IBM

Strengths: NGI will eventually be the basis of IBM's cloud IaaS offerings, as well as the platform for other IBM Cloud products, all presented as a "Bluemix experience".

When the platform is ready, IBM intends to gradually transition its existing infrastructure customers to NGI.

"The eventual rollout of its NGI architecture is likely to help IBM evolve beyond its current status as a hosting-scale provider, making it more viable for IBM to match the cost economics of the market leaders," Gartner noted.

Cautions: While NGI is an ambitious project, IBM's current cloud still runs on SoftLayer infrastructure, which has not seen much advancement to its feature sets since the SoftLayer acquisition, said Gartner.

SoftLayer lacks many cloud IaaS capabilities required by midmarket and enterprise customers, according to the research firm.

And there's historical precedent in IBM's cloud business for engineering problems slowing new products from hitting the market.