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No-mere-hype hyper-converged systems clock hyper-growth
IDC's tracker finds FlexPods flourishing, Vblocks/VxBlocks faltering
Analyst firm IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Converged Systems Tracker shows overall converged systems revenue for 2017's first quarter increased year over year but only because of bonkers growth in hyper-converged systems.
The Tracker divides the converged systems market into four segments, and combines two of them in its published figures;
- Integrated Infrastructure - like VxBlocks
- Certified Reference Systems - like FlexPod
- Integrated Platforms - like Oracle engineered systems
- Hyper-converged Systems
Total worldwide converged systems market revenues increased 4.6 per cent year over year (y-on-y) to $2.67 billion in 2017's first quarter, with customers buying 1.48 EB of storage, up 7.1 per cent y-on-y.
The overall stats for the three market segments the firm publicises are as follows:
Q1 CY2017 | Integrated Infrastructure & Certified Reference Systems | Integrated Platforms | Hyper-converged Systems |
---|---|---|---|
Value | $1,372,500,000 | $635,900,000 | $665,100,000 |
Percent Share | 51.3% | 23.8% | 24.9% |
Annual Change | -3.3% | -13.3% | 64.7% |
Another quarter of HCI growth at the same rate would see $1.1 Bn in revenues while Integrated Infrastructure & Certified Reference Systems, declining again at 3.3 per cent would see $1.33 Bn, with HCI overtaking in the third quarter if growth rates stayed the same.
The top vendors in the Integrated Infrastructure & Certified Reference Systems area were;
Q1 cy2017 | Revenue | Market Share | Year-ago Revenue | Year-ago Market Share | Y-o-Y Revenue Growth |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Dell (+EMC) | $647,800,000 | 47.2% | $667,300,000 | 47% | -2.9% |
Cisco/NetApp | $395,600,000 | 28.8% | $313,700,000 | 22.1% | 26.1% |
HPE | $206,200,000 | 15% | $291,100,000 | 20.5% | -29.2% |
Others | $122,800,00 | 9% | $146,900,000 | 10.4% | -16.4% |
Total | $1,372,500,000 | 100% | $1,419,100,000 | 100% | -3.3% |
Cisco and NetApp's Flexpods were the only growth product in this segment of the market, with HPE being the largest share loser in this combined segment. Dell also gained market share, by declining less than the market overall.
Here are the Integrated Platform numbers for the top vendors;
Q1 CY2017 | Revenue | Market Share | Year-ago Revenue | Year-ago Share | Y-on-Y Revenue Growth |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Oracle | $348,700,000 | 54.8% | $379,600,000 | 51.8% | -8.1% |
HPE | $61,700,000 | 9.7% | $65,800,000 | 9% | -6.2% |
IBM | $19,900,000 | 3.1% | $26,600,000 | 3.6% | -25.1% |
Hitachi | $19,600,000 | 3.1% | $28,000,000 | 3.8% | -30.1% |
Others | $185,900,000 | 29.2% | $233,100,000 | 31.3% | -20.2% |
Total | $635,000,000 | 100% | $733,100,000 | 100% | -13.3% |
In this segment all vendors' revenues declined y-on-y, with Oracle and HPE gaining share in a declining market.
Annoyingly IDC doesn't break down the hyper-converged numbers into supplier shares in its published info. So we don't know if Dell (EMC) has overtaken Nutanix or not, or how well or badly any supplier has done.
IDC does publish a chart showing the segment changes over the past few quarters;
The data for converged systems in all their forms comes against a background of Q4 2016's sales dip and poor sales of standalone servers. ®