Gartner defines the data center outsourcing (DCO) services market as a comprehensive suite of services that support deployment, consolidation, optimization, modernization and managed services. These services primarily cater to data centers, private clouds, edge computing, ERP hosting, mainframes or legacy systems, midrange systems, infrastructure modernization, network and security. Organizations with such environments engage with DCO service providers to enhance efficiency, improve agility, optimize costs, strengthen security — physical, data and cyber — and realize substantial modernization benefits. Data center outsourcing refers to the strategic decision by organizations to delegate data center operations to a third-party service provider. Adopting this approach assists organizations with prioritizing their core business activities while capitalizing on the advanced technologies, operational expertise, best-in-class performance metrics and cost-efficiencies offered by vendors, compared to insourced best efforts.
Hardware (HW) maintenance contracts for data center and network equipment may cover hardware replacement, on-site field engineering, technical support and proactive monitoring. The focus of this market is on the independent, third-party market for data center and network maintenance. This is maintenance provided independently from the OEMs, often referred to as 'TPM' (third-party maintenance), 'unauthorized maintenance' or 'alternative maintenance.' A hybrid maintenance strategy — using OEM-authorized and OEM-independent maintenance — is becoming more common in the hardware support market, with a thriving ecosystem of independent support providers for server, storage and networking equipment. End-user customers are selectively using TPMs to cost-effectively extend the life of IT assets, control OEM-forced upgrades, and save money.
Infrastructure monitoring tools capture the health and resource utilization of IT infrastructure components wherever they reside (e.g., in a data center, at the edge, or IaaS or PaaS in the cloud). This enables I&O teams to monitor the availability and resource utilization data of physical, virtual, software entities, and AI systems — including servers, containers, network devices, database instances, hypervisors, storage, and basic application monitoring. These tools collect data in near real time and perform historical data analysis or trending of the elements they monitor.
Gartner defines network automation platforms as systems that automate and orchestrate the configuration, deployment, and operational management of network infrastructure. Network automation platforms are delivered via software and interact directly with network devices, network controllers (or fabric managers), network services, network management systems, and other automation tools.