Cloud Platform Solutions Buyer's Guide

Cloud Platform Solutions Buyer’s Guide

Includes a Category Overview, Top 10 Questions to Ask, Plus, a Capabilities Reference of the Leading 24 Providers for Cloud Platforms

Cloud Platforms

2017 Buyer’s Guide anagement INTRODUCTION:

Many have predicted that 2017 will be the year of the cloud. In a market where new solutions are constantly pouring down the enterprise, we’ve created this guide to help you pick the right vendor from under the cloud umbrella. We have 24 options for you to choose from, including big names you’ve heard of plus some up and coming organizations we believe could be the right fit for you.

For many years, “cloud computing” was the way to go, with Software as a Serve (SaaS) application model being the go-to for most enterprises. However, other models have shown significant growth, and made a name for themselves in this space, including: Application Platform as a Service (aPaaS) – which is a cloud service that offers development and deployment environments for application services; infrastructure-as-a- Service (IaaS) – which provides access to hardware, network, and physical resources; and Platform-as-a- Service (PaaS) – which provides a more comprehensive stack of solutions including databases, operating systems, development tools and middleware.

In a digital, as-a-service world, enterprises that have implemented these solutions have also extended their value. The benefits of a cloud platform are worth researching, wheteher you are a publicly traded corporation, a government institution or a small to medium sized business, and there is a solution for everyone in this Buyer’s Guide.

You will not find any rankings here, opur goal is to provide you with enough information to make a solid business decision that will ultimately increase your bottom line. To get started in the research phases, we included 24 vendor profiles along with 10- question: five to ask yourself and the remainder aim to help you decide what to ask a prospective solution provider.

Our services don’t stop here. We also have a specific selection of our site deicated to the cloud along with a weekly video series and various other resources. Please do not hesitate to reach out if you need any additional assistance.

Ashley Troutman Host, Editor Solutions Review [email protected]

Cloud Platforms

2017 Buyer’s Guide

anagement 5 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Selecting a Cloud Platform Solution

QUESTION #1 What are my security needs?

How critical is the data you’ll be pumping through that cloud infrastructure and platform? Additionally, how is the potential new cloud platform planned to connect with other aspects of your business and technology environment, potentially creating new gateways for malicious attacks? Is the platform’s architecture such that security can be built into the solution? These answers can help you determine how much you will need to invest into security to ensure your new cloud platform dream doesn’t become a nightmare.

QUESTION #2 Where is the value-add in my business, both now and in the future? Businesses should maintain internal capability in areas where they have the most value-add. This way you can maintain in-house expertise needed to maintain your competitive edge in key product areas today, and in the future through innovation. On the other hand, areas where you don’t have much value-add and that aren’t necessary for maintaining your competitive edge, can be outsourced. Because the acquisition of a cloud platform might represent the outsourcing of internal business capability, make sure what you’re outsourcing won’t hurt you down the road through lost internal expertise.

QUESTION #3 What are the business needs I’m looking to address? Cloud platform solutions could represent significant savings for your company, but you still need to make sure you don’t pursue a solution your company doesn’t need. Make sure you actually need an entire enterprise cloud platform solution and not just a software add-on and vice versa. This requires that you clearly define the specific business needs driving the project.

QUESTION #4 How big is my company and IT department?

Some cloud platform solutions providers will be better suited to helping smaller companies, while others cater toward larger ones. Pick potential solutions providers with a good reputation for working with companies similar to yours. Additionally, the size, sophistication and slack within your IT department also impacts how good a match a potential solution is.

QUESTION #5 What support will I need from the vendor?

Even (or perhaps especially) large companies sometimes need extra support and services from vendors in order to make sure the enterprise technology solutions run well. The same is true for cloud platforms. Find out what support and services your company may need before selecting a vendor so that you know what to ask for and compare.

Cloud Platforms

2017 Buyer’s Guide anagement 5 Questions You Should Ask Potential Providers

Before Selecting an Cloud Solution

QUESTION #6 How does your cloud platform keep my business safe from security threats?

Find out what security features, services and compatibilities the prospective vendor solution has. Keep in mind especially the compatibilities with other security solutions, such as Identity and Access Management solutions. The combination of two compatible, best-fit solutions to your business and security needs merits your consideration.

QUESTION #7 How does your cloud solution work with the rest of my business and technology environment?

Cloud solutions can get along very easily with the rest of your infrastructure, but if you are going to need extensive tie-in between the cloud platform and the rest of your business, ensuring all the technological pieces fit together will be well worth your time.

QUESTION #8 What support offerings do you have?

Support can be critical to ensuring the success of implementation and operation. Compare the different support options your prospective vendors are offering and see how well they align with the support needs you have determined from Question 5.

QUESTION #9 How easy would it be to switch from one solution to another if things don’t work out?

Let’s face it, sometimes the solution that looked the best for your business turns out not to be a great fit. Ask the vendor upfront and directly how they will help you move away from their solution and towards someone else’s if something goes wrong (don’t settle for “it won’t go wrong”). Their response will shine light on the business flexibility and risk the company and solution provider, as well as potentially the culture of the company with whom you’re thinking of working.

QUESTION #10 Cost(s)?

Don’t be fooled into thinking this means only asking about the price on the sticker. With almost every solution, there are likely to be hidden costs as well. Consider that “free” open-source solution, for instance; without support and other enterprise-focused service offerings, you could at the very least find the need to siphon off critical IT resources from other projects. At most, you might confront the high costs of a failed initiative. Opportunity costs should also be considered for what you could do with certain IT resources and money.

Cloud Platforms

2017 Buyer’s Guide

anagement

Cloud Platform Provider Profiles

Accenture ______6

Amazon ______7

Apprenda ______8

CenturyLink ______9

Citrix ______10

Cloudistics ______11

EngineYard ______12

Exoscale ______13

GigaSpaces ______14

Google ______15

HPE ______16

IBM ______17

Kintone ______18

Mendix ______19

Microsoft ______20

Oracle ______21

OrangeScape ______22

Outsystems ______23

Pivotal ______24

Quickbase ______25

RedHat ______26

SAP ______27

Salesforce ______28

ServiceNow ______29

Cloud Platforms

2017 Buyer’s Guide

anagement Accenture

Accenture aims to solve business challenges for clients through industry knowledge and innovation. The vendor offers cloud services and cloud-based solutions that provide security, scalability and agility. It defines support roles and uses automation to infuse intelligence into IT delivery. With Accenture’s cloud 111 Washington St. Albany, NY 12210 platform provides a pre-integrated selection of services to assist clients in United States shoosing what’s right for them. +1 (877) 889-9009 www.accenture.com

From the Company

“Accenture helps our clients accelerate the full potential of software as a service to meet emerging business and technology challenges, driving significant business value across the enterprise. SaaS is increasingly a ‘must have’ software of choice for many organizations. But, realizing the benefits and value is only possible if the services are effectively —and continuously—managed.”

Key Features

Cloud mover – Provides a simple way to request and automate virtual-machine migration, reducing the time to migrate legacy workloads from days to minutes; reducing operating costs compared with running in traditional datacenters with outsourced IT.

ServiceNow integration – Integrates with ServiceNow, giving users a fully integrated self-service IT service management (ITSM) experience. Providing advanced governance capabilities; automation; faster speed of service delivery; and, through improved self-service, a possible personnel costs reduction of as much as 25 percent.

Cross cloud transparency – Lets users create and manage their own resource “tags” to organize data, resulting in more control of their data resources, enabling faster growth of their cloud footprint across clouds without the associated transparency, compliance and support issues that may arise.

Bottom Line

The Accenture Cloud Platform has a global provider and data center footprint on six continents as well as strategic relationships with more than 150 alliance partners. They serve clients in more than 40 industries and in all business functions.

Cloud Platforms

2017 Buyer’s Guide

anagement Amazon Web Services

Amazon Web Services, a subsidiary of Amazon.com, offers a suite of cloud- computing services. Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud and makes web-scale computing easier for 1200 12th Ave. South developers. It reduces the time needed to get and boot new server instances and Seattle, WA 98144 allows users to quickly scale capacity, both up and down. The AWS Cloud makes +1 (206) 266-1000 a number of services, partners, and support options easily available. aws.amazon.com

From the Company

“Amazon EC2’s simple web service interface allows you to obtain and configure capacity with minimal friction. It provides you with complete control of your computing resources and lets you run on Amazon’s proven computing environment. Amazon EC2 reduces the time required to obtain and boot new server instances to minutes, allowing you to quickly scale capacity, both up and down, as your computing requirements change.”

Key Features

Preconfigured templates for your instances - known as Amazon Machine Images (AMIs), that package the bits you need for your server (including the operating system and additional software.)

Secure login– Using key pairs (AWS stores the public key, and you store the private key in a secure place.)

Flexibility – Users have the choice of multiple instance types, operating systems and software packages. 

Bottom Line

Amazon EC2 changes the economics of computing by allowing customers to pay only for the capacity they actually use. This platform boasts one million users across the globe.

Cloud Platforms

2017 Buyer’s Guide

anagement Apprenda

Apprenda offers a cloud application platform that enables your business to offer PaaS to development teams. It includes support for both cloud native and traditional application workloads. Enterprises can securely deliver an entire ecosystem of data, services, applications and APIs to both internal and 433 River St. Troy, NY 121810 external clients. Apprenda provides one platform that enables policy driven United States control over all dev-ops processes, application workloads, and infrastructure. +1(888) 288-8300 Apprenda also covers multiple data-centers and clouds meaning that you can www.apprenda.com build once and run your applications anywhere with complete infrastructure independence.

From the Company

“Most PaaS offerings focus on providing deploy and manage value, which significantly reduces dev ops and IT burdens, but does little to accelerate application development or reduce project cost burdens. Apprenda provides a variety of architecture services and frameworks that satisfy a number of typical requirements and cross cutting concerns of most web and SOA apps.”

Key Features

Compatibility – One platform for your entire custom app portfolio. Build, deploy, run, and manage your traditional .NET and Java applications, together with your microservices and container based workloads.

Extensibility – Use one platform with a growing list of out-of-the-box integrations and powerful service add on capabilities.

Interoperability – Spans multiple data-centers and clouds.

Governability – Enables all policy driven control over all of your dev-ops processes, application workloads, and infrastructure utilization.

Bottom Line

Apprenda creates modern, enterprise-ready app platforms and with more than a decade of evaluating customer insights, they provide compatible solution offerings for both individuals and IT departments.

Cloud Platforms

2017 Buyer’s Guide

anagement CenturyLink

CenturyLink has data centers around the world and they release new capabilities and services every 14 days. The vendor’s cloud platform was purpose built for IT operations. The flexible, integrated platform comes with on 1100 112th Avenue NE boarding assistance and delivers secure and scalable clouds with high Bellevue, WA 98004 performance rates. With CenturyLink you can automate daily server United States +1(855) 225-2967 administration and cloud management functions with expert intensive www.ctl.io processes freeing up IT staff, with the CenturyLink Cloud Control Portal.

From the Company

“CenturyLink's Cloud infrastructure and management tools offer you an easier path to the cloud, whether you want to offload a few virtual machines, create new applications or migrate legacy workloads. And with CenturyLink's portfolio of managed services available whenever you need them, CenturyLink Cloud stands as an easy-to-start solution that's ready to scale with your business.”

Key Features

Security and disaster recovery – Establish compliance, security/data protection/privacy and the ability to failover to the cloud in the event of unplanned downtime.

Real time scalability – Scale up and down based on need, seasonality, or project.

Agility – Monitor projects, people, productivity, and product life cycles effectively.

Cost reduction – There is no need to spend money on hardware, software or licensing fees. Users can also maintain access to information with minimal upfront spending. Speed – Utilizing this solution means faster times to market.

Bottom Line

CenturyLink Cloud customers say this solution outperforms the rest when it comes to ease of use, performance, reliability, time to provision, global network and ability to scale. They are the third largest telecommunications company in the US behind AT&T and Verizon and serve customers in 37 states.

Cloud Platforms

2017 Buyer’s Guide

anagement Citrix

Citrix was founded in 1989 with the goal of making the world’s apps and data secure. This fast, simple and flexible platform enables one-click service integration and allows users to extend an existing data center into the cloud. Users also gain the ability to rapidly manage and scale across more than one 2291 Wood Oak Drive Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33309 location. Citrix’ XenApp and XenDesktop services allow users to deliver virtual United States applications and desktops to any device. This service allows users to +1 (800) 424-8749 maintain full control over their applications, applications, and application www.citrix.com users.

From the Company

“Citrix Cloud (formerly Citrix Workspace Cloud) is a control plane to manage all Citrix technologies. This cloud- based approach means reduced infrastructure, centralized control and SaaS-style updates, contributing to lower administration cost and complexity. Get the best way to deliver a Citrix environment using any cloud or infrastructure of your choice.”

Key Features

ShareFile – Meet the collaboration needs of employees and the data security requirements of the enterprise with this secure enterprise file sync and sharing service.

Secure delivery– Deliver secure virtual apps and desktops to any device, helps automate and simplify the HR Process by streamlining and automating the entire employee life cycle, reducing costs associated with their employee self-service, and ensuring compliance.

Automatic Scaling – Scale quickly and automatically with Costpoint, you can operate more efficiently with more transactional control by eliminating manual processes with electronic billing, automating business processes, and centralizing contract information in one place.

Speed – This platform allows IT to be faster, more cost effective and agile.

Integration – This solution is integrated with XenApp and XenDesktop technology.

Bottom Line

Citrix Cloud quickly establishes new sites and offices plus uses multiple disaster recovery locations. The company currently serves several well-known clients including Aer Lingus and CDW.

Cloud Platforms

2017 Buyer’s Guide

anagement Cloudistics

Cloudistics offers a software-driven platform with the same pay-as-you-grow economics as the public cloud. It’s easy to use and offers predictable performance, costs and control of data and apps. Plus, it delivers the same 11600 Sunrise Valley Dr. simple deployment and management as the public cloud, but with the Reston, VA 20191 security, control and performance of a private on-premises cloud. It’s modular United States +1 (703) 570-8880 design allows users to pick and choose the resources that are optimized for www.cloudistics.com application demands

From the Company

“Launched in 2016, Cloudistics helps anyone bring the power of the cloud to the datacenter in an easy-to-use, on- premises cloud platform that automatically provides high performance resources for all types of applications: Docker, Splunk, Hadoop, Citrix® VDI, and many other high performance workloads.”

Key Features

All-flash storage – Deliver 5x faster applications with built-in all-flash virtual storage and line-speed network visualization technology.

Scalable hardware –Create a cohesive on-prem cloud that can be deployed quickly and at a lower cost than the public cloud.

Simple infrastructure – This tool helps anyone bring the power of the cloud to the datacenter in an easy-to-use, on premises cloud that automatically provides high performance resources.

Cloud controller – Ignite is a free cloud-based management controller that helps with building, deploying and managing clouds from various locations, all from a single pane of glass.

Bottom Line

With Cloudistics, network, storage, compute resources, and cloud controller have been engineered to create a cohesive on-premises cloud that can be deployed in a fraction of the time and at a third of the cost of the public cloud. Deploy your application workloads in minutes and Cloudistics will deploy the optimal resources needed to ensure best performance. All resources scale independently and painlessly as your applications grow.

Cloud Platforms

2017 Buyer’s Guide

anagement EngineYard

EngineYard provides a cloud orchestration platform empowering developers and DevOps to provision, manage, monitor and control applications in the public and private cloud. The platform uses open source technology to automate quick deployment and management of apps. EngineYard’s platform 580 Market Street automatically configures all security groups and firewalls. With EngineYard, San Francisco, CA 94103 United States users can keep production environments separate from development +1 (866) 518-9273 environments. www.engineyard.com

From the Company

“We started EngineYard to meet a genuine need—developers were building business-critical Ruby on Rails applications but didn’t want to worry about application deployment, management and scaling. We assist with small to large deployments, of any instance size, across a spectrum of applications ranging from SaaS, mobile, eCommerce, interactive websites, marketing campaigns and healthcare.”

Key Features

Cloning – Clone your full production environment with a single click.

Dedicated tenancy– Your environment is isolated from other customer environments, is self-contained and includes dedicated compute, storage, and database services.

Snapshots and backups – Application code and databases are written out to persistent storage volumes. They automatically mount those volumes and create backups.

Fine grained controls – They offer a wide range of controls for configuration, deployment and management.

Bottom Line

EngineYard’s engineering and community team members include leading Ruby on Rails and PHP contributors, expert cluster engineers, and seasoned DBAs to provide web server performance, database efficiency, and long- term scalability. They serve thousands of customers including AOL, Audi and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Cloud Platforms

2017 Buyer’s Guide

anagement Exoscale

Exoscale, founded in 2011, offers a cloud computing platform built for native cloud teams. It enables users to start their cloud server in just 30 seconds, scale to more servers and go cloud native. With this platform users can Route de Marcolet spawn virtual servers in different data centers, securely configure firewall 39 Crissier rules across any number of instances and control access to their own Switzerland infrastructure with organizations, keypairs and multi-factor authentication. +1 41 (58) 255-0066 www.exoscale.ch

From the Company

“The application can be configured for a variety of settings including but not limited to discrete manufacturing, process manufacturing, multi-mode manufacturing, construction and engineering, and esoteric and demanding settings like multi-mode manufacturing, aerospace and defense, engineer, procure construct (EPC) and offshore oil and gas drilling. It is in these demanding settings that combine elements of manufacturing, project management and asset management that IFS Applications is without peer as an ERP solution”

Key Features

Compute – High performance SSD cloud servers, full 10 Gbit secure private networking and self-sustained zones for resilient deployments.

Object storage - IFS Highly available multi-redundancy object storage. DNS – Anycast DNS network for low latency resolution. Runstatus – Hosted status dashboards for devops teams and transparency for service incidents and scheduled maintenances.

Bottom Line

Exoscale’s simple and intuitive interfaces make powerful concepts easy to use for teams of any size. Since they announced their public cloud in 2014, their customers have launched 10,0000 VM instances.

Cloud Platforms

2017 Buyer’s Guide

anagement

GigaSpaces

GigaSpaces’ Cloudify has automated scaling and support, and focuses on accelerating app and infrastructure life-cycle hybrid cloud management use cases. The cloud orchestration software platform automates installation, 609 5th Avenue deployment and post-deployment processes. It’s tightly integrated with New York, NY 10017 OpenStack and offers support for other cloud platforms to provide United States +1 (646) 421-2830 interoperability across stacks. www.gigaspaces.com

From the Company

“Cloudify is an open source, TOSCA-based cloud orchestration framework that provides full lifecycle automation (provisioning, deployment, monitoring and remediation) of enterprise and NFV applications. Cloudify provides a single pane of glass across cloud platforms, containers and even non-virtualized and bare metal, all while supporting your existing tools and install base.”

Key Features

Built-in tools – Deployment and topology monitoring along with logging and analytics engine, plus support for Chef and Puppet.

Automation – Auto-scaling and automation of fail-over included. Support – Get a Provides support for TOSCA/Yaml-based orchestration DSL and multi-cloud support including OpenStack, CloudStack and AWS.

Deployment update – Allows updating of application deployments, enabling application operations engineers and developers to introduce topology changes and include new resources to run TOSCA deployments.

Bottom Line

Cloudify offers coverage for 90 percent of the workloads being used in large enterprises today, from hybrid cloud models through Cloudify’s plugin support of the top 5 clouds along with containerized and non-containerized workloads. With this solution, users are able to manage full application lifecycles on hybrid infrastructure plugging in diverse toolsets. Cloudify has been recognized several times in the industry, and won an award for New Product Innovation in 2015 from Frost & Sullivan.

Cloud Platforms

2017 Buyer’s Guide

anagement Google

Google is taking aim at AWS’s top spot in the cloud market with their secure, global and cost-effective cloud platform. Tapping into big data, Google Cloud finds answers quickly and builds advanced products, while also enabling users to grow from prototype to production to planet-scale, without having to 1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy Mountain View, CA 94043 worry about capacity, performance or reliability. Google Cloud Platform is United States powered by its own Google Linux variant. A notable feature of Google Cloud +1(650) 253-0000 Platform is that its sophisticated networking comes as a standard. It’s easy to cloud.google.com create a virtual network, including private and public subnets on which you can arrange your VMs.

From the Company

“Google Cloud Platform lets you focus on what’s next for your business. Google Cloud Platform frees you from the overhead of managing infrastructure, provisioning servers and configuring networks. To let innovators innovate and let coders, well, just code.”

Key Features

Future-Proof infrastructure – Google offers a secure, global, high performance, cost-effective and constantly improving cloud platform built to last.

Serverless – With serverless, your most important cycles are devoted to code, and little time is needed to configure the infrastructure.

Machine learning – Fast, scalable and easy to use ML services. Use pre-trained models or train custom models on your data.

Encryption key management – Cloud KMS is integrated with cloud audit logging and lets you manage encryption for your cloud services the same way you do on-premises.

Bottom Line

Tech giant Google aims to help developers build the future of visionary cloud tools and infrastructure, applications, maps and devices. They have a global expansion planned for 2017 and currently serve high profile customers including Coca-Cola, Spotify and Disney.

Cloud Platforms

2017 Buyer’s Guide

anagement HPE

HPE Helion Stackato is a complete solution for cloud-native application development. It includes a certified Cloud Foundry technology component and enables developers to quickly build cloud native apps and deploy them on multiple clouds. Stackato allows users to improve flexibility and efficiency 3000 Hanover St. Palo Alto CA 94304 without sacrificing security or privacy. HPE allows you to rapidly scale cloud United States applications across hybrid environments and run containerized applications in +1 800-607-3567 production with the resilience and availability of Cloud Foundry technology www.hpe.com built into your application platform.

From the Company

“In today’s idea economy, success favors organizations that can rapidly turn ideas into new products or services. Disruptive business models are succeeding. New technology is redefining how companies develop and deliver applications. In this changing climate, IT must evolve to support the business. Hybrid cloud is a catalyst for IT transformation. It improves efficiency, accelerates delivery of apps and services, and gives you the flexibility to combine your preferred clouds and existing on-premises infrastructure in the ratio best suited to your organization. HPE Helion hybrid cloud solutions provide simplicity, security, governance and speed to support your transformation to hybrid infrastructure.”

Key Features

Non-disruptive failovers – The platform includes non-disruptive failovers and failback and automated orchestration of recovery plans.

Zero RPO – Allows customers to get near zero Recovery Point Objective (RPO) SLAs with continuous data replication technology.

Automated VM replication – Users get orchestrated and automated VM replication, boot order delays, re-IP addressing, pre-failover and post-failover scripting capabilities to achieve low Recovery Time Objectives.

Bottom Line

With HPE Helion OpenStack, users get a highly configurable infrastructure to support business stakeholder demands and provide a modern, agile development experience for developers. HPE serves a plethora of well- known clients with their cloud platform, including 20th Century Fox and Accenture.

Cloud Platforms

2017 Buyer’s Guide

anagement IBM Cloud

An IBM solution for cloud integration enables users to implement new technologies and approaches to connect ecosystems in various ways. With IBM Cloud, users are able to integrate native cloud apps and enterprise apps to ensure seamless connectivity between back-end and front-end systems. 1 New Orchard Rd. IBM Bluemix operates on a public cloud and features a solution that’s built on Armonk, NY 10504 the existing Cloud Foundry platform. Bluemix’s dashboard makes it simple for United States users to create and manage services and applications. This dashboard also +1 (877) 257-5227 www.ibm.com allows you to monitor your usage and your users’ access.

From the Company

“It’s your data, your insight, your cloud. We protect it. You control it. Own your unique insights on a cloud built for business. Use artificial intelligence (AI) on IBM Cloud, built with some of the world’s largest usable data sets.”

Key Features

Speed – Deploy a hybrid cloud with IBM and WMWare in hours instead of weeks.

Development – Develop, experiment and iterate at speed.

AI – Use artificial intelligence on IBM Cloud.

Flexibility – Includes hybrid cloud object storage.

Scalability – Easily scale up or down with this solution.

API management – Allows users to quickly create, manage, and monitor APIs to expand ecosystems. And the API gateway secures and manages transactions throughout ecosystems using a single, extensible gateway platform.

Bottom Line

Walmart and American Airlines are just two of the many customers that have implemented IBM Cloud. IBM customers choose their cloud platform due to its wide range of application capabilities and reliability, among other features. They have a global footprint consisting of more than 50 data centers in 17 countries.

Cloud Platforms

2017 Buyer’s Guide

anagement Kintone

Kintone was launched by three Panasonic engineers in 1997 as Cybozu Corporation. The company unveiled its cloud solution in 2011 in an effort to transform the way teams manage data, projects and operations. Kintone 560 Mission Street offers knowledge based support and video tutorials for their client base that San Francisco, CA 94065 typically consists of mid-size businesses and larger enterprises. United States +1 (415) 692-6546 www.kintone.com

From the Company

“San Francisco-based kintone is making teamwork better with an agile, cloud-based, no-coding required business application development and deployment platform. Named in Gartner 2016 Enterprise application Platform as a Service (aPaaS), kintone empowers teams of all sizes to collaborate and solve business process inefficiencies by rapidly creating custom database and work flow-driven applications with robust analytics. Custom applications built with kintone range from CRM, project management, asset management, SCM, and much more.”

Key Features

No code – The E–Business Suite supports the full life cycle of project and portfolio management with a single, accurate view of all project related activities and industry leading functionality allows users to select the best portfolio of initiatives.

Web-based – Kintone’s cloud platform is web-based.

Enterprise ready– Organizations can maintain data security with granular permission controls and 2-Factor Authentication, all while promoting real-time multichannel productivity with native mobile apps.

Analytics – Analytics are generated in dynamic charts and integrate seamlessly with scores of other services.

Bottom Line

Kintone has more than 5,000 clients and 140,000 end users have built, deployed and used over 300,000 applications on Kintone. There is a free trial available for this subscription based solution and pricing starts at about $24 per month.

Cloud Platforms

2017 Buyer’s Guide

anagement Mendix

Mendix is a software company headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. Their aPaaS solution transforms ideas into applications. It was designed for businesses and IT teams, and aims to help them innovate faster. The 268 Summer St. enterprise-grade technology hides complexity and offers full runtime Boston, MA 02210 optimized for web-scale operations. With Mendix 7’s Connector Kit allows you United States to handle complex XML messages, leverage IoT and algorithmic, and more +1 (857) 263-8200 www.mendix.com

From the Company

“Mendix’s signature platform as a service allows users to rapidly build applications using visual models. The platform also offers pre-built templates and widgets, one-click cloud deployment, and cloud based app management functionality to further speed the delivery of custom applications. By supporting speed and agility across the entire application lifecycle, Mendix users reap a host of benefits, including: Reduced time to market by condensing project duration by 50%, Increased staff productivity by reducing development effort by 70%, Enhanced IT resourcing across more projects with teams that are 60% smaller, and Improved business-IT collaboration that produces higher quality applications.”

Key Features

Agile Project Management – Estimate and plan sprints and future releases, monitor progress using scrum boards and burn down charts.

Reusable app components – Use these for composing the necessary building blocks versus reinventing the wheel

1 Click Deployment – Fully automated provisioning of application environments, developer sandboxes for instant testing, and DTAP environments for staged go-live.

APIs – Web services and APIs for robust integration.

Bottom Line

Mendix was named a visionary in the 2016 Gartner Magic Quadrant for aPaaS. They offer developer support for simple and complex projects. Liberty Mutual, just one of their many well-known clients, used this platform to build a new mobile site in just two months.

Cloud Platforms

2017 Buyer’s Guide

anagement Microsoft

Microsoft offers Azure as their open and flexible cloud service platform. Azure supports the broadest selection of operating systems, programming languages, frameworks, tools, databases, and devices. With it, you can run Linux containers with Docker integration; build apps with JavaScript, Python, and more. Azure One Microsoft Way cloud service supports the same technologies millions of developers and IT Redmond, WA 980521 United States professionals already rely on. With Azure Stack, users can bring Azure +1 (800) 642-7676 development and deployment into their data center. The Azure hybrid solutions www.microsoft.com give users the best worlds providing increased IT options while also decreasing complexity and cost.

From the Company

“Some cloud providers make you choose between your datacenter and the cloud. Not Azure, which easily integrates with your existing IT environment through the largest network of secure private connections, hybrid database and storage solutions, and data residency and encryption features — so your assets stay right where you need them. And with Azure Stack, you can bring the Azure model of application development and deployment to your datacenter. Azure hybrid cloud solutions give you the best of both worlds: more IT options, less complexity and cost. It’s why it’s one of the best cloud computing services available.”

Key Features

Pre-built templates – Any developer or IT professional can be productive with Azure’s integrated tools and pre- built templates.

Managed/pay as you go services – Azure’s managed and pay-as-you-go services can quickly scale up or down to match demand.

Security – Microsoft offers an industry-leading commitment to the protection and privacy of data.

Worldwide network – With Azure running on a worldwide network of Microsoft managed data centers across 30 regions, users have several options for running apps and ensuring good customer performance.

Bottom Line

Azure is a trusted cloud service used by enterprises across the globe and engineered to handle any size workload. More than 66 percent of Fortune 500 companies trust Azure, including Heineken along with NBC Sports.

Cloud Platforms

2017 Buyer’s Guide

anagement Oracle

Oracle Corporation primarily specializes in developing and marketing database software along with technology, cloud engineered systems and enterprise software products. Their cloud platform leverages standards-based shared services and database functionality based on Oracle Exadata Database 500 Oracle Pkwy Machine. It delivers cost savings through standardization and high utilization Redwood Shores, CA 94065 of the shared platform across multiple applications. United States (650) 506-7000 www.oracle.com

From the Company

“Oracle Cloud is the industry’s broadest and most integrated public cloud. It offers best-in-class services across software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and infrastructure as a service (IaaS), and even lets you put Oracle Cloud in your own data center. Oracle Cloud helps organizations drive innovation and business transformation by increasing business agility, lowering costs, and reducing IT complexity.”

Key Features

Scalability – Elastic scalability on demand.

Social capabilities– Application services are built into this platform, including social marketing, social engagement and monitoring, along with social networking for purposeful collaboration.

Embedded BI – This solution offers embedded business intelligence and ubiquitous access through mobile devices.

Developer flexibility – Developers can extend apps or build their own stand-alone apps using standards based programming languages and development tools

Bottom Line

Oracle boasts over 10,000 customers and 25 million users. They claim to have invested nearly 7 years in engineering and strategic acquisitions in order to offer the world’s most comprehensive portfolio of enterprise- grade cloud services.

Cloud Platforms

2017 Buyer’s Guide

anagement OrangeScape

OrangeScape, a PaaS provider founded in 2003, offers KiSSFLOW, a cloud- based platform to help business leaders create, modify and track automated business applications without IT support. KiSSFLOW has a human-centric 800 West El Camino Real design that allows users to build workflows with modern technology, and Mountain View, CA 94040 eliminates the need for complicated mapping. United States +1 (650) 394-7227 KiSSFLOW, is powered by an embedded rule engine technology called HCE www.orangescape.com (Hierarchical computation engine) that has approved US patent.

From the Company

“KiSSFLOW is a tool for IT directors to be able to hand over the power of business process management to leaders of business units. Since it is a platform, any business leader can create a unique form and workflow to facilitate a smooth process. We work very hard to make sure KiSSFLOW includes all of the most important features and also that the User Experience remains simple and human-centric.”

Key Features

Unified Dashboard – View all of your approvals and input requests from a single page inside KiSSFLOW, or from their mobile app.

Unlimited Automated Process Creation – Use templates or create your own automated process from scratch. Edit any process with a simple drag-and-drop interface.

Integration-ready – KiSSFLOW can be plugged into any other cloud-based software with open APIs for use in financial, HR, or other core software.

Tracking and Reporting – Know in an instant which requests are outstanding and what task they are stuck on. Get reporting tools to track workflows in real time.

Bottom Line

KiSSFLOW by OrangeScape offers workflows as simple or as complex as needed. Connect it to all of your essential workflow automation tools and leverage the tailor-made reporting feature. A free 15-day trial is available for prospective buyers. Randstad and Dominoes are just two major names that have implemented and use this tool.

Cloud Platforms

2017 Buyer’s Guide

anagement Outsystems

Outsystems combines the power of low-code development with advanced mobile capabilities, which enables visual development of entire application portfolios that are easily integrated with other, current systems. They have 5901 Peachtree Dunwoody over 7 million end users across the globe, 100,000 community members, and Atlanta, GA 30328 90,000 applications. The cloud platform boasts easy integration allowing United States customers to develop their own backend service and connect with popular +1 (404) 719-5100 www.outsystems.com cloud services, orchestrate data across their systems, and more.

From the Company

“Every aspect of Outsystems is crafter to help you build better apps faster. From high productivity visual development to powerful tools to deploy and manage your apps, Outsystems helps you deliver applications quickly and make changes easily. CoreERP and CRM solutions, Aging Legacy systems. Custom apps that track satellites and power factories. These are just a few of the examples of real projects where Outsystems made it extremely easy to integrate external enterprise system, databases, or custom apps. Choose from a wide variety of pre-built open-source connectors or build your own. Integrate with SOAP web services and REST APIs with no coding. Develop your own back-end as a service and connect with popular cloud services. Orchestrate data across your systems with workflow and business logic”.

Key Features

Simple deployments – Deliver and update apps with one click. Outsystems tracks all changes and handles database scripts and deployment processes.

Full-stack visual deployment – Drag-and-drop the functionality you need for UI, business processes, logic, and data models to create full-stack, cross platform apps. You can also add your own code when necessary.

Automatic refactoring – Outsystems analyzes all models and immediately refactors dependencies. Modify a database table and all your queries are updated automatically. In-App feedback – Apps are better and faster with in-app feedback. Users can share voice and written feedback inside the app.

Bottom Line

Thousands of customers trust Outsystems for rapid application development due to their low-code platform. They offer a free version for one developer and a complimentary 30-day trial for enterprises.

Cloud Platforms

2017 Buyer’s Guide

anagement Pivotal

Pivotal is an enterprise cloud platform, powered by Cloud Foundry and VMWare cloud infrastructure products. CF is PaaS that can be deployed on multiple cloud environments. It allows for scaling and updating without downtime. 3495 Deer Creek Rd. Pivotal CF Services work to create a PaaS ecosystem with differentiated data Palo Alto, CA services including Mobile, Hadoop, Visual Analytics, and Messaging. The United States +1 (650) 846-1608 platform’s architecture offers developers a production ready application www.pivotal.io container runtime and fully automated service deployments.

From the Company

“Pivotal’s Cloud Native platform drives software innovation for many of the world’s most admired brands. We transform how developers deploy software and consume services, how operators install software and deploy services, and how the world connects and secures software. Cloud Native describes the patterns of high performing organizations delivering software faster, consistently and reliably at scale. Continuous delivery, DevOps, and microservices label the why, how and what of the cloud natives. In the most advanced expression of these concepts they are intertwined to the point of being inseparable. Leveraging automation to improve human performance in a high trust culture, moving faster and safer with confidence and operational excellence.”

Key Features

Microservices – Developers move faster with composable services designed for independent deployment, scaling and recovery.

Open source – Built on the fully open source Cloud Foundry, this platform is backed by contributions from over 40 members of the Cloud Foundry Foundation.

DevOps – Align incentives and behaviors across your business with a high trust, empowered culture and a structured platform

Continuous delivery – Shorten your software delivery cycle with a platform designed to cut the time and cost of managing deployment operations.

Bottom Line

Ford, Allstate, GE, Comcast and Mercedes-Benz are just some of the world’s leading companies that work with Pivotal. The architecture of this tool allows businesses to offer their customers a production-ready app container runtime and fully automated service deployments.

Cloud Platforms

2017 Buyer’s Guide

anagement Quickbase

QuickBase first launched in 1999 and is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Once a division of Intuit, the now independent company aims to help businesses of all sizes drive productivity and digitally transform their 150 Cambridge Park Dr. organizations. The platform's unique low-code interface enables users to create Cambridge, MA 02140 custom applications quickly. Quickbase allows users to easily connect with United States other cloud applications with only a few clicks, and also offers automatic data +1 (844) 307-1804 www.quickbase.com synchronization.

From the Company

“QuickBase is the easiest IT-trusted platform for building customized business apps with no coding required. Business users get the fast solutions they need, while IT gets the security and control it demands. No wonder more than half of the Fortune 100 relies on QuickBase to get more done. Every day. QuickBase includes easy web forms for fast data collection, point-and-click integration with other cloud apps and data sources, robust APIs, unlimited reports and dashboards, customizable home pages, and right-sized governance including role-based access control.”

Key Features

Simple syncing– Connect QuickBase to your other cloud apps in a few clicks and sync data automatically.

Scalable – QuickBase supports the data needs of small businesses to larger enterprises.

Security and compliance – Businesses around the world entrust their financial information to QuickBase’s data centers.

Low-code – Users can create or update apps without coding or IT resources.

Bottom Line

QuickBase is used by more than 6,000 customers including Sodexo and Helm, Inc., and half of those are part of the Fortune 100. They offer a 30-day free trial for prospective clients. Quickbase allows your applications to be accessible from anywhere at any time.

Cloud Platforms

2017 Buyer’s Guide

anagement RedHat

Red Hat has been around since 1993 and says they’re responsible for helping 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies solve their business challenges, align their IT strategies, and prep for the future. They provide their solutions through an open business model and a predictable subscription model. RedHat also makes it easy for you to migrate your current Red Hat subscriptions for use on RedHat 100 E. Davie St. Raleigh, NC 27601 US Certified Cloud Providers. Each of the benefits of your subscription transfer to +1 (603) 898-3100 the public cloud. www.redhat.com

From the Company

“Staying competitive today requires modern applications. Building those requires a modern IT, which many businesses lack. Before your developers look outside of your IT organization for solutions, check out Red Hat® Cloud Suite. This fully open source solution for enterprises combines a container-based app-development platform, private-cloud infrastructure, public-cloud interoperability, and a common management framework. Red Hat Cloud Suite modernizes your infrastructure so developers can build services and deliver them to customers and your organization fast, and so IT can retain control and manage the environment from one place.”

Key Features

Modernize apps – Get the container based application to build modern apps. Run workloads in containers or virtual machines on various platforms. Simplicity – Use the same tool across virtualization, private cloud, app development, containers and public cloud. Integration – Red Hat tightly integrated cloud technologies. Fully supported components work together seamlessly to help you build cloud environments, write apps, and maintain integrated management, governance, and workload portability.

Unified management – Manage your environment with only one tool, eliminating the need for extra staff or redundant policy implementations.

Bottom Line

Red Hat allows users to deliver the apps and insights their business needs quickly, while maintaining security. Sprint and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center are just two of the many clients they serve. RedHat’s cloud infrastructure offers automated provisioning configuration management, and software management of RedHat Enterprise Linux and any RPM-based application.

Cloud Platforms

2017 Buyer’s Guide

anagement SAP

SAP’s HANA Cloud Platform is an open-standard, Eclipse-based modular platform as a service. It allows users to build, setup and deploy applications that feature mobile, collaboration, big data and analytics services. It also provides a unique in-memory database along with application services. The Dietmar-Hopp-Allee 16 platform enables you to rapidly develop new applications or extend current 69190 Walldorf ones. Anyone can extend SAP applications in just minutes. With SAP’s HANA Germany +49 (0)6227 / 7-47474 platform www.sap.com

From the Company

“Now more than ever, developers need the right platform to quickly extend, build and run cloud business applications. SAP HANA Cloud Platform is the Platform-as-a-Service purpose-built to meet the exacting needs of modern developers. With comprehensive services and capabilities, the world's best developers depend on HANA Cloud Platform to build better apps in less time.”

Key Features

Analytics – Analyze and act on data as it arrives. Whether its sensor data from smart devices, social media feeds, market prices, or click streams from a web site, SAP HANA Cloud Platform, smart data streaming can extract insight from that raw data, allowing you to respond as fast as things happen. Integration – With the integration services of SAP HANA Cloud Platform, you can securely collaborate with customers and partners at scale to improve efficiencies as well as gain real-time insights from sensors, devices, and social sentiment. IoT – SAP HANA Cloud Platform, Internet of Things service provides the ability to quickly develop, deploy, and manage real-time IoT and machine-to-machine (M2M) and remote data synch applications. Security– SAP HANA Cloud Platform's rich security services make it easy for you to create secure and reliable cloud applications, enabling you to focus on what you do best—delivering amazing apps.

Bottom Line

Bosch, Jaguar and Land Rover are just some of the large enterprises that rely on SAP. They have 110 million cloud subscribers and 41 data centers around the world. You can try the platform out for free and begin building right away.

Cloud Platforms

2017 Buyer’s Guide

anagement Salesforce

Salesforce is an American cloud computing company headquartered in San Francisco. Their cloud platform allows users to build apps with drag-and-drop components and design apps specific to any screen — phone, tablet, laptop, The Landmark desktop, or wearable. Leverage pre-built components from Salesforce and 1 Market AppExchange partners, or have your developers write their own. Salesforce’ San Francisco, CA 94105 United States cloud platform gives developers the ability to take on their application backlog + 1 (415) 901-7040 with ease. www.salesforce.com

From the Company

“Developers everywhere are using Force.com for business application development, creating cloud computing applications like enterprise resource planning (ERP), human resource management (HRM), and supply chain management (SCM). Force.com is a set of tools and services that make it faster and easier to create employee- facing applications that are instantly social and mobile. The Salesforce1 Platform allows you to create apps without worrying about hardware or infrastructure. So IT can focus solely on building apps and driving business results.”

Key Features

Flexible code – Developers can build apps without writing any code, or go beyond that using HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

Integration – This platform allows users to integrate with any data source. Force.com apps are automatically connected to Salesforce data and easily connect with any external data source using APIs.

Security and governance – Force.com includes security controls that handle user authentication and allows an admin to specify which groups of users can view, create, edit, or delete any record or field in the app.

Bottom Line

Salesforce offers a community of experts in addition to their platform. Utilize their ROI investment calculator to see if your revenue would improve after implementing a Salesforce platform. The platform is easily integrated with other Salesforce data, making it especially convenient for many organizations.

Cloud Platforms

2017 Buyer’s Guide

anagement ServieNow

ServiceNow, Inc. is a cloud computing company headquartered in California. It was first opened in 2003 and offers everything-as-a-service cloud computing, including platform-as-a-service. They have integration options for platforms 2225 Lawson Lane such as Salesforce, JIRA, and SharePoint. The ServiceNow Enterprise Cloud Santa Clara, CA 95054 provides a single system of engagement to convert unstructured data into United States +1 (408) 501-8550 structured work. www.servicenow.com

From the Company

“When he created the platform in 2003, our founder Fred Luddy said his mission was to: ‘Build a cloud-based platform to enable regular people to create meaningful applications to route work through an enterprise.’ In light of the digitization of the enterprise, his idea has never been more relevant. The Enterprise Cloud is architected to be flexible enough to adapt to the varying needs of any department. Imagine a world where your enterprise can provide self-service portals, automate the flow of legal documents, enable complex project management, help on-board new employees for human resources, or coordinate employee travel. If a product or service can be automated, ServiceNow can enable that”

Key Features

Multi-instance architecture – Every customer gets their own unique application logic and database, meaning they can all fully customize their cloud service without the need to combine data.

Security and compliance – Secure your data with this platform that uses multiple technologies that have been certified compliant by third-party organizations.

Global infrastructure – ServiceNow’s enterprise cloud was designed for Global 2000 enterprises in terms of availability, location and scale. They utilize 16 data centers in eight regions to accommodate their client base.

Automation – The ServiceNow platform means all customer instance provisioning is done with ServiceNow workflow as is all customer cloning.

Bottom Line

ServiceNow boasts a customer base of thousands including AAA and Ashley Furniture. This vendor was recognized in Gartner’s latest aPaaS Magic Quadrant and has offices across the globe.

Cloud Platforms

2017 Buyer’s Guide

anagement About Solutions Review

Solutions Review is a collection of technology news sites that aggregates, curates and creates the best content within leading technology categories. Solutions Review mission is connect buyers of enterprise technology with the best solution sellers. Over the past three years, Solutions Review has launched ten tech Buyer's Guide sites in categories ranging from Cybersecurity to Wireless 802.11ac as well as Mobility Management and Business Intelligence, Data Analytics, Data Integration and Cloud Platforms.

Information for this report was gathered via a meta-analysis of available online materials and reports, conversations with vendor representatives, and examinations of product demonstrations and free trials. Solutions Review does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in this publication and does not advise technology users to base their vendor selection entirely on this research. Solutions Review disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, regarding this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.