IBM has announced that it has been named the market leader in public cloud IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) adoption by leading independent technology market research firm, Technology Business Research, Inc. (TBR). In TBR's semiannual Public Cloud Customer Research survey of 2,169 enterprise, respondents identified IBM as a leader because of its ability to provide customers with hybrid management tools while addressing data location and privacy concerns through a global network of data centers.

"We continue to see strong enterprise adoption of public cloud services being driven by the need for hybrid management tools and solutions," said Kelsey Mason, analyst at TBR. "The market is also consolidating, which leaves very few players remaining that can address customer demands around global reach and scale, as well as data security and compliance."

Other TBR evaluation criteria include the ability of IaaS providers to focus on attracting developers and building out more data center locations while adding more professional and managed services. Enterprise customers also looked at scalability and cost of public cloud making it a logical deployment model for initiatives around Internet of Things (IoT) and analytics.

"This report validates a much broader trend where companies are turning to the IBM Cloud for choice and consistency across public, private and hybrid environments," says Jim Comfort, chief technology officer for IBM Cloud. "We've become the backbone and onramp to the cloud, giving enterprise customers the global reach, capacity and scale they need. Our cloud offering bridges the gap between on premise IT and cloud with versatility and ease."

TBR's Public Cloud Customer Research report is designed to provide a view into cloud adoption metrics and trends. For more information please click here.