Description

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed that many healthcare organizations have neither the agility and business continuity programs nor the technologies needed to support them during a crisis. Consequently, some have been forced to act on cloud and digital transformation strategies they had been delaying. The cloud has been critical in helping healthcare providers respond to the pandemic and prepare for future disruptions.

Cloud service providers have been strengthening their partner programs by reinforcing and increasing collaborations with independent software vendors (ISVs), system integrators (SIs), cloud managed service providers (MSPs), and telecommunications and network service providers. Industry convergence has intensified, with growing demand for edge computing and 5G networks and the need for differentiation throughout the industry.

Competitive intensity is on the rise with several new companies having launched cloud offerings and forcing market share changes in 2021. This activity will continue to evolve in the next 2 to 3 years, necessitating continual innovation and value-based services from cloud service providers to meet healthcare consumers’ various demands.

Healthcare cloud market participants must create a robust pipeline that accounts for strategic imperatives tied to a pandemic-disrupted world and empowers healthcare organizations with cloud-native digital tools and capabilities, such as secured data compute and storage, data interoperability, and networking.

The ability to offer customized, cloud-based implementation of infrastructure and platforms tailored to each healthcare environment to enable personalized care, patient monitoring, health data interoperability, and clinical analytics (AI/ML) is emerging as a competitive requirement. As cloud infrastructure is becoming increasingly commoditized, service providers have been investing in differentiating themselves through up-the-stack solutions (e.g., IaaS and PaaS), value-add services (e.g., professional and managed cloud services), acquisitions, and industry-specific solutions (e.g., healthcare and Internet of Things).

In a field of more than 50 global healthcare cloud industry participants, Frost & Sullivan independently plotted the top 12 infrastructure and platform cloud infrastructure and platform service providers in this Frost Radar™ analysis.

The Frost Radar™ features Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), IBM Cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), Fujitsu, Rackspace Technology, Salesforce, SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), VMware, Cisco, and OutSystems. While more than a dozen smaller companies either are exploring the market or have recently entered it, Frost & Sullivan has identified these 12 as the market powerhouses.

The Radar™ reveals the market positioning of each company using its Growth and Innovation scores as highlighted in the Frost Radar™ methodology. The document presents competitive profiles on each company based on its strengths, opportunities, and market positioning. We discuss strategic market imperatives and the competitive environment that vendors operate in as well as make recommendations for each provider to spur growth.

Author: Rishi Pathak