Enterprises in Europe are developing a deeper understanding of cloud-native technologies and adopting them slightly faster than companies in the U.S., according to a new research report published today by Information Services Group (ISG) (Nasdaq: III), a leading global technology research and advisory firm.
The 2022 ISG Provider Lens™ Cloud Native Services and Solutions report for Europe finds widespread and growing use of containers and Kubernetes orchestration even as the market shifts from a hype-and-growth boom to a more mature phase. Companies in Europe are now working to scale up their cloud-native deployments, which increasingly reside in multi-cloud environments.
“As enterprises pursue cloud-native strategies, many are tapping into the strengths of different public clouds, along with on-premises and edge environments,” said Bernie Hoecker, partner, enterprise cloud transformation, with ISG. “This may make their architectures even more complex, but it helps them avoid technical debt or lock-in.”
Companies are becoming more familiar with both the benefits and the challenges of cloud-native technologies. Migrating legacy applications to distributed, container-based microarchitectures in the cloud can give enterprises faster cycle times for new software and better scalability to meet fluctuating demand, along with smoother integration into DevOps software pipelines, ISG says. However, a cloud-native approach also requires new skills, new security tools and the means to track and monitor widely distributed software components.
In Europe, recent industry surveys indicate that about three-quarters of back-end developers used containers in 2021, the report says. However, many European companies still need assistance to scale cloud-native technologies across their IT environments. A growing number of service providers offer container migration factories and “Day 2” consulting and support to ease the transition.
Cloud-native strategies in Europe often run up against evolving data sovereignty and residency requirements that affect where data can move within distributed application architectures, ISG says. Providers are developing specific tools to address this challenge. Sustainability is also a growing issue.
“Many European companies now require cloud-native observability tools to measure the environmental impact of their operations,” said Jan Erik Aase, partner and global leader, ISG Provider Lens Research. “This makes observability an even more complex undertaking.”
The report also explores other global and European cloud-native trends, including the plateauing of demand for serverless architectures and the growing importance of edge solutions and open-source software and standards.
The 2022 ISG Provider Lens™ Cloud Native Services and Solutions report for Europe evaluates the capabilities of 65 providers across five quadrants: Managed Container Services, Container Platform Solutions, Hyperscaler Cloud-native Platforms, Cloud-native Observability Solutions and Cloud-native Security Platforms.
The report names VMware as a Leader in three quadrants and Dynatrace and Sysdig as Leaders in two quadrants each. It names Accenture, AWS, Capgemini, Cognizant, Computacenter, Datadog, DXC, Google, HCL, HPE, Microsoft Azure, Mirantis, New Relic, OVHcloud, Palo Alto Networks, SUSE Rancher, Red Hat, Splunk and Wipro as Leaders in one quadrant each.
A customized version of the report is available from Dynatrace.
The 2022 ISG Provider Lens™ Cloud Native Services and Solutions report for Europe is available to subscribers or for one-time purchase on this webpage.
