For many sub-genres of cloud technology, the competitive landscape amounts to one decision: hyperscaler or specific player? Cloud database management systems (DBMS) are no different; and according to Gartner’s most recent Magic Quadrant, the hyperscalers – mostly – take the spoils.

The report, published earlier this month, finds eight companies in the leaders’ zone out of 16 analysed in total. Alibaba Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and Teradata found a place in the top right grid, while Redis Labs and Snowflake sat in the ‘challengers’ zone.

DBMS, as per Gartner’s definition, are products from vendors which ‘supply fully provider-managed public or private cloud software systems that manage data in cloud storage.’ Data warehouses, relational to nonrelational data models, and deep learning are all included, but vendors who only provide DBMS in an IaaS, managed by the customer, are not part of the definition.

Integration between independent, open source database providers and the major clouds are an interesting inflection point. Alibaba Cloud, for instance, has its ApsaraDB across various SQL sets, as well as Redis, MongoDB and Cassandra. Last year, Google Cloud partnered with seven open source vendors, with CEO Thomas Kurian continuing to espouse an open vision as recently as this month.

Not all cloud providers agree, however. With one eye on AWS re:Invent later this week, the long-standing cloud infrastructure leader has, in the words of Gartner, tended ‘to think of its own cloud as the most important.’ Indeed, Redis CEO Ofer Bengal told CloudTech last year that, AWS aside, the ‘mood was trying to change’ around open source cloud collaboration. AWS’ depth of product, strong performance and dominant market presence is, naturally, cited as a major benefit.

Though AWS was clear in terms of ability to execute as judged by Gartner, Oracle was seen as the leader – albeit with Google and IBM in short order behind – for completeness of vision. The analyst firm praised Oracle’s established enterprise focus and on-premises presence, which in this arena was ‘clearly a strength.’ Yet a lack of interoperability – the only managed DBMS available on Oracle’s cloud being its own services – was seen as a pain point.

Gartner predicts that by 2022, three quarters of all databases will either be deployed or migrated to a cloud platform, while a year later, multi-cloud will force players’ hands around data governance and integration. For Alibaba Cloud, who touted its own leadership credentials as a result, the company said it had seen its DBMS double in demand year-on-year, with more than 100,000 enterprise customers cited.

Seeing the hyperscalers at the top of the tree is nothing new for Gartner Magic Quadrants, of course. The IaaS MQ, published in September, added various flavours of platform as a service (PaaS) to noted expanding enterprise use cases. Yet this did not change the rankings, with AWS, Microsoft and Google Cloud remaining the leaders.

Disclaimer: CloudTech saw a copy of the Magic Quadrant through Alibaba Cloud’s landing page, which can be found here.

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