Four Times Leader. glueckkanja in the ISG Study Germany 2026

ISG renamed its study this year. The Microsoft Cloud Ecosystem became the Microsoft AI and Cloud Ecosystem, and the yardstick moved with the name: the study no longer assesses who adopts Microsoft platforms but who runs Copilot, agents, and AI workloads under control. The new yardstick has not changed our position. The ISG Provider Lens® study Germany 2026 positions us as a Leader in four quadrants: Microsoft Productivity and Business Process Services and Azure Managed Services, each in the large market and the mid market. After 2021, 2023, 2024, and 2025, it is our fifth Leader rating in Germany, and in Switzerland, the jump into the Leader quadrant came two weeks earlier.

The Study

With the Provider Lens® series, ISG assesses every year which service providers are competitive in a country market. Providers are positioned per quadrant by portfolio attractiveness and competitive strength, from Contender to Leader. For Germany 2026, ISG examined 59 providers across five quadrants: Microsoft Productivity and Business Process Services and Azure Managed Services, each split into large and mid market, plus Azure Data Transformation and AI Services. Lead author is Axel Oppermann, and his market assessment sets the tone for the entire study: the market rewards operations, not technology. Consumption only counts if its impact is proven, NIS2, DORA, and the EU AI Act set the sequence of procurement decisions, and with the first major renewal cycles for Copilot and Power Platform licenses, billing is shifting from licenses to usage.

Leader Microsoft Productivity and Business Process Services

In the large market, 24 of the 59 examined providers qualified for the quadrant, nine of which ISG rates as Leaders. We are one of them.

"glueckkanja operates Microsoft 365 as a code-based identity and endpoint control layer and, as a Launch Partner of the Microsoft Security Store, integrates Copilot agents into the security stack rather than in isolated pilot projects." (Axel Oppermann, Lead Analyst, ISG)

The reasoning reads like a description of our operating model. Tenant management, in our world, means workplace as code: conditional access, regulatory baselines, and lifecycle rules exist as versioned blueprints, and automated checks detect deviations from the target state. Governance for agent-based AI hangs on identity as the control logic, and as a MISA member and Launch Partner of the Microsoft Security Store, we run 14 Security Copilot agents in production, embedded in Managed Red Tenant and MXDR. The report specifically highlights for regulated industries that our operational architecture translates the requirements of DORA, NIS2, and BAIT into operational controls.

In the mid market, with 27 qualified providers and ten Leaders, ISG rewards the other side of the same model: predictability.

"glueckkanja delivers Microsoft 365 for the mid-market via versioned blueprints and MACC-eligible Marketplace products as a predictable Software-as-a-Service model with rapid time-to-value, allowing for the ordering of recurring use cases." (Axel Oppermann, Lead Analyst, ISG)

Managed Intune, Managed Entra, and workplace services come as code packages from a unified framework, and the majority of projects run at a fixed price instead of open-ended consulting days. A QuickStart framework with pre-configured tenant settings brings midsize companies into an organized workplace environment within a few weeks, and those without their own security team get operations included through the 24/7 service of our Managed SOC.

Leader Azure Managed Services

In the large market, 25 providers qualified and nine stand in the Leader quadrant.

"glueckkanja operates Azure via a proprietary Foundation Framework as a target-state-based operating model. Regulated enterprise clients benefit from stable configurations, verifiable audits and predictable cloud costs." (Axel Oppermann, Lead Analyst, ISG)

The core is the Azure Foundation: a Terraform-based platform model that bundles landing zones, policy sets, and management groups into one set of rules and prevents tenant drift. Changes run exclusively through GitHub pipelines, unplanned manual interventions in the portal are ruled out, rollbacks are reproducible, and the change history is complete. What stands out is what ISG counts as a strength: our deliberate distance from fully autonomous AI operations. Routines such as patching and provisioning are automated, while decisions about architecture and risk remain with people. For emergencies, dedicated service modules are in place, from the Managed Dark Tenant for recovery after ransomware attacks to Managed Container and Managed Data Foundation.

In the mid market, 24 qualified providers and nine Leaders, the report turns its perspective to procurement.

"glueckkanja replaces the traditional custom cloud project for midsize companies with a pre-built Azure runtime model, supported by its own Foundation Framework and based on fixed-price contracts." (Axel Oppermann, Lead Analyst, ISG)

Four out of five projects run at a fixed price, supplemented by transaction-based service packages in the Microsoft Commercial Marketplace: Managed AVD, Managed Container, or Managed Data Foundation can be procured through the existing Microsoft contract, with calculable unit costs instead of open-ended consulting budgets. The Foundation Framework gives midsize companies an organized Azure environment within a few weeks, without first having to build their own platform team, which in practice is the most common hurdle.

Five study years, four quadrants, one new yardstick: thank you to our customers and to the team that writes this operation as code every day. If you want to dig deeper into the results, request the full ISG overview through the form below.