Enterprises in Germany Turn To the Public Cloud to Enable the Remote Workforce

Enterprises in Germany are embracing public cloud services to enable remote workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new report published by Information Services Group , a leading global technology research and advisory firm.

“Public cloud clients want self-service infrastructure to assist their fast-moving development teams.”

The 2021 ISG Provider Lens Public Cloud – Services & Solutions Report for Germany finds empowering a cloud-based remote workforce is the top use case for the public cloud in Germany. In addition, enterprises are looking for cloud service providers that can help them manage multiple public clouds and have strong partnerships with public cloud providers. German enterprises also want cloud partners that deliver innovative services and create additional value from the cloud.

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In response, cloud service providers are developing industry-specific transformation capabilities and using accelerators to move client workloads to the cloud and address industry requirements, the report says.

Meanwhile, a skills shortage is hitting a number of public cloud service providers in Germany, the report says. Cloud hyperscalers have expanded their online training programs to increase the number of skilled engineers and cloud architects that are required to support market growth, but providers still report shortages.

Some providers are addressing the skills shortage by focusing on automation, allowing them to support a large number of clients without adding to their remote workforce, the report says. Many providers are offering AI operations, or AIOps, to automate cloud operations.

“Leveraging automation gives clients a better user experience and enables service providers to improve profit margins,” said Andrea Spiegelhoff, partner, ISG EMEA, in Germany. “Public cloud clients want self-service infrastructure to assist their fast-moving development teams.”

To bolster their cloud operations capabilities, managed services providers are developing cloud management platforms and using DevOps and infrastructure-as-code practices, along with AI-based automation and self-healing capabilities, to integrate multiple clouds in complex operating environments.

The report also sees a growing focus on management of cloud spending in Germany, with financial operations, or FinOps, services in greater demand. Some providers offer dashboards to track cloud costs, but more integration is needed for clients using multiple clouds.

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The use of multiple clouds is the standard setup in Germany, with most service providers supporting multiple hyperscalers, the report adds. The market is moving from infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) to platform-as-a-service (PaaS), where clients choose the cloud to match services to their business technologies.

The 2021 ISG Provider Lens™ Public Cloud – Services & Solutions Report for Germany evaluates the capabilities of 94 providers across seven quadrants: Consulting and Transformational Services for Large Accounts, Consulting and Transformational Services for the Midmarket, Managed Public Cloud Services for Large Accounts, Managed Public Cloud Services for the Midmarket, Hyperscale Infrastructure and Platform Services, SAP HANA Infrastructure Services, and Secure Enterprise Filesharing Services.

The report names T-Systems as a Leader in four quadrants and CANCOM and Microsoft as Leaders in three. Accenture, Arvato Systems, Atos, AWS, Capgemini, Claranet, Deutsche Telekom, Google, IBM, NTT DATA and Wipro are named Leaders in two quadrants. All for One Group, Axians, Box, Brainloop, BTC, Computacenter, doubleSlash, DRACOON, Dropbox, Infosys, IONOS Cloud, PlusServer, Rackspace Technology, Reply, Skaylink and TCS are named Leaders in one quadrant.

In addition, Cloudreach, gridscale, Nextcloud, Nordcloud, Sopra Steria and Syntax were named Rising Stars—companies with “promising portfolios” and “high future potential” by ISG’s definition—in one quadrant each.

Customized versions of the report are available from AWS, DRACOON, gridscale, IONOS Cloud and PlusServer.

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