Table of Contents
- Summary
- Market Categories and Deployment Types
- Key Criteria Comparison
- GigaOm Radar
- Vendor Insights
- Analyst’s Take
- Methodology
- About Joep Piscaer
- About GigaOm
- Copyright
1. Summary
Kubernetes is the de facto standard for container orchestration, and it’s being used by born-in-the-cloud startups and cloud-native enterprises alike. In 2021, Kubernetes was in production on-premises, in the cloud, and even at the edge for many different types of applications, including those that Kubernetes wasn’t initially built for.
Kubernetes was never really built for stateful applications, and by default, it lacks features for data protection. However, we see many organizations building and running their stateful applications on top of Kubernetes, indicating there’s a gap in functionality between what Kubernetes offers and what the (enterprise) market wants.
Unfortunately, existing data protection tools, mostly built for legacy technologies such as virtual machines, do not fit well into the container paradigm. Vendors are adapting existing solutions or creating new products from scratch that are often better aligned with the cloud-native and container paradigms.
Many of these data protection solutions include other data management features, such as data security, disaster recovery, or heterogeneous data migration capabilities. There’s some overlap among data storage solutions, data protection solutions, and data management solutions in the cloud-native space, with each solution offering some adjacent features.
We have seen a particular focus on ransomware and other security features in the last year, with vendors developing protective measures against different kinds of attacks including ransomware, abuse of misconfigured cloud resources, and more. The Key Criteria companion report dives into features and functionality we expect to see in this space, as summarized in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Cloud-Native Data Storage, Protection, Migration, and Security Converge Into Single Solutions
The market for cloud-native data protection is growing rapidly, with both incumbent vendors and challengers in the market competing for completeness of features across the four key pillars. Differences can be observed between those targeting existing, more traditional infrastructure alignment, and those targeting fully cloud-native environments.
In any case, we see the growing need for flexible, adaptive solutions that can follow the ever-changing requirements of their customers. Multi-platform, multi-cloud, multi-environment (including edge), multi-team, and self-service features are quickly becoming differentiating features that ensure successful adoption not for just one use case but for continuously changing use cases across the entire enterprise.
How to Read this Report
This GigaOm report is one of a series of documents that helps IT organizations assess competing solutions in the context of well-defined features and criteria. For a fuller understanding consider reviewing the following reports:
Key Criteria report: A detailed market sector analysis that assesses the impact that key product features and criteria have on top-line solution characteristics—such as scalability, performance, and TCO—that drive purchase decisions.
GigaOm Radar report: A forward-looking analysis that plots the relative value and progression of vendor solutions along multiple axes based on strategy and execution. The Radar report includes a breakdown of each vendor’s offering in the sector.
Solution Profile: An in-depth vendor analysis that builds on the framework developed in the Key Criteria and Radar reports to assess a company’s engagement within a technology sector. This analysis includes forward-looking guidance around both strategy and product.