Grid® for Cloud Computing Infrastructure | Winter 2019

The Cloud Computing Infrastructure Grid^® represents the democratic voice of real software users, rather than the subjective opinion of one analyst. G2 Crowd rates products from categories deemed influential to the overall cloud computing market algorithmically based on data sourced from product reviews shared by G2 Crowd users and data aggregated from online sources and social networks.

Technology buyers can use the Cloud Computing Infrastructure Grid^® to help them quickly select the best vendor for their businesses and to find peers with similar experiences. For vendors, media, investors, and analysts, the Cloud Computing Infrastructure Grid^® provides benchmarks for vendor comparison and market trend analysis.

G2 Crowd rates vendors based on a collection of product reviews gathered from our user community, as well as data aggregated from online sources and social networks. These reviews are from a series of different products in categories deemed critical to the cloud computing infrastructure space, and secondary products in categories viewed as important, but not crucial to the core cloud computing infrastructure market. The Cloud Computing Infrastructure Grid^® algorithm was adapted from our Grid^® algorithms, but combines multiple products across categories from a single vendor onto a Grid^® and uses this data to calculate the Satisfaction and Market Presence scores in real time. The Grid^® Report for Cloud Computing Infrastructure | Winter 2019 is based off of scores calculated using the G2 Crowd Grid^® algorithms from reviews collected through November 12, 2018.

Satisfaction for the Cloud Computing Infrastructure Grid® is across multiple categories to reflect a vendor’s complete presence in a space. Category scores are then aggregated with greater weight toward categories deemed critical to the suite. The Satisfaction rating is an aggregated score of all products offered by a vendor in the following categories: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS), Database as a Service (DBaaS), Cloud File Storage, Container Management, Container Orchestration, Hybrid Cloud Storage, Load Balancing, Object Storage, and Virtual Private Cloud. Satisfaction scores are affected by the following (in order of importance):

• Customer satisfaction with end user-focused product attributes based on user reviews
• Popularity and statistical significance based on the number of reviews received by G2 Crowd
• Quality of reviews received (reviews that are more thoroughly completed will be weighted more heavily)
• Age of reviews (more-recent reviews provide relevant and up-to-date information that is reflective of the current state of a product)
• Customers' satisfaction with administration-specific product attributes based on user reviews
• Overall customer satisfaction and Net Promoter Score^® (NPS) based on ratings by G2 Crowd users

The Market Presence score is affected by the following (in order of importance):

• Market presence is a combination of 15 metrics from G2 Crowd’s reviews, publicly available information, and third-party sources
• Both the software vendors and the individual products are measured on various criteria. The criteria are listed in order of importance. Products metric receive greater weight than vendor metrics
• Each input is normalized by category and segment. This means that scores are relative to other products in the category/segment and may change from segment to segment
• The scores are then scaled from 0-100

Making G2 Crowd research relevant and easy for people to use as they evaluate and select business software products is one of our most important goals. In support of that goal, organizing products and software companies in a well-defined structure that makes capturing, evaluating, and displaying reviews and other research in an orderly manner is a critical part of the research process.

To manage the process of categorizing the software products and the related reviews in the G2 community, G2 Crowd follows a publicly available categorization methodology. All onboarding products appearing on the Grid^® have passed through G2 Crowd's categorization methodology and meet G2 Crowd's category standards.

Many terms that appear regularly across G2 Crowd and are used to aid in product categorization warrant a definition to facilitate buyer understanding. These terms may be included within reviews from the G2 community or in executive summaries for products included on the Grid^®. A list of standard definitions is available to G2 Crowd users to eliminate confusion and ease the buying process.

The ratings in this report are based on a snapshot of the user reviews, as well as revenue and social data collected by G2 Crowd up through November 12, 2018. The ratings may change as the products are further developed, the vendors grow, and as additional opinions are shared by users.

Keeping our ratings unbiased is our top priority. We require the use of a LinkedIn account or verified business email address to validate a G2 Crowd user’s identity and employer. We also validate users by partnering with vendors and organizations to securely authenticate users through select platforms. We do not allow users to review their current or former employers’ products, or those of their employers’ competitors. Additionally, all reviews are manually checked by our team after our algorithm filters out reviews that don’t meet our submission requirements. All reviews must pass our moderation process before they are published.

Our G2 Crowd staff does not add any subjective input to the ratings, which are determined algorithmically based on data aggregated from publicly available online sources and social networks. Vendors cannot influence their ratings by spending time or money with us. Only the opinion of real users and data from public sources factor into the ratings.

To qualify for a G2 Crowd Suite Grid® Report a vendor must have at least one product in each of the core categories, and at least 10 reviews for one of those products. Inviting other users, such as colleagues and peers, to join G2 Crowd and share authentic product reviews will accelerate this process.

*The customer satisfaction score is normalized for each Grid^®, meaning the scores are relative.

**Net Promoter, Net Promoter System, Net Promoter Score, NPS and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Fred Reichheld and Satmetrix Systems, Inc.