Key Criteria for Evaluating HCI

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Key Criteria for Evaluating HCI

HCI simplifies infrastructure with a scale-out approach that partially eliminates the need for hardware sizing while adding better granularity and linearity in capacity and performance upgrades. However, given the range of features, the emphasis shifts to understanding the di erences between implementations in order to choose the best solution for the organization. While HCI with standard, table-stakes features are mature, the market is very crowded with multiple HCI solutions offering key criteria and innovative features that can have a significant positive impact on organizations. Now more than ever, given the growing complexity of expanding infrastructure to the public cloud and the edge, it is crucial to select a solution that can last for a long time and respond quickly to ever-changing business requirements.

The HCI market share leaders are VMware and Dell EMC VxRail on one side and Nutanix on the other. VMware is the market leader in virtualized infrastructure and is expanding its reach to the hybrid cloud, thanks to a series of new products and services built in partnership with major service providers. Nutanix has been able to build a compelling alternative end-to-end solution that has a technical lead and is expanding to become more hybrid as well. Even when VMware (or VMware/Dell) and Nutanix do not come first in a single category, their stacks are always well positioned.

The runner-ups are HPE, Microsoft, and NetApp with very interesting solutions, each one of them with clear differentiators and market focus.