Cloud Computing refers to products and services that enable the delivery, management, and optimization of computing resources over the internet. This category includes markets that focus on empowering organizations to seamlessly store, migrate, manage, and optimize workloads across diverse cloud environments, including public, private, hybrid, and multi-cloud models.
Data center infrastructure management (DCIM) tools monitor, measure, manage and/or control data center resources and energy consumption of both IT-related equipment (such as servers, storage and network switches) and facilities infrastructure components (such as power distribution units and computer room air conditioners). They are data-center-specific (they are designed for data center use), rather than general building management system tools, and are used to optimize data center power, cooling and physical space. Solutions do not have to be sensor-based, but they do have to be designed to accommodate real-time power and temperature/environmental monitoring. They must also support resource management, which Gartner defines as going beyond typical IT asset management to include the location and interrelationships between assets.
The data center and cloud networking vendors covered in this market provide hardware and/or software solutions to deliver connectivity primarily within enterprise data centers. This includes data center core/spine switches, access switches (top of rack [ToR], leaf), virtual switching, Ethernet fabrics, network operating systems (NOSs) and network overlays, and the requisite management, automation and orchestration of those components.
Digital employee experience management tools measure and help IT continuously improve employee sentiment toward and the performance of company-provided technology. They continuously surface actionable insights, drive self-healing automations, and optimize support and employee engagement via the near-real-time processing of aggregated data from endpoints, applications, employee sentiment and organizational context. These insights enable self-healing and can enhance employee interactions with self-service portals and chatbots. They also help IT support, asset management, procurement and other teams whose work depends on reliable information. DEX tools help IT improve the digital employee experience by quickly identifying and remediating technology issues. Benefits for IT teams include greater visibility of device and application performance, reliability and usage; reduced overhead through automation; and improved endpoint configuration and patch compliance. Benefits for the workforce include reduced digital friction that impedes productivity, the ability to offer feedback, faster issue resolution, and rightsized virtual and physical endpoints with optimized life spans.
Gartner defines document management as the tools and practices used to capture, store, process and deliver documents and information in support of personal, team and enterprise needs. Gartner estimates that 70% to 90% of enterprise data is unstructured, posing a significant challenge for organizations that need to unlock its potential using AI and also mitigate the risks of poor information governance. Document management platforms are critical to enterprise application strategies that require AI-ready, unstructured data (aka enterprise content).
Gartner defines full-stack hyperconverged infrastructure software as the market consisting of complete software solutions that include virtualized compute, storage and networking from a single instantiation designed to run on-premises or in a colocation environment. It consists of those vendors that develop and sell hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) software comprising the vendor’s own server virtualization, software-defined storage and network management tools. The full-stack software solution may also be integrated with a hardware stack, as a complete offering spanning both software and hardware. Recently, this market has been heavily influenced by the positioning of storage virtualization and private cloud infrastructure looking to revirtualize compute and providing alternatives to incumbent vendors.
IT Infrastructure and IoT refers to the products and services that support the deployment, management, and optimization of core technology systems and connected devices across enterprise environments. This category includes markets that focus on enabling organizations to build and operate resilient, scalable, and intelligent infrastructure. It encompasses solutions for data center management, network infrastructure, and IoT connectivity—spanning on-premises, cloud, edge, and hybrid models.
Integrated systems combine server, shared storage and network devices, along with management software and support in a preintegrated stack. The integrated system market has four segments: integrated infrastructure system, integrated reference architecture, integrated stack system and hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) segment. The overall HCI segment is further subdivided into Hyperconverged Integrated Systems (HCIS), which provides both software and hardware in an appliance model and the software only segment in which vendors provide the Hyperconverged software. This is then integrated with HW by a reseller or the end customer.
Platform-native consumption services (PNCS) are multidomain, consumption-based, as-a-service offerings for enterprise mission-critical infrastructure. PNCS vendors’ platform and product capabilities provide API-centric control planes for SLA-based IT operations life cycle management and support. PNCS offerings include storage as a service (STaaS), compute as a service (CaaS), network as a service (NaaS), and data protection service offerings, including backup, archive and ransomware detection. PNCS vendors use artificial intelligence for IT operations (AIOps) infrastructure telemetry, software and automation tools to provide proactive SLA management. IT outcomes include improved productivity, cyber-resilience and continuous workload infrastructure cost optimization. PNCS provides a hybrid IT operations platform approach to on-premises consumption-based as-a-service offerings in lieu of centralizing mission-critical infrastructure on the public cloud. PNCS vendors provide as-a-service offerings such as STaaS, CaaS and NaaS to enable IT operations to shift from capital expenditure (capex) to consumption for the benefits of an on-premises hybrid platform operating model. Major benefits that PNCS solutions provide include asset cost optimization, productivity improvement, sustainability and cyber-resilience SLAs that substantially improve IT operations. As a result, customers enjoy a more flexible usage model that meets business and IT operations demands. Other benefits include asset financing and management capabilities that favorably alter the economics of asset utilization. Use case examples include STaaS, CaaS, NaaS, data protection as a service such as ransomware protection or recovery, and higher levels of platform as a service (PaaS) services such as database as a service (DBaaS).
The primary storage platform (PSP) market addresses the need of I&O leaders to operate and support standardized enterprise storage products, along with platform-native service capabilities to support structured data applications. PSP products like primary enterprise storage arrays provide mandatory and common enterprise-class primary storage features and capabilities needed to support the platform. Platform-native services like storage as a service (STaaS) and ransomware protection, with PSP product capabilities, are required to support platform-native services. The PSP market has emerged at the convergence of two major enterprise storage market developments: the evolution of the PSP product market in conjunction with the demand for hybrid, multidomain platform-native storage services, extending on-premises services to public cloud, edge and colocation environments.