WW Converged Systems Market Revenue at $4.15 Billion Up 15% Y/Y in 4Q18 – IDC

According to the International Data Corporation‘s Worldwide Quarterly Converged Systems Tracker, worldwide converged systems market revenue increased 14.8% Y/Y to $4.15 billion during 4Q18.

“Hyperconverged infrastructure demand remains the primary driver of converged systems market growth,” said Sebastian Lagana, research manager, infrastructure platforms and technologies, IDC. “As HCI solutions are increasingly capable of operating business-critical workloads while reducing datacenter complexity and promoting affordability, the segment will continue to expand its share of the overall converged systems market.“

Converged Systems Market Segment Results
Converged systems market view offers three segments: certified reference systems and integrated infrastructure, integrated platforms, and hyperconverged systems.

The certified reference systems and integrated infrastructure market generated $1.6 billion in revenue during the fourth quarter, which represents a yearly decline of 6.4% and 38.6% of total converged systems revenue.

Integrated platforms sales declined 8.4% Y/Y in 4Q18, generating revenue of $619 million. This was 14.9% of the total converged systems market revenue.

Sales of hyperconverged systems grew 57.2% Y/Y during the fourth quarter, generating $1.9 billion in revenue. This amounted to 46.5% of the total converged systems market.

As it relates to the branded view of the hyperconverged systems market, Dell, Inc. was the largest supplier in 4Q18 with $552.4 million in revenue and a 28.6% share of the market. Nutanix generated $284.9 million in branded revenue, which represents 14.8% of the total HCI market during the quarter and 49% of the total HCI revenue generated through sales of systems running Nutanix software. HPE was the third largest branded HCI vendor with $104.9 million in revenue and 5.4% market share.
 

Top 3 Companies, WW Hyperconverged Systems as Branded, 4Q18
(in $ million)

* Dell, Inc. represents the combined revenues for Dell and EMC sales for all quarters shown.

From the software ownership view of the market, systems running VMware hyperconverged software represented $734.9 million in total fourth quarter vendor revenue or 38.1% of the total market. Systems running Nutanix hyperconverged software represented $576.2 million in fourth quarter vendor revenue or 29.8% of the total market. Both amounts represent sales of all HCI software and hardware regardless of how it was branded.
 

Top 3 Companies, WW Hyperconverged Systems Based on Owner of HCI Software, 4Q18
(in $ million)

Taxonomy Notes
IDC defines converged systems as pre-integrated, vendor-certified systems containing server hardware, disk storage systems, networking equipment, and basic element/systems management software. Systems not sold with all four of these components are not counted within this tracker. Specific to management software, IDC includes embedded or integrated management and control software optimized for the auto discovery, provisioning and pooling of physical and virtual compute, storage and networking resources shipped as part of the core, standard integrated system. Numbers in this press release may not sum due to rounding.

Certified reference systems and integrated infrastructure are pre-integrated, vendor-certified systems containing server hardware, disk storage systems, networking equipment, and basic element/systems management software. Integrated platforms are integrated systems that are sold with additional pre-integrated packaged software and customized system engineering optimized to enable such functions as application development software, databases, testing, and integration tools. Hyperconverged systems collapse core storage and compute functionality into a single, highly virtualized solution. A key characteristic of hyperconverged systems that differentiate these solutions from other integrated systems is their scale-out architecture and their ability to provide all compute and storage functions through the same x86 server-based resources. Market values for all three segments includes hardware and software but excludes services and support.

IDC considers a unit to be a full system including server, storage, and networking. Individual server, storage, or networking ‘nodes’ are not counted as units. Hyperconverged system units are counted at the appliance (aka chassis) level. Many hyperconverged appliances are deployed on multinode servers. IDC will count each appliance, not each node, as a single system.