IaaS providers not up to enterprise challenge says Gartner

They lack the range of services corporates need to achieve long-term strategic goals

Enterprises looking to harness infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offerings to meet long-term goals are struggling to find providers who are up to the task, according to analyst firm Gartner.

Gartner argues that no IaaS provider currently offers the depth of services that enterprises need to achieve anything other than short-term tactical objectives.

"Many providers have a narrow offering based on their current sales and this can prevent them branching out to a wider market," said Lydia Leong, research vice president at Gartner.

"But in reality customer requirements for IaaS are diverse and evolve quickly," she added.

"Cloud IaaS represents a spectrum of services; there is no ‘one size fits all', and no single service provider successfully addresses all segments of the market."

IaaS is the underlying layer in the software stack, and typically refers to operating systems, networks, virtualisation and storage.

"We are still at the beginning of the adoption cycle for cloud compute IaaS," said Leong.

"This is a rapidly evolving market that represents the transformation of IT infrastructure over 10 to 20 years."

Gartner predicts that the global IaaS market will grow from an estimated $3.7bn (£2.3bn) in 2011 to $10.5bn (£6.4bn) in 2014.