Gartner defines strategic cloud platform services (SCPS) as standardized, automated, public cloud offerings integrating infrastructure services (e.g., computing, network and storage), platform services (e.g., application, data and value-added services such as AI/ML) and transformation services (resources to help customers adopt cloud-oriented IT delivery models). Although owned by the service provider, infrastructure and platform services may be hosted in providers’ infrastructures or customers’ data centers. Services should be elastically scalable, metered by use, and consumable via web-based interfaces and programmable APIs. Transformation programs may be delivered by automated, self-service interfaces, and managed interactions facilitated by account teams/partners.

Strategic Cloud Platform Services

Generative AI (GenAI) Infrastructure providers are infrastructure vendors (such as cloud platforms and hardware manufacturers) that offer underlying technology, tools and hardware that other companies and developers use to build and deploy specific generative AI applications in production. Generative AI refers to technologies that can generate new derived versions of content, strategies, designs and methods by learning from large repositories of original source content. These providers offer scalable, reliable and cost-effective solutions for generative AI projects, which can be complex and expensive to train and deploy. Generative AI infrastructure providers focus on research and developing the foundational AI techniques, while application developers focus on building products using those foundational technologies. Please note that this market is based on Beta research and is continuously evolving. We will be making changes as and when there are new updates.

Generative AI Infrastructure Providers (Transitioning to Generative AI Specialized Infrastructure)

Generative AI Infrastructure Providers

Threat modeling automation tools automate the creation of security requirements and threat models. They can integrate with software development life cycle (SDLC) tools to manage requirements and perform validation. Threat modeling automation tools dynamically highlight potential security ramifications of application architecture and recommend secure coding practices or architectural countermeasures. These tools significantly decrease the effort required to create and maintain threat models, security requirements and risk assessments. This tool automatically identifies potential threats based on predefined criteria, seamlessly integrates with development tools like JIRA, Jenkins etc., and checks for coding standards, potential bugs, and security vulnerabilities. Typical users include security teams, developers, DevOps teams, product owners, and risk management professionals, who use it to efficiently identify and mitigate security risks.

Threat Modeling Automation

Gartner defines microsegmentation as the ability to insert a security policy into the access layer between any two workloads in the same extended data center. Microsegmentation technologies enable the definition of fine-grained network zones, down to individual assets and applications.
Core capabilities include:
- Flow mapping, which is the ability to gather and show North/South and East/West traffic flows and use them in the policy definition (it can present this data in a visual manner)
- Workload isolation, which is isolation from other workloads based on security policy
- Policy enforcement, including the definition of rules based on different factors
- The ability to deploy in the virtualized and infrastructure as a service environments
Some of the most frequent optional capabilities of microsegmentation technologies include:
- Automation of the deployment as part of a continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipeline
- Integration with cloud infrastructure to ease deployment, enforce rules or automate policy updates when new assets are deployed
- Asset discovery: adjacent to the flow mapping, microsegmentation tools can show more advanced context for the assets
- Policy recommendation engine: complementary to the asset discovery, microsegmentation technology can suggest policy rules to authorize discovered flows
- Threat detection: based on threat intelligence, layer seven protocol inspection and anomaly detection
- Interoperability through direct integration with third-party products, such as a firewall, and hardware, such as switches and routers
- Internet of Things (IoT)/operational technology (OT) coverage — the solution supports microsegmentation for IoT/OT infrastructure
- Kubernetes/Container coverage — the solution supports microsegmentation for containers/K8s

Microsegmentation (Transitioning to Network security Microsegmentation)

Microsegmentation

Gartner defines zero trust network access (ZTNA) as products and services that create an identity and context-based, logical-access boundary that encompasses an enterprise user and an internally hosted application or set of applications. The applications are hidden from discovery, and access is restricted via a trust broker to a collection of named entities, which limits lateral movement within a network.

Zero Trust Network Access (Transitioning to Security Service Edge)

Zero Trust Network Access

Microsoft Azure Reviews, Ratings & Features 2025 | Gartner Peer Insights

Evaluation and contract negotiation

Evaluation & Contracting

Ability to understand your organization's needs

Timely and complete response to product questions

Pricing and contract flexibility (pricing and terms)

Integration and deployment

Integration & Deployment

Availability of quality 3rd-party resources (integrators, service providers, etc.)

Ease of integration using standard APIs and tools

Quality and availability of end-user training

Ease of deployment

Service and support

Service & Support

Timeliness of vendor's response

Quality of technical support

Quality of peer user community

Product capabilities

Product Capabilities

User Management

Security

Developer Capabilities

Middleware Capabilities

Architecture Flexibility

Big Data Enablement

Operations Management

Resiliency

Public Cloud Architecture

Distributed Cloud Architecture

Edge Architecture

Environmental Sustainability

Pre-Integrated Solutions

Modernization Capabilities

Transformational Capabilities

AI/ML Capabilities

Additional Context

Amazon Web Services

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Microsoft Azure

Microsoft

Google Cloud Platform

Google

IBM Cloud

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

Oracle

Huawei Cloud

Huawei

Alibaba Cloud

DigitalOcean App Platform​

DigitalOcean

Tencent Cloud

ZStack Cloud

ZStack

50M - 250M USD

<50M USD

250M - 500M USD

1B - 3B USD

500M - 1B USD

3B - 10B USD

30B + USD

10B - 30B USD

Gov't/PS/ED <5,000 Employees

Gov't/PS/ED 5,000 - 50,000 Employees

Gov't/PS/ED 50,000 + Employees

Partnerships Manager.

Microsoft Azure is an excellent cloud platform, it is a highly reliable platform with high availability.
I use Microsoft Azure to manage my virtual machine remotely from any location and for data storage management.
Moreover, I can deploy applications easily and quickly and modify the resources according to my needs.


FOUNDER S OFFICE PRODUCT & GROWTH

We really had an overwhelming experiences with Microsoft Azure, as our development team prefer this robust cloud computing platform for host application and web services. This cloud computing
platform enable us to easily build, deploy and manage our application efficiently. 

Our internal development choses Microsoft Azure because of its extensive ranges of services such as storage, analytics, networking and many more such features. 

Broadcom (VMware)

Other...

Rackspace Technology

Lumen

OVHcloud

Virtustream

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

NTT Communications

Verizon

DXC Technology

Joyent

GTT (Interoute)

Dimension Data

Cloudflare

Skytap

Fujitsu

V2 Cloud

VEXXHOST

Ace Cloud

Extreme Compute

HEAD OF INFORMATION & CYBER SECURITY

Azure provides scalable and resilient cloud support. Azure is continuously improving and changing. This can lead to challenges in some ways as name changes and free services become extra costs or dashboards and menu changes. 

Software Developer

Super difficult to set up for some use cases, not very straightforward to use

ENGINEER

Our experience with Microsoft was good! All the services that they provided us enabled our company to build, deploy and manage applications and services with ease. ALl the services regarding storage, networking, analytics, AI, and IOT help us to leverage our business value.

Manager, IT Security and Risk Management

Microsoft provide a myriad of functions across there platform. What they do lack is the ability to interact with the SME. 

Senior IT Services Associate

We are using Azure for our aviation client and using it for our Hybrid cloud environment. Azure has provided a very simple and effective easy to access user interface due to which developers always feel and ease to work on. Features like Active Directory on on-prem are very easy on the Azure cloud platform. Most of our applications were using on-prem SQL Server database and post moving those on cloud, changes on integration side were not difficult as Azure integrates with other technologies very easily. Active community support on Azure helps us to get suggestions and sometimes helpful to resolve our errors. Even the Microsoft Account Managers are also very supportive and help to clear the checklist before our large and time consuming deployments

BI / ETL DEVELOPER

Azure is a robust platform offering plenty of services both from Microsoft and from multiple partners through an extensive marketplace. Deployment of services like virtual networks, virtual machines or databases is quick and simple. Being another Cloud Infrastructure user for years, adapting to Azure was not as simple as I would have expected since the user interface is not as consistent as I would have liked, although the usage of API is similar.

TECHNICAL SUPPORT ENGINEER

Microsoft Azure is one of the most popular cloud platforms. It has a collection of cloud services that are designed to help you build, test, deploy, and manage applications and services through Microsoft data centers. This helps organizations to store the data over the internet rather than deploying a server in on-premises or a physical server. This reduces the cost of deployment and physical servers. It provides the various services and tools to help developers, IT professionals, and businesses in the organization.

Manager Facility

Its hybrid cloud capabilities allow us to seamlessly integrate our on-premises infrastructure with the cloud and its flexibility and scalability has allowed us to quickly adapt to changing business needs. Overall, it has been a game changer for my organization, which provides a secure and scalable cloud infrastructure.

Active

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50M-1B USD

1B-10B USD

10B+ USD

Gov't/PS/Ed

IT Associate

We use Azure for multiple different functions including device and user management as well as being able to review what licenses we're currently using and assignment. It's very easy to navigate and use. We're also currently testing out Entra deployments via Azure. 

Data Scientist

Microsoft Azure is a comprehensive cloud platform that offers a wide range of services for engineers, including virtual machines, databases, AI and machine learning tools. Azure Functions is one of the most secure ways to deploy serverless functions and is seamlessly integrated with other Azure native functions and third-party services. Azure Functions is an event-driven, compute-on-demand experience that extends the existing other Azure application platforms with capabilities to implement code triggered by events occurring in Azure or third-party services. as well as on-premises systems. Azure Functions makes it straightforward to create, deploy and manage serverless functions without having to worry about server infrastructure.

AUDIT SENIOR MANAGER

Truly an exceptional cloud service and hosting platform that meets the needs of innovation, scalability, availability and cost efficiency.

DGM, IT SECURITY AND RISK MANAGEMENT

Microsoft Azure provides a robust and versatile cloud platform for enterprise-level workloads. Its seamless integration with Microsoft products like Office365, Active Directory and Windows servers makes it the users choice for organizations. My overall experience with Microsoft Azure is very good as it offers diverse services and continuous innovations. Its customer support response is also impressive.

Manager

Azure is a streamlined hyperscaler and cloud provider with a variety of features, functionality and security components that assists a business to grow at scale, with the ability to scale up or down as required over a period of time to meet business requirements while maintaining cost and without investing in significant hardware or software.

AWS CLOUD ENGINEER

It has an unmatched number of services and thereby catering to almost all usecases.It has been a smooth and interruption free experience and even in case of any issue it has been resolved very quickly.

System Administrator

Microsoft Azure SCPS is used for security & management platform services. It provides governance, security, and control. It has multiple features like policy enforcement and strong security integrations in hybrid or multi-cloud environments. Microsoft Azure is suitable for large enterprises which helps to manage systems and workloads.


Director of IT

My experience with Microsoft Azure has been positive due to its robust cloud services,easy integration with other microsoft tools and strong security measures. It supports diverse workloads efficiently but navigating its pricing structure can be challenging. 

VP, TECHNOLOGY

Microsoft Azure provides reliable cloud services with great flexibility, strong performance and easy integration with Microsoft products. It is ideal for businesses of all sizes. on the downside, cost management can be tricky and some features require technical expertise.

IT ENGINEER APPLICATIONS

This is a great tool to use with the database in the cloud environment!

Azure has been a great software for us in the sense that it provides great Application Management and Active Directory handling.

Microsoft enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Microsoft is dedicated to advancing human and organizational achievement.

Microsoft Security helps protect people and data against cyberthreats to give peace of mind.


Every company has a mission. What's ours? To empower every person and every organization to achieve more. We believe technology can and should be a force for good and that meaningful innovation contributes to a brighter world in the future and today. Our culture doesn’t just encourage curiosity; it embraces it. Each day we make progress together by showing up as our authentic selves. We show up with a learn-it-all mentality. We show up cheering on others, knowing their success doesn't diminish our own. We show up every day open to learning our own biases, changing our behavior, and inviting in differences. When we show up, we achieve more together. 

Microsoft operates in 190 countries and is made up of more than 220,000 passionate employees worldwide.