Every year, during the Spring and Summer, there is a flurry of analysis released from the Gartner and some of the most anticipated insights come via what Gartner calls the Magic Quadrant (MQ).
The MQ is a two-by-two matrix that rates vendors in a particular market/segment on two axis – Vision and Execution. Organizations that rate high on both Vision and Execution are placed in the upper right quadrant of the matrix and are referred to as Leaders in that specific category.
These MQs are a solid source of input for customers as they make decisions about who of they will choose as their key partners. They are a great source of input, although they’re not necessarily the authoritative source organizations use for their final decision making.
Over the past couple months, there have been four MQs released which focus on Cloud infrastructure:
- Cloud Infrastructure as a Service
A view of all the vendors delivering IaaS from the cloud, e.g.Azure IaaS. - x86 Server Virtualization Infrastructure
A view of the vendors delivering infrastructure for private and hybrid clouds, e.g. Windows Server and System Center. - Enterprise Application Platform as a Service
A view of the vendors delivering PaaS from the Cloud – e.g.Azure PaaS. - Public Cloud Storage Services
A view of the vendors delivering services for Cloud Storage, e.g.Azure Storage.
As you formulate your organization’s cloud strategy, I encourage you to carefully consider the importance of being able to flexibly move your apps and workloads between clouds. No customer has ever told me they want to be locked into a single solution; for a huge variety of reasons we all want to have the option to move apps and workloads across clouds as/when needed.
But what does this focus on flexibility have to do with the new MQ’s? If you feel most confident working with vendors in the leader quadrant, and if you are prioritizing cloud flexibility, then you are going to want to partner with whichever vendor is identified as a leader in all four MQ’s noted above.
Only one vendor meets these criteria – spoiler alert: Microsoft.
Looking at these four MQ’s together is important because (among other reasons) Microsoft is not just the only vendor that appears in all four of them, but we are also the only vendor that appears in even three!
When you consider the strategy I have been writing about on this blog over the last 18+ months, the fact that Microsoft is identified as a leader in all four segments shouldn’t be a surprise.
Our strategy has very purposefully driven us to this leadership position in the industry. We are the only vendor that can provide the consistency that empowers IT to seamlessly migrate workloads/apps across private, hosted, and public clouds. This vision has been core to every aspect of our strategy. Taken together, these four MQ’s, emphasize that Microsoft has the broadest vision, combined with strong execution across the breadth of these offerings.
Another huge Microsoft-only strength is that migrating workloads/apps is especially fast across our clouds because all of them clouds are compatible and interoperable.
We are also constantly innovating. With things like the Windows Azure Pack we are able to regularly bring Azure capabilities to Windows Server and System Center deployments. Our cloud consistency means you can dev anywhere and then deploy in any of these clouds. Our competitors simply cannot deliver this.
The principle that has led us to this leadership position is simple: Cloud-first. This is an engineering principle that has us first prove and harden our solutions in the public cloud, then we bring them on-premises. This is important to our end-users in the IT community because every piece of software we provide for your datacenters has already been tested and validated at internet-wide scale. Anything you get from us is 100% ready to deploy in your business.
An example of this in action is Hyper-V. In each of these four MQ’s, Hyper-V’s hypervisor is the foundational component – and we use the exact same bits in our private, hosted, and public cloud solutions.
This Cloud-first principle also enables us to get value out to you much, much faster via an accelerated (cloud speed) cadence for our on-prem releases. Now you get regular releases that bring consistent, incremental value with more stability than ever before.
These four MQ’s are a great validation of our strategy/vision, as well as our ongoing execution. We are looking forward to working more closely with you and delivering you the cloud(s) your organization needs to succeed!