NTT Communications

Strengths: NTT Communications enjoys a large customer base, especially in Asia. And its sister companies in the NTT conglomerate can also bring in customers, as well as their partner networks.

NTT Com has a long track record delivering managed hosting and security services, which it can layer on top of Enterprise Cloud 2.0.

The company's global network reduces both total cost of its cloud solutions and friction in customer implementations, Gartner noted.

Cautions: Enterprise Cloud 2.0, the unified platform, still seems like a cloud in transition. It is a basic IaaS service with little differentiation and missing many capabilities that are important to customers, according to Gartner.

The new IaaS offering at the heart of NTT Com's strategic cloud shift also has a limited operational track record. So far, Enterprise Cloud 2.0 shows more outages than is typical for the industry, the research firm said.