For EntErprisE ArchitEcturE proFEssionAls
The Forrester New Wave™: Public Cloud Enterprise Container Platforms, Q3 2019
July 29, 2019
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11
The Seven Global Providers That Matter Most And How They Stack Up
IBM: Forrester's Take
our evaluation found that iBM Cloud (see figure 8):
› Stands out with a solid Kubernetes service. iBM's focus on and investment in container services
and Kubernetes open source contributions over the past two years is paying off in customer adoption
and satisfaction. iBM Cloud Kubernetes service (iKs) offers tunable capacity, bare-metal and
dedicated compute options, a growing catalog of integrations, and a managed istio service mesh.
› Needs to improve operations management, global reach, and user experience. Most of iBM's
container platform features are on par with the broader public cloud container market, but global
region support is lagging and the developer experience needs improvement.
› Is a good fit for enterprises with complex legacy app modernization requirements. iKs offers
tight integrations with weather data, blockchain, Watson ai, and iBM middleware. While these
differentiated services are attractive to a subset of the market, iKs is less attractive to cloud-first
companies seeking a wider range of general-purpose public cloud services.
IBM Customer reference Summary
Deep configuration control, high availability and stability, and responsive support were the most-cited
positives. Billing complexity and high cost relative to value were the chief customer complaints.
FIGUrE 8 iBM QuickCard
REFERENCE QUOTES
Differentiated
On par
Needs improvement
"Rock-solid stability and
consistent performance."
"The cost is high for the value
delivered; pricing and billing
are too complex."
Orchestration & registry
Deployment models
Operations management
Security features
User experience
ALM
Integrations & APIs
Vision
Road map
Market approach
Products evaluated
IKS, IBM Cloud Container Registry, ICP
IBM
Wave position
STRONG PERFORMER
