Information Services Group (ISG) has launched a research study examining providers of container services, the cloud-native approach to building applications.

The study results will be published in a comprehensive ISG Provider Lens report, called Container Services & Solutions, scheduled to be released in September. The report will cover a range of container services offered by providers, including managed container services, Kubernetes platform solutions and hyperscale cloud container platforms.

Enterprise buyers will be able to use information from the report to evaluate their current vendor relationships, potential new engagements and available offerings, while ISG advisors use the information to recommend providers to the firm's buy-side clients.

The new report will look at ways container services providers are helping enterprises lower costs and improve customer experience through the faster development of new products and services, said Jan Erik Aase, partner and global leader, ISG Provider Lens Research.

"By decoupling applications from the underlying infrastructure, container solutions offer some major advantages over traditional on-premises applications," he said. "These benefits include light-touch updating of applications, faster scaling of compute and other resources to accommodate peaks in demand, and the freedom to work in web-based programming languages."

ISG has distributed surveys to more than 180 container services providers. Working in collaboration with ISG's global advisors, the research team will produce five quadrants representing the services and products the typical enterprise customer is buying in the container space, based on ISG's experience working with its clients. The five quadrants that will be covered are:

• Managed Container Services, analyzing service providers that offer a suite of capabilities to assist enterprises with the creation and operation of container platforms, along with the development of applications atop those platforms. Service providers in this quadrant must offer a structured methodology to help enterprises containerize existing applications. These offerings assist enterprises with setting up Kubernetes, service mesh, observability and security functionality.
• Kubernetes Platform Solutions, focused on independent software vendors that offer enterprise software distributions of Kubernetes. These distributions should be based on the upstream open-source project and provide additional capabilities necessary for enterprises to maximize their Kubernetes use, such as multi-cluster management, compliance management and patching. This software should be able to run under a hybrid cloud model.
• Hyperscale Cloud Container Platforms, including hyperscale cloud providers that offer managed public cloud platforms for containerized applications. Players in this space own globally distributed infrastructure with datacenter regions available in the relevant geographies for this study. They also offer fully automated managed services dedicated to deploying and operating Kubernetes on this infrastructure on the customer's behalf.
• Cloud Native Observability Solutions, covering software vendors that provide dedicated solutions for observability of containerized applications. Understanding the behavior of these applications can be more complex than with a traditional monolith. Developers and operators must understand the behavior of each containerized app or service as well as how they communicate with one another.
• Kubernetes Training Services, focused on companies that offer bespoke training in the skills needed to safely deploy, scale and manage containerized applications and Kubernetes. Typically, these companies are certified by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation for training purposes. As new technical skills and cultural changes within an enterprise are required to effectively use Kubernetes, some businesses may opt to work with external training providers.

The report will cover the global container market and examine products and services available in the U.S. and Europe. ISG analysts Blair Hanley Frank and Mark Purdy will serve as lead authors of the report.

A list of identified providers and vendors and further details on the study are available in this digital brochure.