CenturyLink

Strengths: "CenturyLink has built a solid platform for increasing its own agility and ability to deliver new service offerings," Gartner noted. That platform is increasingly emphasizing hybrid and multi-cloud capabilities.

CenturyLink has historically used cloud IaaS as a means to pursue managed services business. But that strategy hasn't stopped the telecom from building a competitive feature set for self-service customers, and blending self-service and managed-service models across a hybrid solution portfolio, the research firm said.

Cautions: Despite successful execution on its roadmap and recent acquisitions, competitors are still outpacing CenturyLink, according to Gartner. The provider's stated intention of integrating Platform-as-a-Service shows little progress.

The Level 3 acquisition, by which CenturyLink is expanding its global telecom footprint, and the sale of data center assets, "creates some uncertainty around the vendor's future cloud ambitions," said Gartner.

The cloud-focused acquisitions support a hybrid and multi-cloud strategy -- not one focused on its own IaaS and PaaS.