Gartner Research

Critical Capabilities for Distributed Hybrid Infrastructure

Published: 16 September 2025

Summary

Distributed hybrid infrastructure has become the enabler of unified management capabilities, from on-premises to edge and cloud. This evaluation compares provider offerings in six use cases across 12 critical capabilities to empower heads of I&O to make the optimal DHI choice.

Included in Full Research

  • Alibaba Cloud
  • Amazon Web Services
  • Broadcom (VMware)
  • Google
  • Huawei
  • IBM
  • Microsoft
  • Nutanix
  • Oracle
  • Tencent Cloud
  • Infrastructure Operations Mgmt.
  • On-Premises Architecture
  • Edge Architecture
  • AI and GenAI Capabilities
  • Public Cloud Architecture
  • Data Services
  • Resilience
  • Container Support
  • Solution Delivery
  • Networking
  • Security and Governance
  • Container Deployment
  • Hybrid Infrastructure Management
  • Edge Computing
  • Sovereign Workloads
  • Multicloud
  • AI and GenAI Workloads

Analysts:

Jeffrey Hewitt,  Julia Palmer,  Adrian Wong,  Dennis Smith,  Leo Li,  Elaine Zhang,  Tony Harvey

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Critical Capabilities: A deeper look into provider offerings

How does a Critical Capabilities report work?

As a companion to the Magic Quadrant™, a Critical Capabilities report scores competing products and services against a set of meaningful differentiators. It reveals which options are the best fit in various use cases to help you focus on the vendors best suited to your needs.

A Critical Capabilities report is more than just a diagram. You also get:
Sharper focus

Narrow down the product and service criteria most important to you.

Individualized use cases

Use interactive features to customize usage scenarios based on your organization’s unique needs.

Faster decision making

Use data to speed up provider selection and accelerate the procurement process.

A Gartner Critical Capabilities report is just one of our many offerings.

We provide actionable, objective insight to help organizations make smarter, faster technology decisions to stay ahead of disruption and accelerate growth.

Pick the right provider with confidence

We use a Critical Capabilities report, the Magic Quadrant and more to ensure you select the best-fit provider to avoid the costly repercussions of a poor decision.

Align deal structures and optimize spend

We benchmark pricing against the market so you avoid unnecessary charges.

Reduce complexity and risk

We analyze contract terms and conditions to protect you against future price increases and unanticipated costs.

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