Insights togetherprovideasimilarsetof functionality,asdoestheRightScaleCloudManagementPlatform. Thefoursmallercloudautomationandorchestrationvendorsinoursurvey—CloudBolt,Embotics,Morpheusand Turbonomic—are a little more challenged here: they are all based on hybrid cloud-capablemanagementarchitectures,anddeliversolidlifecyclemanagement,butmustlinktothirdpartytoolstodeliverworkloadmonitoring.



EvaluationofSecurity,ComplianceandGovernanceThefinalhybridcloudmanagementevaluationcategoryisfocusedonvitalsecurity,complianceandgovernance features, most of which should be regarded as must-have, checkbox items in yourevaluationofalternativesolutions.BasedonourregularsurveysofITprofessionals,securityisstillviewedasthe#1concernfororganizationsthatareconsideringmovingtoapublic/hybridcloud.

In our assessmentwe prioritized features such as fine-grained role-based access controls, firewallservices, data encryption, and policy-based compliance and governance capabilities that span on-premisesandpubliccloudenvironments.Wealsolookedfornetwork-basedsecurityfeaturessuchasmicro-segmentationtoisolateandprotectparticularworkloads.

Cisco, Microsoft and VMware achieved the highest scores, based on the strength of their nativeplatformsecurityfeaturesandpolicy-basedcomplianceandgovernanceframeworks.VMwarestoodout among these vendors, with its comprehensive NSX security features—including micro-segmentation;vRealizeAutomationgovernance;androbustthirdpartysupport.

Red Hat, RightScale and ServiceNow also scored well, with their focus on providing end-to-endsecurityandpolicy-drivencompliancecapabilities.Thesmallercloudautomation-orientedvendorsinourstudycomeoutabitweakerhere.Allfourofferpolicy-basedcomplianceandgovernanceatsomelevel, but as a consequence of their abstraction-layered architectures, they are one step removedfromunderlyingcloudinfrastructureandworkloads,preventingthemfromofferingthelevelofend-to-endsecurityenabledbythecloudplatformvendors.



CLOUDNATIVEAPPLICATIONSLANDSCAPEIn this sectionwe present the category-level scores for Cloud Native Applications, alongwith ourrationale,basedonourassessmentofthevendors’offeringsagainsteachoftheevaluationfactors.Toarrive at overall marks, we computed an average of the 4 category scores, and then adjusted thescoresbasedonourownjudgmentofeachvendor’smarketposition,installedbase,productstrategy,andfocusandexpertise.

ThevendorsincludedinthissectionareVMware(VMW),Microsoft(MSFT),ServiceNow(SVN),Cisco(CSCO)andRedHat(RHT).

ThecategoriescoveredinthissectionincludeContainerManagementandPaaS(management),alongwith the more DevOps focused Agile Application/Performance Management and the offering ofRemoteManagement-as-a-Service.

Foreachcategorywehaveprovidedasummary thatdiscusses thekey factorsweused toevaluatevendorofferings,theimportanceofthefactorsandsignificantobservations.

CLOUDNATIVEAPPLICATIONSCOMPETITIVELANDSCAPE(4=HIGH)

Cloud Native Apps Competitive Factors VMW MSFT SVN CSCO RHT

Agile Application and Performance Mgmt 2 2 0 1 1

Container Management 2 3 0 3 3

Remote Management-as-a-Service 3 4 4 1 1

Platform-as-a-Service Support 0 4 0 0 3


3 3.3

1 1.0

1 1.3

2 2.0

EvaluationofAgileApplicationandPerformanceManagementOneofthefirstchallengesofsupportingandmanagingcloudnativeapplications–thoseapplicationsbuilt, packaged and deployed byDevOps if not by developers themselves – is how to provide anymanagementinsightorcontroloverwhatistrulyahighlyagile,incrediblyflexible,scalableandscale-out,distributedhybrid “cloud”of inter-relatedservices.Traditional tools thatembedpresumptionsaboutoneappperserverorevenperVMquicklylosetheirfootingandrelevancywhenapplicationsarecontainerizedandflungacrosselasticcloudinfrastructure.Containerizedapplications,asacorevalue,areincrediblyportableforone,highlyscalable(ifbuiltaccordingtomicro-serviceprinciples),andareexpectedtobemanagedmoreas“cattleinsteadofpets”.

We lookhere forcapabilities thatsupportanagileDevOpsapproach toapplicationandapplicationperformancemanagement(expandabletoothermetricandevent“informed”managementactivitieslike security) rather than simply wrap containerized applications within a static infrastructuremanagement solution. These capabilities can include interactive, online, metric exploration,developer/personal dashboarding, quick compilation/creation of triggers defining new events, andan effectively wide open capacity to fold-in and integrate any kind of data stream for immediateanalysis.



Tobesure,thisisanewcategorythisyearinourreportbecauseitreallyaddressesawholenewtypeofmanagementuserwithnewideasaboutbestpracticemanagementinthisrapidlyevolvingspace.It will be some time before there is agreement about best approaches in this space. However,VMware’sWavefrontacquisitionisaprimeexampleofhowtobringcloud-nativeapplicationsintoalarger management scheme in order to cover the whole portfolio of applications (into newarchitectures) that companies might now deploy. Notably, Red Hat with a rapidly expandingCloudFormsaperturecoveringtheirsolidcloud-nativeapplicationportfolioofsolutions(fromRHELtoOpenShift)isinaprimepositiontoquicklycapitalizeonopensourceadvances(whichmaynotbeatfirstenterpriserock-solid,butareabigdriverbehindmostthingscloud-native).

EvaluationofContainerManagementContainermanagementisalsoanareaunderfastevolution,andalsoincludesalargeswathofopensourceprojectsandinitiatives.Recentlytherehasbeensomeconvergenceandsettling,withDockerand Kubernetes getting cozier, and together becoming a more stable, “standard” platform. In thiscategory,weareconsideringtheinclusionandintegrationofsomethinglikeKubernetes(orbetter)intothebroadersetofcloudmanagementactivities,withperhapsagainRedHatsettingthebar.

VMware in the past has rolled some interesting container deployment options, including vSphereIntegrated Containers and Project Photon in order to leverage the benefits of the hypervisor (andsomeofitsexistingmanagement)andestablishedvirtualizationstaff/skillsets.RecentlytheybroughtoutPivotalContainerService,aKubernetesplatformquicklydeployable in turn inside thevirtuallyhostedenvironment.MicrosoftAzure Stack is also recentlynotable asbringing anAzure applianceoption(withAzureContainerservices)immediatelyon-premise.

EvaluationofRemoteManagement-as-a-ServiceOnefacetofsupportingcloud-nativeapplicationsthatweexpecttobecomeincreasinglyimportantisthe ability to subscribe to management services instead of having to acquire software and thenimplementandmaintainmanagement serversandapplicationsover time. In thepast, securityandriskwereoftencitedasobstacles,but today thoseareno longer roadblocks. Insteadweseecloud-hostedmanagement as possibly the best if not onlyway to adequatelymanage hybrid andmulti-cloudscenarios.

ServiceNow,ofcourse,isacompletelycloudhosted,SaaS-stylemanagementserviceprovider,whichhasgivenitaheadstartinthisarea.MicrosofthasofferedOMSforacoupleofyears,whichhasaddedthingslikelogfileanalysis,oftenbetterhadasacloud-hostedservicethanasanon-premiseburden,toanon-premiseSCOM.Nowin2017VMwarehasweighedinwithmultipleremoteCloudManagedServiceslikeNetworkInsightthatofferthesamefunctionalityastheiron-premisecounterparts,andcanbereadilyappliedacrosshybridclouds.

CiscohasannouncedIntersightasasubscription-stylemanagementofferingintendedtoreplaceon-premise UCS Director (et.al.), but they admit this may take years to reach a critical mass offunctionality.MicrosoftismovingtowardspositioningAzure(andAzureStack)astheirmainsolutionplatform,withAzure(i.e.cloud)hostedmanagementservicesbecomingtheirdefaultoffering(whileon-premiseSCOMfadesaway).

EvaluationofPlatform-as-a-ServiceSupportPlatforms like Cloud Foundry are a key element in many enterprise cloud-native applicationdeployments.WithPaaS,developerscanskipoutofdealingevenwithDevOpslevelcontainerization,



andjustdeployapplicationcodedirectly,lettingtheplatformhandleallthedirtyworkofpackaging,deploying,managingandsecuringapplicationsunderthehood.TherecouldbesomeargumentastowhetheraPaaSisnecessarilyconsideredcloudmanagement,butwehavenodoubtthatthereisalotofcloudmanagementthatgoesintoanenvironmentautomatingPaaSsolution.Weexpectincreasingdifferentiation in cloud management solutions extending through containerization and into theapplication layer, taking strong advantage of PaaS capabilities and automation and likely applyingnewMachineLearningintelligencetohandlethelargescopeandscalesinvolved.

Red Hat’s Openshift (and hosted offering Openshift.ai) is their highly integrated ContainerizedApplicationSolutionwithmanyPaaSfeaturesbuilt-inlikeJBOSSmiddleware,databaseservicesandone-click deployment style support for developers. VMware vSphere readily hosts Cloud Foundry,andMicrosoftAzureStackdeliversCloudFoundry(andotherAzurecloudservices).



CLOUDCOSTINGANDBUSINESSMANAGEMENTLANDSCAPEIn this section we present the category-level scores for Cloud Costing and Business Managementsolutions,alongwithourrationale,basedonourassessmentofthevendors’offeringsagainsteachoftheevaluationfactors.Toarriveatoverallmarks,wecomputedanaverageofthe4categoryscores,andthenadjustedthescoresbasedonourownjudgmentofeachvendor’smarketposition,installedbase,productstrategy,andfocusandexpertise.

ThevendorsincludedinthissectionareVMware(VMW),Microsoft(MSFT),ServiceNow(SVN),Cisco(CSCO),RightScale(RSC),Embotics(EMB),CloudBoltSoftware(CB)andTurbonomic(TUR).

The categories covered in this section are Cost and Consumption Transparency, BusinessManagement,DataCenterPlanningandCloudCostOptimization.

Foreachcategorywehaveprovidedasummary thatdiscusses thekey factorsweused toevaluatevendorofferings,theimportanceofthefactorsandsignificantobservations.

CLOUDCOSTING&BUSINESSMANAGEMENTCOMPETITIVELANDSCAPE(4=HIGH)

Cloud Costing Competitive Factors VMW MSFT SVN CSCO RSC EMB CB TUR

Cost and Consumption Transparency 4 4 4 2 4 3 2 3 Business Management 4 4 3 2 3 2 2 2

Data Center Planning 3 2 1 1 3 3 1 3

Cloud Cost Optimization 4 4 2 3 4 3 2 3


3 3.5

2 2.5

2 2.0

3 3.5

2 2.8

1 1.8

2 2.8

EvaluationofCostandConsumptionTransparencyAcomprehensivecostmodelisattheheartofbusinessmanagementandcosttransparency.Itshowsthe distribution and interdependencies of costs across the entire IT landscape includinginfrastructure,cloudenvironments,technicalservices,applications,andconsumers(businesslines).Thatsaid,thecostmodelisonlyasgoodasthedata,andthereforeasteadystreamofcostandusagedata,enabledinpartbyprogrammaticaccesstocostandcapacityinformation,isrequiredtoensurerapid and efficient data collection. The final aspect of cost transparency is analytics, which allowsusers to explore cost drivers, trends andKPIs fromdifferent viewpoints using customized reportsandrole-baseddashboards.

Fourvendors—Microsoft,RightScale,ServiceNowandVMware—risetothetopinthiscategory.Theyallprovideprogrammaticaccesstocostdatafrommultiplesources,includingfinancialsystems,cloudenvironments, service desk software, and/or asset databases (e.g. CMDBs). The common cloudssupportedareVMware,AWS,AzureandOpenStack.

These same four vendors receive topmarks for comprehensive costmodels since they all performdata normalization, model interdependencies, and automate cost allocation. Analytics is anotherstrengthofthesevendors,withtheirflexible,role-baseddashboardsandcustomreporting.



Twoofthesmallervendors,EmboticsandTurbonomic,alsoscoredwell inthiscategory.Bothofferdynamicandvisualcostmodels,somelevelofprogrammaticaccesstocostdata,andanalyticstohelpoptimizecost-performanceforatenant'sworkloads.

EvaluationofBusinessManagementMany companieswould like to seemore responsible IT consumption, but they don’t knowhow tochangeorganizationalbehavior.Webelieveagreatplacetostartisbettercommunicationandbetteralignment, more specifically with IT communicating costs and value and business units having abetterunderstandingofhowtheirspend/consumptionstandsupagainsttheirbudget.

Towardsthesegoals,showback/chargebackisIT’smostpowerfulweapon,facilitatingcostrecoveryand providing an understanding of what IT services actually cost. The beauty ofshowback/chargebacktoolsisthatbusinessunitreportingcanbeautomatedwithbusinessrulesandallocation templates, so IT administrators can throw out their spreadsheets and focus on morestrategicactivities.Theleadersinthiscategory—Microsoft,RightScale,ServiceNowandVMware—allhavestrongshowback/chargebackfunctionality.

Automatedbudgettracking(plannedvs.actual)andknowingwhenyouareunder-orover-spendingisavery importantcomponentofBusinessManagement.Nearlyall thevendorsweevaluatedhavebuilt-in budgeting, and those that don’t generate data and insights that can be used to informandimprove externally administered budgets. VMware, for its part, assists managers with budgetforecastingandprovidesflexibilitytoadjustplannedusage.

Another important dimension to running IT more like a business is service quality managementfunctionalitythatenablesabetterunderstandingofthetrade-offsbetweencostandquality.Thisisanarea where VMware really shines by providing alerts when SLAs and other commitments are indanger of beingmissed and publishingmonthly service reports covering performance, alongwithroot cause and business impact reports to identify remedial action. ServiceNow can alsomeasureperformanceagainstSLAs,whileMicrosoftSystemCenter2016strivestohelpITdeliverpredictableperformanceforbusiness-criticalapplicationsbyofferingapplicationhealthmetricsthathelptriggerremediationactions.

EvaluationofDataCenterPlanningDecisionsupportisakeyaspectofdatacenterplanningandbusinessmanagementoverall.Inorderto improve data center operations, companies need tools to assist them in resource planning andmodelingtheimpactofnewworkloads,andtoenablethemtorunmultiplewhat-ifscenariosbeforecommittingtochangesintheirdatacenterorcloudenvironments.

At the topof the listofvaluabledecision support tools is resource costandcapacityplanning.Thecompanies that scored highest in this category—Embotics, RightScale, Turbonomic and VMware—offerstrongfunctionalityinthisarea,asdoMicrosoftandServiceNow.Resourceplanningsolutionshelp companies plan for future resource requirements based on historical usage and help teamsunderstand who is using what resources and for what purpose. These solutions also help groupsestimatetheimpactandcostofaddingnewworkloadstoremainingcapacity.

The use of what-if scenarios can be one of themost effective ways to determine how changes inconsumption can affect charges for application licenses and infrastructure resources. What-ifmodeling can also help companies forecast and optimize service costs, for example by comparingcloud services for best-cost workload placements. Embotics, RightScale, Turbonomic and VMwareofferstrongwhat-ifplanningcapabilitiesaspartoftheirdatacenterplanningproducts.



EvaluationofCloudCostOptimizationCloudcostoptimizationisallaboutminimizingcloudservicecostsbyhelpingenterprisesselectthemost cost-effective cloud/region for eachworkload, aswell as reducing thewaste and inefficiencyresultingfromover-provisioning.Threevendors—Microsoft,RightScaleandVMware—reallyshineinthiscategorybydoingbothoftheseparticularlywell,whileCisco,EmboticsandTurbonomicdeservehonorablemention.

Whenitcomestocomparingcloudservices,allthreeoftheleadingvendorsinthiscategoryprovidefull visibility, tracking and comparisonsof costs across allmajorpublic clouds, includingMicrosoftAzure, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud, as well as selective private/hybrid clouds (e.g.MicrosoftincludesOpenStackandwilllikelybeaddingAzureStack,whileVMwarewilllikelyincludeVMwareCloudonAWS). Inadditiontocomparingthecostofcurrentcloudalternatives,RightScalegoesonestepfurtherwithOptimaScenarioBuilder,enablingyoutodirectlycomparepotentialfuturecosts across different clouds, based on assumptions about future spend for new or existingworkloads, aswell asdifferent instance sizes, regions, andpurchaseoptions (e.g. spot vs. reservedinstances).

The top 6 vendors in this category also provide customers with opportunities for workloadrightsizing and resource reclamation/re-use to increase efficiency, such as automatically shuttingdownidleworkloads;leveragingstoragevolumesnotinuse;orrightsizingVMinstances.

Overall,VMwareoffersthestrongestcloudcostingandbusinessmanagementsolutions,givingitthetoproll-upscore,withMicrosoftandRightScalecominginaclosesecond.



CLOUDMANAGEMENTMARKETSUMMARYEVALUATIONInthisfinalrollup,we’vebroughttogetherthescoresforeachofthefivefunctionalareas.Whiletherearenumerousoptionstoweightthesescores,herewe’vesimplyaveragedthefivescorestoarriveata final, top-levelcloudmanagement landscapescorereflectingouroriginalchoiceofcriteriaacrosstheevaluationasthesetofimportantandnecessaryitemsforcompletecloudmanagement(eachITorganizationmaywant to individually consider the importanceof eacharea/categoryaccording totheirownneedsandrequirements).

Evaluation Scores VMW MSFT SVN CSCO RHT

Cloud Orchestration 3 3.6

3 3.0

3 3.0

3 3.1

2 2.9

Operations Management 3 3.8

2 2.5

1 1.5

1 1.4

1 1.9

Hybrid Cloud Management 3 3.0

2 2.8

2 2.0

2 2.0

2 2.0

Cloud Native Apps 1 1.8

3 3.3

1 1.0

1 1.3

2 2.0

Cloud Costing & Business Management

3 3.8

3 3.5

2 2.5

2 2.0

Not Evaluated

Summary Score 3.2 3.0 2.0 1.9 *2.2

Legend:VMW=VMware,MSFT=Microsoft,SVN=ServiceNow,CSCO=Cisco,RHT=RedHat

VMware and Microsoft post leading scores, likely because they are both inherently alsohypervisor/cloud platform vendors and therefore intimately familiar with and focused on thepractices and capabilities that IT organizations need in their respective cloud transition efforts.ServiceNowdoesverywellinareasthatitfocuseson,butisalayered“add-on”solution(whichcanbeaneasywaytoaddbusinessservicemanagementtoanexistingarchitecture).CiscoandRedHathaveimproved in this year’s evaluation; Red Hat demonstrating great viability when one starts with amorepurecloudconcept(andCiscowhenonestartswithUCSinfrastructure).ButVMwarevRealizeSuite tops the chart in the IT enterprise evaluation, indicating that VMware should be an earlyconsideration by any IT organization looking to grow and mature their cloud managementcapabilities.

ABOUTTANEJAGROUPTaneja Group’s mission is to deliver best-in-class technology analysis and consulting for the storage,server, virtualization, cloud and big data markets to enable our clients to convert technology intobusiness.Weareaboutique firmof operational expertswithbothbroadanddeep expertise in storagesystems and technologies, server and desktop hardware and software, virtualization platforms andappliances, cloud software and services, big data technologies, and physical and virtual infrastructuremanagementsolutions.Formoreinformation,pleasevisitwww.tanejagroup.com.

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NOTICE:THEINFORMATIONCONTAINEDHEREINHASBEENOBTAINEDFROMSOURCESBELIEVEDTOBEACCURATEANDRELIABLE,ANDINCLUDESPERSONALOPINIONSTHATARESUBJECTTOCHANGEWITHOUTNOTICE.TANEJAGROUPDISCLAIMSALLWARRANTIESASTOTHEACCURACYOFSUCH INFORMATION AND ASSUMES NO RESPONSIBILITY OR LIABILITY FOR ERRORS OR FOR YOUR USE OF, OR RELIANCE UPON, SUCHINFORMATION.COMPANY,BRANDANDPRODUCTNAMESREFERENCEDHEREINMAYBETRADEMARKSOFTHEIRRESPECTIVEOWNERS.

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