Rackspace

Strengths: In recent years, Rackspace has evolved its business to delivering private cloud infrastructure across a variety of technology platforms. Rackspace is now the market leader in industrialized private cloud IaaS.

The company, since privatization, has also "returned to its roots in managed services," said Gartner. Rackspace now offers its high-touch managed services for its own infrastructure, as well as on partner platforms:  AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

Those partnerships with the three hyper-scale powerhouses make Rackspace "well-positioned to deliver hybrid and multi-cloud solutions," according to Gartner.

Cautions: There's little to differentiate Rackspace's IaaS offerings from competitors, said Gartner.

For private infrastructure, where Rackspace has excelled of late, that's common. But public cloud customers expect more in today's market, Gartner noted.