Microsoft Is a Strong Performer in Enterprise Public Cloud Platforms Excerpted from the Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Public Cloud Platforms, Q4 2014 by John R
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FOR CIOS DECEMBER 29, 2014 Microsoft Is A Strong Performer In Enterprise Public Cloud Platforms Excerpted From The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Public Cloud Platforms, Q4 2014 by John R. Rymer and James Staten with Peter Burris, Christopher Mines, and Dominique Whittaker Microsoft’s relentless pursuit of cloud plaTFORM LEADERSHIP IS PAYING OFF Microsoft had a rough start in public cloud platforms back in 2008 as it debuted an offering aimed at rapid devs and coders but lacking enough transparency to the infrastructure below to garner broad appeal. Now, Azure is a full service platform with solid infrastructure services, robust application services, a solid partner ecosystem, and strong integrations with its tools for developers and systems administrators. It has also built strong bridges to the non-Microsoft developer community through solid support for Linux, open source tools, and middleware. While its offering lacks the maturity and breadth of capabilities and controls of AWS, Microsoft has delivered strong services for video, big data, mobility, and integrations with the rest of the Microsoft application portfolio. Azure has also benefitted from strong strategic priority under Satya Nadella, who ran this platform prior to his ascension to CEO. He has ensured that Microsoft be “cloud first,” mandating that all Microsoft services integrate with, and advance as, cloud services. Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Public Cloud Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Public Cloud Platforms For CIOs, Q4 ‘14 Platforms For Rapid Developers, Q4 ‘14 Risky Strong Risky Strong Bets Contenders Performers Leaders Bets Contenders Performers Leaders Strong Strong Amazon Web Services MIOsoft Microsoft, with a Forrester score of 4.20, Microsoft is a Leader in this Salesforce Forrester Wave. Cordys* Mendix MIOsoft Salesforce (Q2 2013) OutSystems OutSystems Google Mendix Acquia Current Rackspace* IBM Current offering (Q2 2013) offering Cordys* (Q2 2013) Engine Yard Acquia CenturyLink Dimension Data GoGrid Market presence Verizon Market presence Q4 2014 Participating vendor Q4 2014 Participating vendor Q4 2014 Non-participating vendor Weak Weak Q4 2014 Non-participating vendor Weak Strategy Strong Weak Strategy Strong *[Vendor] chose not to participate in this Wave update, but its developments *[Vendor] chose not to participate in this Wave update, but its developments since our last analysis aren’t substantial enough to change its position in our since our last analysis aren’t substantial enough to change its position in our market view. market view. Headquarters Forrester Research, Inc., 60 Acorn Park Drive, Cambridge, MA, 02140 USA Tel: +1 617.613.6000 • Fax: +1 617.613.5000 • www.forrester.com FOR CIOS Microsoft Is A Strong Performer In Enterprise Public Cloud Platforms 2 Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Public Cloud Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Public Cloud Platforms For Coders, Q4 ‘14 Platforms For DevOps Pros, Q4 ‘14 Risky Strong Risky Strong Bets Contenders Performers Leaders Bets Contenders Performers Leaders Strong Strong Amazon Web Services Amazon Web Services Microsoft, with a Microsoft Microsoft, with a Microsoft Forrester score of 4.08, Forrester score of 4.08, is a Leader in this is a Leader in this Forrester Wave. Forrester Wave. Salesforce Google Google IBM IBM Current Current Rackspace* offering offering (Q2 2013) Cordys* (Q2 2013) Engine Yard CenturyLink Acquia Dimension Data GoGrid Market presence Verizon Market presence Q4 2014 Participating vendor Q4 2014 Participating vendor Q4 2014 Non-participating vendor Q4 2014 Non-participating vendor Weak Weak Weak Strategy Strong Weak Strategy Strong *[Vendor] chose not to participate in this Wave update, but its developments *[Vendor] chose not to participate in this Wave update, but its developments since our last analysis aren’t substantial enough to change its position in our since our last analysis aren’t substantial enough to change its position in our market view. market view. See below for more information on Microsoft’s current offering, strategy, and market presence. Microsoft Evaluation Overview CURRENT OFFERING Self-service The Azure portal gives developers self-service provisioning and administration control control via portal, Visual Studio IDE integration, CLI, and RESTful APIs. Developers can now create, provision, and manage VMs from Visual Studio Server Explorer. It provides granular RBAC with multiple levels of users per tenancy and integrates with LDAP and Active Directory (a native Azure service). All portal functions are mirrored via RESTful APIs. It reports resource and cost consumption clearly. Platform Developers can configure: configuration options * Application platform (OS, cache, messaging, identity, and media service). * VM types and sizes. * Resource groups. * Data environments. * Storage volume types. * VPNs, point-to-site SSL and MPLS links, and IP addresses. IPv6 addresses are not supported. © 2015, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited December 29, 2014 FOR CIOS Microsoft Is A Strong Performer In Enterprise Public Cloud Platforms 3 Microsoft Evaluation Overview Monitoring and Azure provides deep monitoring of certain applications, components, and services; policy features on others, monitoring is limited to basic. Application usage statistics and incident data are provided. It offers multiple policy controls (ACLs, QoS, VLANs, bandwidth, etc.) that automatically follow the application or VM. Private and Azure Virtual Network supports site-to-site VPN connections and VNET-to-VNET hybrid cloud connectivity, and its ExpressRoute enables private MPLS connections to Azure data options (VPC centers. It offers Microsoft Azure Pack for on-premises deployment that presents to on-premises a subset of Azure Services (including IaaS) that is managed via System Center. total isolation) Application workloads can be deployed to either Azure or Azure Pack environments from System Center, Visual Studio, or Team Foundation Server. Managed service providers can also offer Azure pack for alternative hosting arrangements. Breadth of Azure includes several storage options, including Blob storage (files or blocks), storage options relational database (SQL Database), and nonrelational data (tables and HD Insight). Azure storage delivers redundancy on all customer data by ensuring that at least three copies are stored in the data center — each on a different fault domain. Azure also offers a managed, multitenant shared cache (Shared Caching) as well as a memcached compatible cache that uses the customer’s existing or dedicated Cloud Services instances (web/worker roles). In addition, SQL Database enables automatic HA — it is transparently configured for customers when they create each database with zero additional work. SSD, FC, or iBand storage options were not provided. Snapshot, backup, and recovery services were all provided. Audits and Azure was covered by the following certifications in June 2014: SSAE 16 (SOC 1 certifications Type 2 and SOC 2 Type 2), PCI DSS, FedRAMP JAB P-ATO, FISMA Moderate, and UK G-Cloud “Official.” All compliance certifications can be found at the Microsoft website (http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/support/trust-center/compliance/). Transaction Azure provides support for: features * ACID database transactions (SQL Database service). * Eventual consistency with high guarantees (NoSQL service). * Transactional messaging. Breadth of Azure provides many platform and several application services. platform and application Platform: services * Load balancing. * Application server/container. * Database. * NoSQL database. * Integration services. * Single sign-on and identity management. * Notification. * Scheduler. * Caching. * Application messaging. * Backup/restore. * Mobile back end. © 2015, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited December 29, 2014 FOR CIOS Microsoft Is A Strong Performer In Enterprise Public Cloud Platforms 4 Microsoft Evaluation Overview Breadth of Application: platform and * Video/media delivery. application * Content delivery services (Cont.) * Application catalog. Languages Microsoft provides supported SDKs for five languages: supported * .NET (C#). * Java. * PHP. * JavaScript/Node.js. * Python. * Ruby. Infrastructure Strong: Microsoft Azure abstracts most of the configuration details with tools and abstraction default settings for C#/.NET developers, specifically: features * Deployment automated by Azure’s Cloud Services (including operating system, .NET application platform, firewall, load balancer, DNS, and configuration of application code). * .NET middleware configuration automated by Azure Cloud Services. * Database configuration automated by Microsoft Azure SQL Database service. Application Microsoft provides broad services to assist application deployment for Microsoft deployment Azure: services * Test harness/framework setup and execution. * Team Foundation Server integration. * Automated build services (integration with MS Build). Through its Visual Studio Online service, Microsoft provides a comprehensive development, delivery, and life-cycle management process for Azure. Security Azure provides rich controls for both administrators and developers with clearly controls delineated roles. Azure does not automatically encrypt customer data at rest. Customers may implement encryption at rest by using .NET cryptographic services. Customers using Virtual Machines have additional options for encryption at rest, including the Encrypting File System in Windows Server 2008 R2 as well as Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) in