SEATTLE, WA--(Marketwired - Nov 5, 2015) - 2nd Watch is listed as a Representative Vendor in a new report from Gartner, "Market Guide for Managed Service Providers on Amazon Web Services," published October 27, 2015. The study reviewed the IT operations and application management needs of Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers, and noted that many customers want to use cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS), but lack the technical understanding or skills to do so safely, efficiently and with agility. They need professional services to help migrate applications into the cloud, want to outsource management of the infrastructure or applications, or want a managed service provider (MSP) that will assist them in making a transition to cloud-native DevOps-style operations. The Market Guide can be found here.

2nd Watch is one of the earliest members of the AWS Partner Network (APN) and has been an AWS Premier Consulting Partner since 2013. 2nd Watch has achieved AWS Competencies in DevOps, Marketing and Commerce, Big Data and Life Sciences. 2nd Watch was also the first cloud-native MSP to achieve SOC2 compliance, meeting requirements for security, availability and confidentiality.

The Gartner Market Guide points out that "Many MSPs currently deliver managed services on AWS in a fashion that is very similar to the way that they have delivered hosted or on-premises solutions; they use AWS's basic compute, storage and networking capabilities as if they were simply renting VMs. However, this is not the future direction of the market or the most advantageous way for customers to use AWS. Cloud IaaS is in the process of actually transforming the managed service market toward a more agile and customer-intimate, yet highly automated and standardized, approach."

Gartner goes on to say that "Cloud IaaS customers typically take a bimodal IT approach to sourcing these solutions; they are more oriented toward Mode 1 'reliable IT' or Mode 2 'agile IT,' and this impacts the buying center, vendors considered, and requirements for contracting and pricing.

"This Mode 2 customer is launching a new application or group of related applications, or is moving an existing application to cloud IaaS and wants a DevOps approach to operations. An agile, cloud-native application life cycle is the highest priority," concludes Gartner.

"2nd Watch has worked hard to establish itself as a leading cloud-native AWS MSP, and our success managing environments for some of the world's largest brands demonstrates that we have achieved our desired result," says Jeff Aden, co-founder and EVP at 2nd Watch.

Source: Gartner, Inc., "Market Guide for Managed Service Providers on Amazon Web Services," Lydia Leong, October 27, 2015

Gartner Disclaimer:
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About 2nd Watch
2nd Watch is an APN Premier Consulting Partner providing managed cloud to enterprises. The company's subject matter experts, software-enabled services and cutting-edge solutions provide companies with tested, proven, and trusted solutions, allowing them to fully leverage the power of the public cloud. 2nd Watch solutions are high performing, robust, increase operational excellence, decrease time to market, accelerate growth and lower risk. Its patent-pending, proprietary tools automate everyday workload management processes for big data analytics, digital marketing, line-of-business and cloud native workloads. 2nd Watch is a new breed of partner which helps enterprises design, deploy and manage cloud solutions and monitors business critical workloads 24x7. 2nd Watch has more than 400 enterprise workloads under its management and more than 75,000 instances in its managed public cloud. The venture-backed company is headquartered in Seattle, Washington. To learn more about 2nd Watch, visit www.2ndwatch.com or call 888-317-7920.