Why Infrastructure Platform Consumption Services Matter Now

During the past year, AI has transformed the infrastructure market. Organizations are rapidly expanding data center and cloud capacity to support new AI workloads, while facing growing pressure to manage cyber risk, control costs, and demonstrate measurable business value. As infrastructure investments increase, technology leaders must balance innovation with operational efficiency and financial accountability.

These pressures are accelerating the adoption of consumption-based infrastructure models. Organizations want the flexibility to scale resources as demand changes, simplify operations through automation, and align spending more closely with business outcomes. As a result, infrastructure is increasingly being delivered as a service rather than as a fixed asset.

Gartner® defines the infrastructure platform consumption services (IPCS) market as solutions delivering mission-critical infrastructure, such as storage and compute, on a consumption-based, as-a-service model, managed through the platform vendor’s control plane. The appeal of IPCS lies in its ability to connect technology, operations, and economics. Organizations gain the flexibility to scale capacity as needed, automate routine operations, improve service accountability through SLA-backed commitments, and gain greater visibility into the relationship between infrastructure investments and business outcomes.

At the same time, AI is reshaping the hybrid infrastructure landscape. While hyperscalers continue to drive innovation, many organizations still require on-premises infrastructure to address data sovereignty, cyber resilience, performance, and cost requirements. This creates a growing opportunity for providers that can deliver cloud-like consumption experiences while supporting enterprise-class governance and control.

Against this backdrop, Hitachi Vantara was recognized as a Challenger in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Infrastructure Platform Consumption Services. It is our opinion that this recognition reflects the strength of our strategy and our continued investment in helping customers modernize how infrastructure is deployed, operated, and consumed.

Our approach brings together VSP One, VSP 360, and Hitachi EverFlex into a unified platform experience. VSP One provides a common data foundation across block, file, and object storage. VSP 360 delivers centralized visibility, management, and intelligence, while EverFlex offers flexible consumption and service delivery models including infrastructure managed services. Together, these capabilities help customers simplify operations, improve resilience, and align infrastructure investments with changing business needs.

Looking ahead, the next phase of infrastructure will be defined by greater automation, intelligent operations, and measurable service outcomes. Organizations will increasingly seek platforms that unify infrastructure management across multivendor and multicloud environments while providing the transparency and flexibility needed to support evolving business priorities.

We feel that our Challenger position validates our progress and directions. More importantly, it reinforces the conversations we are having with customers about how infrastructure can become more resilient, intelligent, flexible, and accountable to business outcomes.

Access the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ report and explore what the findings could mean for your infrastructure strategy.

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Infrastructure Platform Consumption Services, Jeff Vogel, Daniel Bowers, 21 September 2026

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