New analysis from Omdia’s Cloud Software & Services Intelligence Service indicates that the container management and runtime market has grown to $6.3bn. This market now consists of two distinct main segments – a container-as-a-service (CaaS) market largely controlled by major public cloud providers, with smaller providers also offering CaaS, and a commercially supported Kubernetes market where independent software vendors (ISVs) provide infrastructure-agnostic solutions.
Amazon narrowly edged out Microsoft to claim the top position in the CaaS market, which is the largest in revenue terms. Revenue in Omdia’s CaaS market model represents direct costs only, while revenue from indirect consumption of compute, memory, storage and network resources required to operate containerized applications contributes significantly to cloud providers. Smaller and local cloud service providers (CSPs) have established their own niche in the CaaS market, offering an alternative to the major public clouds.
In the commercially supported container management market, where Kubernetes has established itself as the standard, Red Hat extended its lead as the top ISV in the container management product segment. When considering the overall container management & runtime market (inclusive of both CaaS and container management products), Red Hat takes the third spot, just behind Amazon and Microsoft.
“Most container management solutions are based on Kubernetes, which is known for its increasing complexity,” explained Michael Azoff, Chief Analyst in Omdia’s Cloud and Data Center research practice. “Fully managed services are touted for reducing this complexity but when thinking about what is self-service and what is fully managed, it is best to think in terms of the two key roles: developers and site reliability engineers. Whether the service is on the cloud or on-premises, application developers want the maximum freedom to work on the application lifecycle. Where CaaS is distinguished from on-premises products, is that CaaS makes administration and maintenance of Kubernetes as easy as possible, which is attractive to large enterprises that have large scale requirements, as well as smaller businesses that lack the right in-house skills”.
