Private and hybrid cloud have graduated from tactical options to strategic foundations. Enterprises that once viewed cloud primarily as a cost play are now relying on mixed-mode infrastructure to run GenAI workloads on AI-ready cloud infrastructure, modernize legacy applications, and satisfy ever stricter data sovereignty and sustainability mandates.
ISG Provider Lens™ Private/Hybrid Cloud Data Center Services UK 2025 Report recognizes twelve Leaders for large account managed services. While the report’s scope is regional, the capabilities it highlights—automation first operations, sovereign-ready architectures, and FinOps discipline—mirror the needs of global enterprises looking to futureproof their estates.
5 Reasons Private and Hybrid Cloud Are Board-level Priorities in 2025
Enterprises have discovered that hybrid architectures offer balance. Sensitive or latency-critical workloads stay on dedicated nodes while elastic bursts, AI training jobs, and global user traffic can land on hyperscale regions. This flexibility supports five converging imperatives:
- GenAI at scale
Models need adjacent data, GPUs, and low-latency fabrics. A well-designed private core plus selective public expansion keeps inference fast and training costs in check. - Sovereign control
Data residency rules in finance, healthcare, and the public sector require in country processing. Hybrid topologies satisfy locality without sacrificing elasticity. - Legacy coexistence
Mainframes and proprietary appliances still run critical revenue streams. Hybrid integration offers refactor-when-ready pathways, enabling cloud modernization, rather than risky rip-and-replace. - Predictable economics
FinOps transparency turns consumption noise into business metrics. Leaders combine usage telemetry, chargeback, and AIOps tuning to drive cloud cost optimization and keep spend tied to value. - Sustainability targets
Boards want carbon roadmaps, not abstracts. Providers now publish verifiable power usage, renewable mix, and circular hardware programs to help CIOs defend ESG progress.
Hybrid Cloud Adoption Isn’t Easy: What’s Holding Enterprises Back?
Even mature users feel friction as estates grow:
- Modernizing without downtime
Many critical systems cannot tolerate multi-hour migration windows. Leaders now use blue-green or live migration patterns plus real-time replication layers to limit business impact. - Balancing control with compliance
Cloud security teams demand fixed-location storage while developers push for self-service speed. Achieving both means unified policy engines that translate mandates into code. - Running GenAI on mixed hardware
GPU scarcity and capacity caps make it hard to right-size. Providers offering shared AI clusters with consumption tiers give enterprises breathing room without overbuying. - Achieving cost transparency across clouds
Line item billing is not insight. Clients need workload profitability and carbon accounting side by side. FinOps frameworks with machine learning anomaly detection are closing the gap. - Meeting measurable ESG goals
Regulators increasingly require audited reporting. Providers that expose real-time power dashboards and hardware lifecycle metrics position clients to certify progress.
For instance, Flexera’s 2024 State of the Cloud report found that about 90% of enterprises operate a multicloud strategy and over 70% run hybrid workloads, highlighting how common cross-platform complexity has become.
What the Top Hybrid Cloud Providers Do Differently
ISG’s Leaders among cloud infrastructure providers share five consistent attributes:
- Automation driven operations
They employ policy-based orchestration, self-healing runbooks, and full-stack observability so ops teams manage by exception rather than ticket. - Sovereign, sector aware architecture
Templates embed jurisdictional controls, key management, and audit pipelines aligned to vertical mandates such as FCA in finance or MHRA in life sciences. - AI-ready fabric
Direct attach accelerators, high bandwidth east-west networks, and containerized ML pipelines offer consistent performance from sandbox to production. - FinOps maturity
Leaders provide near real-time cost benchmarking, predictive budget alerts, and cloud optimization playbooks that link resource meters to business value. - Global reach with local depth
They operate data centers and edge zones in multiple regions yet maintain in-country engineering teams for faster incident response and contextual compliance advice.
Where Hybrid Cloud Is Headed: Trends to Watch in 2025 and Beyond
Enterprises and providers alike are steering toward new baselines:
- AI native infrastructure will see storage, networking, and security stacks hardened for large language models, vector databases, and autonomous agents.
- FinOps becomes continuous with engine-driven guardrails that pause rogue workloads automatically and suggest rightsizing in chat interfaces.
- Decentralized edge patterns will move analytics closer to sensors, vehicles, and branch sites while maintaining central policy and observability.
- Local regulations by design will drive template-level cloud security safeguards—encryption, audit, residency, rather than manual overlays.
- Experience centric ops will tie SRE metrics to developer productivity and customer response times, not just hardware uptime.
The Uptime Institute’s 2024 survey shows average data ‑center power usage effectiveness (PUE) flat at 1.56, underscoring room for sustainability gains that hybrid optimization can unlock.
Meet the 12 Leaders in Managed Services for Private and Hybrid Cloud
Below are the twelve providers ISG positions as Leaders in large account managed services, listed alphabetically. Each summary captures where they stand out:
- Accenture
Pairs deep industry consulting with hybrid reference architectures; automation fabric driven by myNav accelerates discovery, migration, and Green Cloud benchmarking.
- Atos
Long heritage in high security, mission systems, and HPC; delivers trusted private clouds with sovereign controls, complemented by Bull Sequana compute for AI training.
- Capgemini
Offers Cloud Platform Engineering with built in FinOps and AIOps; strong vertical blueprints for public sector, energy, and financial services enable faster compliance alignment.
- Computacenter
European data center footprint plus integration expertise for on prem hardware refresh and multicloud brokerage; focus on pragmatic cost and operational outcomes.
- DXC Technology
Platform X provides AIOps driven NoOps, embedding self-healing across hybrid estate; invests in continuous modernization toolchain for mainframe and midrange workloads.
- Fujitsu
Combines robust sustainability roadmaps with fully managed sovereign cloud zones; trusted by governments and regulated industries for long term infrastructure stewardship.
- HCLTech
CloudSmart services deliver factory migrations, multicloud governance, and edge‐to‐core observability; AI training labs help clients pilot GenAI safely on private GPUs.
- Hexaware
Automation first, GenAI enabled operations through Tensai® and RapidX™; consumption friendly pricing appeals to both multinationals and midmarket firms seeking agility.
- Infosys
Cobalt platform integrates accelerators for regulatory compliance, carbon tracking, and AI workload enablement across private, hybrid, and edge footprints.
- Kyndryl
Operates one of the world’s largest infrastructure footprints with Site Reliability Engineering frameworks; strategic partnerships with hyperscalers enhance hybrid orchestration.
- TCS
Pairs Secure Borderless Workspaces with Cognitive Business Operations to deliver experience centric, policy compliant cloud hosting at scale.
- Wipro
Drives legacy modernization in financial services through AI, automation, and cloud, underscored by strategic transformation wins like the Phoennix Group.
The Hexaware Approach
Hexaware is one of only two providers in the 2025 study to be rated a Leader for both large accounts and midmarket. A top cloud services provider, Hexaware’s cloud vision shows up in three ways:
- Centralized observability using machine learning to correlate business KPIs with infrastructure telemetry, surfacing anomalies before they hit service level targets.
- FinOps excellence via a four-phase framework that maps cloud spend to value streams, enabling data-driven cost rightsizing and chargeback.
- Sustainability baked in through carbon footprint dashboards and power-aware workload placement, helping clients meet science-based targets.
The result is a hybrid cloud estate that scales from pilot to production without surprise bills or compliance gaps.
Why Enterprises Are Choosing Hybrid Cloud for Their Most Strategic Workloads
Hybrid cloud gives enterprises the flexibility to run workloads where it makes the most sense, balancing control, performance, and cost. A life sciences firm might keep clinical analytics on private GPU clusters while offloading non-sensitive tasks to public cloud overnight. A regional bank may store customer data locally but use public AI models for fraud detection. This mix-and-match model lets organizations meet regulatory, performance, and economic goals simultaneously.
How to Select the Right Partner for Hybrid Cloud Success
When assessing managed service providers, enterprises should ask five practical questions:
- How automated are day two operations? Look for policy driven configuration, event correlation, and auto remediation that minimize manual toil.
- Can the provider align cloud costs with outcomes? FinOps tooling must translate usage into per product or per customer profitability, not just spreadsheets.
- Is their cloud-readiness platform AI ready? Accelerators, GPU pools, and data governance pipelines should be available on demand, not special projects.
- Does sustainability have hard metrics? Verify published PUE, renewable energy mix, and hardware reuse programs that feed ESG reporting.
- How quickly can we migrate legacy estates? Proven factory methods for mainframe, midrange, and monolith refactor reduce risk and accelerate time to value.
What Comes Next for Private and Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure
Hybrid leaders are already testing software defined everything, confidential computing, and location aware AI scheduling. Future convergences may include:
- Lower carbon with renewable feeds and heat reuse credits.
- Edge plus core federations that share a single policy plane and cost model.
- Autonomous remediation loops with GenAI that writes and validate runbooks in real time.
For enterprises, the takeaway is clear: momentum favors adaptable architectures and partners who embed intelligence, compliance, and sustainability in the service fabric.
Why These Leaders Matter for the Future of Enterprise IT
Private and hybrid cloud have become indispensable to enterprise cloud transformation because they let businesses move at public cloud speed without losing control of data, risk, or cost. These cloud infrastructure providers profiled here demonstrate how automation, AI readiness, and governance by design can coexist in a single operating model.
Organizations that embrace these principles are already seeing tangible benefits. By unifying on-prem and multicloud estates under FinOps and AIOps control, they reduce unplanned outages, accelerate new product launches, advance cloud modernization, and cut energy waste. The combination positions them not merely to keep pace with change but to shape it.
As digital ambitions grow and regulatory plus sustainability pressures intensify, the capabilities delivered by these providers will define competitive advantage. CIOs who select partners with automation depth, sector awareness, and global reach will be best equipped to turn hybrid complexity into strategic flexibility.