Author: MukeshRanjan

Broadcom’s Acquisition of VMware Sparks Unprecedented Chaos in the Virtualization World | Blog

Broadcom’s staggering US$61 billion acquisition of VMware in January marked one of the largest technology deals ever. Broadcom’s reputation for radical cost-cutting and focus on short-term shareholder value following acquisitions has raised concerns about VMware’s future direction. Read on for recommendations for enterprises, service providers, and competitors to deal with the aftermath of the acquisition of VMware.

Connect with us to discuss this acquisition further.

Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware has ignited worries that Broadcom’s aggressive cost-slashing and financial optimization measures will harm VMware’s reputation as a trusted partner and hinder its ability to innovate.

Let’s look at Broadcom’s troubling past track record of taking over companies and then selling off non-core assets:

  • Broadcom acquires CA Technologies: After Broadcom bought CA Technologies for US$18.9 billion in 2018, it sold the software company’s Veracode platform the following year for US $950 million and intermittently laid off CA Technologies employees. Moreover, CA Technologies’ mainframe business customers regularly expressed dissatisfaction post-acquisition, citing a lack of client focus, with many looking for a way out. Everest Group followed the acquisition of CA Technologies in detail in our blog, Broadcom, CA Technologies, and the Infrastructure Stack Collapse
  • Broadcom buys Symantec’s enterprise software business: Following its purchase of Symantec’s enterprise software business for US$10.7 billion in 2019, Broadcom sold Symantec’s cybersecurity services business to Accenture and the enterprise consulting group to HCL Technologies in 2020

Broadcom might be treading a similar path with VMware. As its acquisition history suggests, Broadcom’s actions will likely be drastic and swift. Within only a month, Broadcom has already created worrying disruptions, posing serious concerns for VMware clients and partners as outlined below:

VMWare blog

A brief history of VMware and Broadcom

Founded in 1998, VMware pioneered virtualization technology, allowing multiple virtual machines to run on a single server, eventually creating the multi-billion cloud market. Over the years, VMware grew its product offerings, such as vSphere, ESXi, and Workstation, to become a dominant cloud and infrastructure player. VMware created multiple software solutions for data center management, networking, security, and the digital workplace. The company has maintained a reputation for innovation, working closely with its service partners and creating a positive client experience.

Established in 1991, Broadcom initially specialized in developing semiconductors,  focusing on communication and networking chips. The company expanded over the years into many other areas, including security, infrastructure storage and management, and industrial solutions. In recent years, Broadcom consolidated its portfolio and now reports revenue in two areas – semiconductor solutions and infrastructure software. Broadcom is known for its aggressive acquisition strategy and focus on financial returns, often raising concerns about its commitment to product innovation and long-term support.

VMware and Broadcom merger leaves enterprise CIOs flummoxed

Since its launch over a decade ago, VMware has held massive dominance in cloud computing, with nearly all enterprises licensing its virtualization technology. Its slowdown started when the giant hyperscalers, such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, developed public cloud offerings with multiple advantages beyond VMware’s in private cloud settings.

However, most enterprises eventually realized that both public and private clouds had their advantages and drawbacks and settled for a hybrid environment to leverage the strengths of each cloud type.

  1. Enterprise recommendations

CIOs who had settled on hybrid cloud strategies have been left with pressing questions by Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware. They must decide whether to stay with VMware, immediately look for alternatives, or wait and watch what peers do. This also allows organizations to reevaluate service providers’ innovative problem-solving abilities or rebalance hybrid cloud portfolios.

While the answers to these critical questions will depend on their specific situations, all enterprises should take the following steps:

    • Reexamine the hybrid cloud portfolio mix – Most enterprises today have an ineffective blend of workloads on public and private clouds, leading to low-value realization. Enterprises should first reevaluate workloads and create a strategic migration and modernization plan
    • Assess the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) needVMware and Citrix have been the leading VDI vendors despite the technology’s performance challenges. Fortunately, managing the VMware disruption in the VDI space should be relatively straightforward given the low penetration of VDIs among employees and a flurry of VDI-as-a-service offerings from BigTechs such as Azure Virtual Desktop, AWS WorkSpaces, Citrix DaaS, and specialist players like Anunta, Dizzion, and Parallels
    • Evaluate the implications of staying with or leaving VMware While each organization should undertake a thorough cost-benefit-impact analysis, they should consider the following factors:
      • Expect an increase in total cost of ownership (TOC): Broadcom’s move from perpetual licenses to membership-based pricing will likely result in higher TOC
      • Consider the impact on customers engaged with Dell: Organizations engaged with Dell as the VMware reseller will see an even higher price impact since Broadcom eliminated Dell’s preferred pricing with VMware
      • Recognize the cost of change: Most enterprises have been using VMware software for a long time. Shifting away will require a significant transformation with upfront investment, talent management, and business continuity planning
    • Engage actively with service provider partners – Most enterprises have adopted VMware solutions through third-party service providers. Clients should accept their help to understand the alternatives, advantages, limitations, and integration risks and engage them to create innovative options.
  1. Service provider recommendations

Service providers play a critical role as the conduit between technology providers and enterprises in helping provide guidance and the next steps to navigate this uncertainty.

While service provider partners are also grappling with sudden, unexpected terminations of partner agreements with VMware, they must act quickly to determine the best step for their enterprise customers. Delaying and watching is not an option, and we recommend the following actions:

    • Understand and evaluate all alternatives – A thorough understanding of all available alternatives to VMware is the first step to retaining credibility with enterprises. Nutanix, Microsoft, Citrix, Scale Computing, and ComputerVault are options for virtualization, while Microsoft Azure virtual desktop, Amazon workspaces, and Citrix workspace are contenders for VDI. Not to be forgotten, hyperscalers, including AWS, Azure, GCP, Oracle, and IBM, also offer virtual private cloud and full-stack solutions
    • Refine and accelerate hybrid cloud go-to-market – Every cloud has a silver lining, and the VMware uncertainty has created an opportunity to add new energy to a stabilized cloud go-to-market and messaging. Many enterprises claim a lack of service provider cloud innovation over the last two or three years, and this is an opportunity to start new conversations and deepen relationships
    • Push Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) offerings – DaaS or VDI-as-a-service offerings have been available from vendors, including hyperscalers, BigTechs, service providers, and specialists, but haven’t taken off. Despite the many DaaS benefits, enterprises have shown interest spikes but lacked an external stimulus to kickstart large-scale transition. The VMware frenzy could be a catalyst for the transition to DaaS
    • Collaborate with Broadcom without biases – The sudden and shocking actions by Broadcom have led to many preconceived negative perceptions. However, service providers should be open to what Broadcom will offer as it aims to set a level playing field for VMware’s partners. Keeping an open mind will allow providers to leap ahead of their peers on VMware partner status. VMware’s huge client base cannot be ignored despite the current upheaval
  1. Competitor recommendations

Since VMware has shown its belly to competition, it’s now a mad rush. VMware’s competitors have a rare opportunity to grab its clients, potentially giving them considerable future revenue. Competitors understand this and have launched a scathing attack on VMware through email and social media campaigns, as well as direct outreach. While the desire to capture a larger market share is understandable, competitors should take a more balanced and pointed approach for higher conversion rates. We recommend the following strategies:

    • Create a structured attacker strategy – Going after as many clients as possible might sound attractive but is most likely inefficient. Identify a long list of accounts to target, prioritize them based on relevance, and create dedicated teams with established Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
    • Build deeper account intelligence to win more clients – Winning new clients requires a more nuanced approach beyond the marketing tactics to connect with distressed clients initially. Understanding the specific context of each potential client, including pain points, decision-making stakeholders, existing software, integration challenges, etc., can significantly increase deal conversion rates
    • Maximize channel partner leverage – Develop joint attacker strategies in collaboration with service providers who often understand clients’ needs better. Aggressively expand partnerships with service providers

We will continue to follow this space and watch how Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware unfolds. If you would like to discuss this further, reach out to [email protected] or [email protected].

Catch our upcoming webinar, Engineering Services in 2024: The Market Outlook and Commercial Trends, for insights into the pricing outlook, commercial dynamics, market attractiveness, and evolving buyer expectations for engineering services.

Energizing the Distributed Hybrid IT Environment: Implications of HPE Acquiring Juniper Networks | Blog

Beyond consolidating the competitive networking market, Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s (HPE) planned acquisition of Juniper Networks can potentially unlock a distributed, hybrid, secure fabric to optimize today’s hybrid IT environment. Explore the projected benefits to both companies and market repercussions in this blog. 

Reach out to learn more on this topic.

HPE’s announcement earlier this month of its plans to acquire Juniper Networks for approximately US$14 billion has mainly focused on the benefits HPE can gain, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities, new business lines, and margin improvements. However, the deal has far greater potential and can significantly impact the hybrid IT environment. Let’s delve into this further.

Hybrid IT: a distributed puzzle

Today’s businesses operate across a combination of on-premises infrastructure, public clouds, and edge computing resources. While this distributed hybrid model offers flexibility and scalability, it presents formidable challenges. Managing disparate technologies, ensuring seamless connectivity, and maintaining security across these diverse environments is a complex puzzle.

Cloud has already created a gamut of challenges for the networking and security industry, which both HPE and Juniper have struggled with. Yet, with the shift toward a distributed hybrid IT environment, a new growth story may emerge from these two infrastructure giants.

HPE + Juniper: a combined force for hybrid IT management

The HPE-Juniper merger holds the potential to simplify this landscape significantly. Bringing together HPE’s expertise in servers, storage, and edge computing with Juniper’s leadership in networking and security solutions can create a hybrid IT management powerhouse.

Here’s how this combined force could benefit both organizations:

  • As-a-service infrastructure stack: Imagine Greenlake’s as-a-service offering complemented by Juniper’s networking, security, and AI portfolios. This could culminate in an as-a-service infrastructure stack that can compete (theoretically) with the public clouds. Given the market’s search for alternative options amid rising cloud cost concerns, this can become an attractive option for enterprises and finally help HPE expand its edge-to-core strategy
  • Embedded security: Juniper’s security portfolio complements HPE’s existing offerings, providing a more comprehensive and integrated approach to securing hybrid environments. This can mitigate risks and ensure data protection across the hybrid ecosystem
  • Alternative network fabric options to Cisco: Despite being a long-time enterprise networking giant, Cisco’s innovation hasn’t scaled significantly to meet distributed computing model demands. With the combined scale of HPE and Juniper, enterprises finally will have meaningful alternatives for end-to-end networking requirements and, even better, an AI-enabled option through Juniper’s Mist capabilities
  • Consolidated automation capabilities: Juniper’s AI and automation capabilities through its Mist capabilities have been disrupting the data center and wireless markets. After HPE integrates these capabilities into its entire server, storage, cloud, and campus portfolios, enterprises stand to benefit from a more consolidated automation potential across the complete hybrid IT infrastructure stack

Challenges and considerations

While the potential benefits of the union are significant, there are also challenges to consider. Both companies have sizeable portfolios that overlap, especially in the networking segment. The strategy for prioritizing the network products between Juniper and HPE Aruba is unclear. Allocating the networking portfolio to Rami seems like a smart move, but how the internal sales and product will adapt to a combined market offering remains to be seen. Only time will tell if Antonio and Rami can make this merger work.

The road ahead: what the acquisition means

Competitors: With the consolidation, Cisco, Arista, and Extreme will have opportunities to target the existing Juniper and HPE accounts until the integration is fully operationalized. In the long term, price wars and another scaled competitor in the networking space could emerge. With the distributed world rising, competitors will need to enhance their offerings to provide an end-to-end intelligent, distributed, hybrid, and secure connectivity fabric.

Enterprises: Existing HPE and Juniper customers will benefit from the complementary portfolio. HPE clients can take advantage of the enhanced automation capabilities enabled by Mist offerings. For prospective clients, it also provides enterprises with increased bargaining power, having another significant provider in the market with comparable offerings.

Telecom service providers: If HPE continues to focus on its enterprise strategy, existing telecom customers of Juniper might lose out on possible innovations and receive less attention.

Channel partners: System integrators, resellers, and managed services providers may need to reexamine their strategies in light of the combined entity and prepare for contingencies if support is reduced.

Despite these challenges, the HPE-Juniper acquisition will significantly impact the market. If poorly executed, it might end up being a consolidation exercise. However, if well executed, it has the potential to ignite an often overlooked but mammoth market segment.

To discuss further, contact [email protected] and [email protected].

Look into our webinar, The Generative AI Odyssey: A Year in Review and What’s Ahead in 2024, to explore the hype vs. reality of generative AI, showcase actual production-level use cases, address challenges head-on, and provide a glimpse into the future of this transformative technology as we move into 2024.

AWS re:Invent: The Story Beyond Generative AI | Blog

While Generative Artificial Intelligence was a major focus at the recent Amazon Web Services (AWS) annual user conference in Las Vegas, other important themes stood out to our analyst team. These include an increased focus on partnerships, cost optimization, and new growth channels. Read on for our analysis of the trends to pay attention to from AWS re:Invent 2023.

Since attending AWS re:Invent from Nov. 27 to Dec. 1, we have been digesting the newer offerings, alliances, and strategic focus areas for AWS. This blog explores the top three themes we believe make their mark in the sea of announcements, initiatives, and even unspoken priorities.

Increased focus on the partner ecosystem

Much like prior years, a significant focus was put on the partner network, including service providers (global system integrators, niche system integrators, etc.), technology partners (large and small vendors), and others (e.g., resellers).

The AWS Marketplace witnessed significant changes to help partners that are already well supported. Many service providers demonstrated high-value client transformation case studies during keynote sessions, round tables, and in expo booths.

With the massive spectrum of service partners and their diverse wish lists, we firmly believe a key focus area for AWS should be improving the profitability of its AWS business. AWS needs to make it simple to use its many offerings, scale personnel training, and help build tools and intellectual property (IP).

AWS continuously assesses its partner program and the results shared were encouraging. However, with the market transitioning to Generative AI, the earlier approach of building partnerships based on core infrastructure will need to evolve.

We observed that clients want service partners to proactively have strong views on specific cloud vendors they should work with rather than be indecisive. To remain the preferred choice, AWS needs to continue engaging its service partners, especially with the newer demand for cloud services.

Nonetheless, AWS will need to work with service partners to strike a balance between being the primary cloud partner, which AWS wants, while maintaining the partner’s professed cloud agnosticism to ensure they both deliver client value.

Service providers’ industry expertise is another critical engagement area. This can explain why the event did not heavily emphasize the “industry cloud” because a large part of industry-centric development will be done in collaboration with service partners.

We believe the earlier witnessed “client ownership” friction between service partners and AWS is now resolved. However, as some service partners still raise this concern with us, AWS should address this issue through partner communication and stronger action.

Cost optimization at the center of all conversations

One notable feature of AWS re:Invent 2023 was the presence of a large number of financial operations (FinOps)-focused providers in the booths. While FinOps is not new and cost optimization has always been a CIO agenda, the sudden surge in their relevance can be attributed to the current macroeconomic situation and the frantic, unplanned post-COVID cloud adoption. As a result, most enterprises ended up having complex, hybrid cloud estates and a lack of visibility, leading to spiraling costs.

According to an Everest Group survey of 450 enterprises, 63% dedicate more than 7% of their cloud spend to FinOps as they are becoming more aware of the potential cost-saving available through investments in FinOps.

The FinOps space has become quite crowded with several specialists, global and regional system integrators, and technology providers, including AWS, offering these solutions. Enterprises currently have too many choices and identifying the right partner is difficult.

The provider type also varies by their offering within FinOps and typically can be categorized by: reseller, Reserved Instances (RI)/Savings plan (SP) management provider, consulting and managed services provider, visibility and recommendations provider, and end-to-end FinOps capability and offering provider.

Some of the specialist providers that caught our attention at the event include Alteryx, Archera, Aviatrix, CAST, Chronosphere, Cloudability, CloudFix, Cloudflare, CloudKeeper, CloudZero, Coralogix, DoiT, Finout, Flexera, Harness, Kubecost, LogicMonitor, Ollion, ProsperOps, Splunk, Stacklet, Ternary, Vantage, Vega, Virtasant, Xosphere, and Zesty.

Each enterprise should identify the right solution to meet its requirements. A few considerations to keep in mind when choosing a FinOps solution or service include the ability to manage environment complexity, the metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) used to track progress, cross-team collaboration features, availability of skilled FinOps personnel, and the visibility and dashboarding quality.

Newer channels for growth acceleration

In the third quarter of 2023, AWS reported US$23.1 billion in revenue, up 12% year-on-year, but the growth rate was below the company’s typical historical increases in the mid-20 to low-30% range. The same trend is visible across its partner ecosystem, except for a few specialist players.

The growth rate of most global cloud system integrators has diminished by more than half compared to 2021 and 2022. Amid this slowdown, we sense an emphasis on identifying channels for growth acceleration within AWS and across its entire ecosystem partners.

Generative AI was the biggest growth bet and talking point for all attendees at the event. Almost every major announcement by AWS was around Generative AI. However, it’s worth noting that Generative AI has had little influence on the top line of hyperscalers, technology vendors, or system integrators.

Most Generative AI implementations are still in the proof of concept stage, with more than 90% of deal sizes being under US$1 million. AWS expects that many Large Language Models (LLMs) will require public cloud computing capacity and is pushing all its partners to drive enterprise adoption.

However, the founder of a leading Generative AI company at the event mentioned that while the potential is enormous, the shape and form of future adoption are completely uncertain. Interestingly, he suggested with the rapid rate AI models are evolving, LLMs might get replaced by something completely new in two years. While AWS and the entire ecosystem need to continue investing and exploring Generative AI use cases, placing big bets on it could be a risky short-term proposition.

Other Focus Areas at AWS re:Invent

If not for the emergence of Generative AI, industry cloud and complex workload migration to AWS would have dominated the event. These AWS industry cloud solutions had dedicated booths right at the center of the expo hall.

However, its impact was muted by limited announcements by AWS and the lack of a serious investment intent displayed. As suggested earlier, this could be due to AWS focusing the industry cloud narrative with service provider partners who have a better understanding of industries. The impression created by AWS at re:Invent in this area was low, making it appear the hyperscaler is taking a wait-and-see approach.

Another growth area AWS is expected to pursue is the migration of complex workloads, like mainframes, to its platform. It announced partnerships with a few system integrator partners and showcased its intent to help enterprises migrate.

With a significant portion of simple workloads already migrated to the cloud, complex workload migration could be the most stable growth potential for AWS in the next few years. AWS and its partners should double down on investments in this area.

Undeniably, AWS re:Invent 2023 turned out to be a delicate balancing act of strengthening the partnership network, investing in emerging innovation areas, maximizing client value, and ensuring cost optimization in the current macroeconomic environment. We would love to hear your observations from AWS re:Invent. To share your views or to discuss other details, please reach out to [email protected] or [email protected].

Learn more about the AWS services market, including trends, demand drivers, and key considerations for enterprises.

Cloud Services PEAK Matrix® Assessment 2023 – Europe

Cloud Services – Europe 


In the continuously maturing cloud adoption landscape, enterprises are leveraging cloud services to increase operational efficiency, enable business innovation, and accelerate organizational growth. There is a cautious approach to adoption due to the current economic headwinds, prompting enterprises to scrutinize their cloud modernization spend and focus on cloud operations. There is a strong focus on hybrid cloud and multi-cloud strategies as a way to enhance reliability and utilize the best-of-the-breed offerings across cloud providers. Industry-specific cloud offerings, AI-backed cloud solutions, cloud sustainability, and product-centric operations are also gaining traction.

European enterprises are primarily adopting cloud to drive operational efficiencies and business growth. Demand for sovereign, private, and hybrid cloud-hosted infrastructure has been on the rise. Furthermore, enterprises are seeking AI-enabled automation and SRE-enabled operations to better manage their multi-cloud environments. As a result, Service Providers (SPs) are strengthening their horizontal- and vertical-focused partnerships with regional providers in the public and private cloud space to aid enterprises in their cloud adoption engagements. They are increasing investments in regional delivery centers to provide compliant and accelerated cloud transformation services.

Cloud Services

What is in this PEAK Matrix® Report

In this report, we assess 27 cloud SPs featured on Cloud Services PEAK Matrix® Assessment 2023 – Europe and categorize them as Leaders, Major Contenders, and Aspirants based on their capabilities and offerings.
 

In this report, we:

  • Examine the market impact and vision and capability of 27 SPs focused on cloud services
  • Study providers’ key strengths and limitations
  • Evaluate enterprise sourcing considerations

Scope

  • All industries
  • Geography: Europe
  • The assessment is based on Everest Group’s annual RFI process for the calendar year 2023, interactions with leading cloud SPs, client reference checks, and an ongoing analysis of the cloud services market

Related PEAK Matrix® Assessments

Analytics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Services Specialists
PEAK Matrix®

Analytics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Services Specialists PEAK Matrix® Assessment 2024

Unified Communication & Collaboration (UCC) Specialist Services PEAK Matrix® Assessment 2024
PEAK Matrix®

Unified Communication & Collaboration (UCC) Specialist Services PEAK Matrix® Assessment 2024

Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) IT Services PEAK Matrix® Assessment 2024
PEAK Matrix®

Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) IT Services PEAK Matrix® Assessment 2024

Data Annotation and Labeling (DAL) Solutions for AI/ML PEAK Matrix® Assessment 2024
PEAK Matrix®

Data Annotation and Labeling (DAL) Solutions for AI/ML PEAK Matrix® Assessment 2024

Our Latest Thinking

Forces Foresight2 1
Blog

Driving Factors for IT Services Recovery in 2024: Insights from Everest Group’s Forces & Foresight™ Research

GettyImages 1464561980
Blog

Decoding Quantum Computing: Uncovering its Potential Impact and Opportunities, Part I

GettyImages 1303466068
Blog

Gig Worker Benefits Collective: Transforming Benefits Delivery in the Gig Economy

GettyImages 1316136492
Blog

The Capital One Merger with Discover Potentially Signals a Shift in the US Banking Landscape

What is the PEAK Matrix®?

The PEAK Matrix® provides an objective, data-driven assessment of service and technology providers based on their overall capability and market impact across different global services markets, classifying them into three categories: Leaders, Major Contenders, and Aspirants.

LEARN MORE ABOUT Top Service Providers

Unveiling Hidden Dangers: Proactive Measures to Address Cloud Migration Risks | Blog

Moving an IT ecosystem to the cloud can be a complex undertaking that involves a multitude of risks – from technology and regulatory challenges to internal hurdles, as well as other unexpected problems that can arise without proper planning. Understanding these potential pitfalls and developing a comprehensive plan to mitigate them will ensure enterprises reap the many benefits cloud offers. Uncover the risks and learn recommendations to address them in this blog.  

In the last decade, cloud has risen to immense importance across all geographies and verticals, offering enterprises numerous benefits such as scalability, agility, and cost efficiency. As a result, it has become the bedrock of any digital business, leading more enterprises to increasingly migrate to the cloud. Additionally, enterprises are now also undergoing inter-cloud migration as they strengthen their cloud strategy and prioritize IT asset optimization.

Despite its apparent simplicity and prevalence in most digital transformation initiatives, enterprises must understand the associated cloud migration risks and proactively plan for contingencies. More than 55% of enterprises believe the COVID-19 pandemic rushed cloud adoptions and limited returns from cloud investments. This reinforces the importance of understanding cloud migration risks to fully realize the benefits that cloud promises.

Let’s look at the most commonly understood and observed risks that generally fall under the following categories:

  • Technology – This encompasses risk arising from challenges in integrating legacy and modern systems, possible misconfigurations during migration, and the ever-increasing technology skill gap
  • Regulatory – This pertains to risk related to data security and privacy, vertical and geography-specific compliance and regulations, and data governance and sovereignty
  • Client’s internal environment – This involves risks such as untrained internal resources, broken security controls, reliance on third-party vendors for different services, and possible operations disruptions

While service providers generally tackle these threats from the get-go, a few other potential impediments often get overlooked during the migration phase, creating larger issues later on if not proactively addressed.

Some of these additional risks can include:

  • Underwhelming perceived value: Enterprises often do not have clear post-migration expectations, resulting in most enterprises being dissatisfied within a year or two of starting the cloud migration process. An alarming 67% of enterprises have expressed their inability to realize the expected level of value from cloud. This extends beyond monetary value and also encompasses aspects such as innovation, compliance, resilience, and agility, which are expected as by-products of successful cloud migration
  • Negative stakeholder experience: Cloud migration can impact internal and external stakeholder experience. Any security breach or service disruption can expose corporate data and applications to cyberattacks and even damage the enterprise’s reputation and erode customer trust. Additionally, any unnecessary delay in migration timelines due to factors such as network issues, application incompatibility, or inefficient processes can lead to downtime and productivity loss
  • Exceeding budget expectations: Unplanned migration costs and the complexities surrounding the entire multi-cloud system end up giving most customers price shock. Around 60-70% of global enterprises believe cloud adoption costs were higher than their initial expectations of cost reduction. This occurs due to factors such as complex multi- and hybrid cloud environments, inefficient cloud resource management, lack of governance guardrails, and gaps in consumption visibility and management
  • Conflicting objectives: Senior stakeholders from various departments often view cloud migration from different lenses and have disparate objectives. Even if service providers meet the defined Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Service Level Agreements (SLAs), stakeholders still can be highly dissatisfied. This commonly arises due to misalignment between cloud, product, technical, and finance teams and the lack of defined accountability and ownership that results
  • Unplanned transitions: During the enterprise transition from one provider to another or from on-premise to an outsourced service provider, a proper transition methodology is crucial. Many enterprises struggle in this phase because transition teams do not contextualize their approach to the enterprise. This often results in a disconnect between expectations and outcomes in areas such as migration velocity, proposed SLAs, and risk management

Recommendations for mitigating cloud migration risks

To lessen these risks, enterprises should take the following actions:

  1. Define the value expected from cloud expectations
  • Define what value means to your enterprise. Different stakeholders often have varying ideas of value. Conduct a comprehensive assessment to come to a shared definition of value
  • Measure alignment to the defined value metrics at all stages of executing the migration plan
  • Recognize that value realization is continuous and emphasize the importance of making it a cyclic process rather than a one-time event
  1. Plan and assemble the right delivery team
  • Include an integrated cyber-cloud team to mitigate cloud security risks associated with migration efforts
  • Conduct a comprehensive RFP procedure to ensure the onboarding of certified and skilled talent with prior similar on-ground experience. Develop a detailed talent management plan across different execution phases
  • Ensure the availability of well-structured transition teams that offer industry- and enterprise-specific contextualization, particularly when transitioning from another vendor or a captive center
  1. Leverage Intellectual Properties (IPs) and frameworks
  • Implement a value-based migration framework internally or with a service provider partner to define and measure future value
  • Adopt an open communication framework that allows regular, timely, and contextualized communication with internal and external stakeholders to ensure consistent experience. This should be in addition to technology measures such as disaster recovery plans, incident response plans, and security measures
  • Prioritize the implementation of FinOps tools and solutions to enable cost optimization and visibility at all times
  1. Evolve contracting methodologies
  • Define Objectives and Key Results (OKRs), and don’t just contract for KPIs and SLAs
  • Push for some “skin in the game” from partners by encouraging transparent and flexible pricing models
  • Include knowledge transfer in the project scope to upskill internal teams to handle post-migration changes in the enterprise IT landscape

For more strategies to tackle cloud migration risks or to share your views on this topic, feel free to reach out to [email protected] or [email protected].

Network Transformation and Managed Services PEAK Matrix® Assessment – System Integrators (SIs) 2023

Network Transformation and Managed Services PEAK Matrix® Assessment – System Integrators (SIs)

As enterprises embrace their digital transformation journeys, they are becoming cognizant of the critical role that network transformation plays. By employing cutting-edge network technologies, these digital enterprises seek to optimize performance, automate operations, boost efficiency, expedite digital transformation, and enhance user experiences. However, amid the backdrop of declining global macroeconomic conditions, enterprises currently prioritize realizing RoI from their prior investments, especially those made during the pandemic, before allocating resources to newer and less mature technologies such as 5G and edge computing.

Network System Integrators (SIs) are proactively investing in a comprehensive suite of solutions to serve the ever-evolving needs of enterprises. Their aim is to deliver end-to-end network transformation, spanning consulting to managed services, while incorporating cutting-edge technologies such as multicloud networking, Network-as-a-Service (NaaS), network automation, IoT, and wireless networks. They strategically realign their network approach, focusing on use case relevance and value creation. Consequently, they are developing industry-specific and AI-driven contextualized solutions tailored to the unique requirements of various sectors. By doing so, these SIs can offer highly customized network solutions that drive tangible and meaningful business outcomes.

NetworkTransformationSI

What is in this PEAK Matrix® Report

In this report, we assess 19 network SIs on the Everest Group PEAK® and categorize them as Leaders, Major Contenders, and Aspirants based on their vision and capability and market impact.

In this report, we:

  • Examine the market impact and vision and capability of 19 SIs focused on network services
  • Study providers’ key strengths and limitations
  • Evaluate enterprise sourcing considerations

Scope:

  • All industries and geographies
  • The assessment is based on Everest Group’s annual RFI process for the calendar year 2023, interactions with leading network SIs, client reference checks, and an ongoing analysis of the network services market

 

Related PEAK Matrix® Assessments

Analytics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Services Specialists
PEAK Matrix®

Analytics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Services Specialists PEAK Matrix® Assessment 2024

Unified Communication & Collaboration (UCC) Specialist Services PEAK Matrix® Assessment 2024
PEAK Matrix®

Unified Communication & Collaboration (UCC) Specialist Services PEAK Matrix® Assessment 2024

Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) IT Services PEAK Matrix® Assessment 2024
PEAK Matrix®

Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) IT Services PEAK Matrix® Assessment 2024

Data Annotation and Labeling (DAL) Solutions for AI/ML PEAK Matrix® Assessment 2024
PEAK Matrix®

Data Annotation and Labeling (DAL) Solutions for AI/ML PEAK Matrix® Assessment 2024

Our Latest Thinking

04-18-2024_Analyzing the EU AI Act Impact for Global Businesses_Join us_1200x628
Events

Analyzing the EU AI Act Impact for Global Businesses

BPS-Price-Benchmarking-Catalog-2024-FINAL.png
Market Insights™

BPS Price Benchmarking Catalog

Cybersecurity is Becoming a Key Enterprise Spend Area
Market Insights™

Cybersecurity is Becoming a Key Enterprise Spend Area

Cybersecurity Market Shift - From Best-in-Class OR Easy-to-Integrate to Both
Market Insights™

Cybersecurity Market Shift – From Best-in-Class OR Easy-to-Integrate to Both

What is the PEAK Matrix®?

The PEAK Matrix® provides an objective, data-driven assessment of service and technology providers based on their overall capability and market impact across different global services markets, classifying them into three categories: Leaders, Major Contenders, and Aspirants.

LEARN MORE ABOUT Top Service Providers

5G Adoption in APAC: Navigating Challenges and Maximizing ROI | Webinar

on-demand WEBINAR

5G Adoption in APAC: Navigating Challenges and Maximizing ROI

The advent of 5G technology has promised unmatched opportunities for enterprises with new use cases that can benefit the topline. However, despite the hype around private 5G, current adoption patterns in APAC are not providing the promised potential. These ROI conversations have become even more pivotal given the macroeconomic conditions. 

Join this webinar as our analysts provide buyers, service providers, and telecom providers with insights into the latest developments, challenges, and opportunities in the APAC market for private 5G.

Our speakers will discuss:

  • What is the potential of 5G in the diverse APAC market?
  • What is the current maturity for private 5G adoption, what are best practices, and what challenges should APAC enterprises keep in mind?
  • How can enterprises ensure maximum ROI from private 5G adoption?

Who should attend?

  • CIOs and CTOs,
  • IT strategy heads
  • Heads of outsourcing
  • Procurement managers
  • Network leads and managers
  • Cloud head
  • 5G leads
  • Cloud and infrastructure heads
Mukesh Ranjan
Akshat Vaid

The APAC Cloud Market Landscape: Restructuring Your Cloud Strategy | Webinar

on-demand WEBINAR

The APAC Cloud Market Landscape: Restructuring Your Cloud Strategy

Enterprises in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region are consuming cloud at a faster rate than in other geographies. But as the cloud adoption frenzy cools, enterprises will need to realign their cloud journeys to address the unique challenges of the APAC market.

In this webinar, Everest Group’s experts will provide buyers and service providers insights into the latest developments, emerging patterns, and potential opportunities of the APAC cloud landscape.

Our speakers will discuss:

  • What does the existing APAC cloud market landscape look like, and what are its challenges?
  • How can your enterprise map its cloud journey?
  • What are the external and internal factors impacting the enterprise cloud journey?
  • How can you redefine a value-focused enterprise cloud journey?

Who should attend?

  • CIOs and CTOs
  • Service providers
  • IT strategy heads
  • Heads of cloud solutions/competency
  • Heads of outsourcing
  • Procurement managers
  • IT department heads
  • Global sourcing managers
  • Vendor managers
  • Senior marketing executives
  • Heads of sales

5 Steps to Unlock Maximum Value from Cloud | Webinar

On-Demand Webinar

5 Steps to Unlock Maximum Value from Cloud

In the last couple of years, we have witnessed the frantic adoption of cloud by enterprises trying to keep up with innovation. During that time, the definition of cloud value was never standardized across different stakeholder groups, and today many enterprises believe they are not realizing the expected value from cloud. This phenomenon has been exacerbated by the current macroeconomic environment, which has added further pressure on enterprises to justify all investments and maximize value.

In this webinar, our experts will explore the unique opportunity for enterprises to align the definition of cloud value and execute their cloud value realization strategies while facing a constrained macroeconomic environment.

Our speakers will discuss:

  • How can you define value from cloud, and what are the key elements beyond cost?
  • What does value realization mean for different stakeholder groups?
  • How can enterprises align on one consistent definition of value?
  • What is the role of different market participants in helping enterprises realize value?
  • How relevant is cost optimization as a value lever in the current recessionary environment?
  • What are the pragmatic steps enterprises can take to maximize value realization?

Who should attend?

  • CIOs and CTOs
  • IT/BPO strategy heads
  • IT/BPO department heads
  • Heads of outsourcing
  • Procurement managers
  • Global sourcing managers
  • Vendor managers
  • Hyperscaler BU heads
  • Cloud and infrastructure heads
  • Solution leads
  • Cloud architects
Zachariah Chirayil
Practice Director
Ranjan Mukesh
Vice President
Singh Abhishek B
Partner

How can we engage?

Please let us know how we can help you on your journey.

Contact Us

"*" indicates required fields

Please review our Privacy Notice and check the box below to consent to the use of Personal Data that you provide.