Want a sure edge on your competition? Just make it into one of Gartner’s magic quadrants, a ranking that rewards those who combine innovation and leadership.
Recently the research house took a peek at managed hosting, releasing a 13-page report on the matter.
So what precisely is managed hosting? For Gartner, “managed hosting solutions are offered on physical and virtualized infrastructures, including cloud infrastructure as a service. This market is mature, but cloud capabilities are disruptive, so vendors must be chosen with care,” the report said.
Furthermore, these services include storage, bandwidth and data center services, and the provider must manage the computing, including managing server operating systems – that element of management of course being the key!
These managed services can be provided in a number of ways: on dedicated physical servers, virtual servers, as infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) or on shared or multi-tenant infrastructure.
Gartner analyzed vendors’ ability to provide enterprise application hosting, such as handling SAP, e-business hosting including e-commerce and e-marketing, and Web-based business application hosting such as supporting corporate intranets.
Gartner’s criteria are the product or service itself, quality of user experience, market understanding, product strategy and innovation.
Gartner didn’t find a single perfect vendor. “Providers may be leaders in some areas but lag behind in others. As a result, it is important to match your use case with a vendor that excels in meeting your particular needs. Smaller providers may do one thing extraordinarily well, but may not have a comprehensive set of services that enables them to address a broad array of use cases,” Gartner explained.
Who made the magic quadrant cut? AT&T, Rackspace, Savvis and Verizon Terremark.
Pictured: Gartner Magic Quadrant for Managed Hosting, North America
AT&T
AT&T ranked lowest of the four magic quadrant residents, by a small margin. Because AT&T has been in the managed hosting game for a long time, it can handle complex needs. “It can also manage complex enterprise application hosting, in synergy with its application management business,” said Gartner, adding that AT&T clients are often unhappy with the way the provider processes billing.
Rackspace
Rackspace was a top finisher, ranking highest on execution. Gartner found Rackspace to be “the market share leader in pure-play managed hosting, and historically has grown significantly above the market average.”
Gartner also praised Rackspace for its customer service and overall responsiveness. Finally Gartner said Rackspace has aggressive pricing.
However, if you need fast throughout all the way to the West Coast of the U.S., Rackspace lacks infrastructure in that part of the country to guarantee high speeds.
Savvis
Savvis is another veteran of this space, and as a result, it “can handle extremely complex deals, including large-scale e-commerce and enterprise application hosting needs,” Gartner argued. Savvis also has a full set of offerings in the areas of middleware, application support and the type of infrastructure it supports.
However, Savvis has been buying up companies, and this has blunted the company’s focus, Gartner believes.
Verizon Terremark
This company came about when Verizon bought Terremark two years ago. Both outfits already had managed hosting offerings that were essentially combined during the merger.
For previous Terremark accounts, customer service has gotten better since the merger.
Edited by
Alisen Downey
