Converged Systems Segments

IDC's converged systems market view offers three segments: certified reference systems & integrated infrastructure, integrated platforms, and hyperconverged systems. The certified reference systems & integrated infrastructure market grew revenues 2.5% year over year to $1.4 billion in 3Q20, which represented 36.7% of all converged systems revenue. Integrated platforms revenues declined 7.7% year over year to $438 million in 3Q20. This amounted to 11.2% of total converged systems market revenue. Revenue from hyperconverged systems grew modestly at 0.6% year over year during the quarter to $2.0 billion. This represented 52.1% of the total converged systems market.

IDC offers two ways to rank technology suppliers within the hyperconverged systems market: by the brand of the hyperconverged solution or by the owner of the software providing the core hyperconverged capabilities. Rankings based on a branded view of the market can be found in the first table of this press release and rankings based on the owner of the hyperconverged software can be found in the second table within this press release. Both tables include all the same software and hardware, summing to the same market size.

As it relates to the branded view of the hyperconverged systems market, Dell Technologies was the largest supplier with $676.8 million in revenue and a 33.2% share. Hewlett Packard Enterprise finished second during 3Q20 with $262.7 million in revenue and a 12.9% share of the market. Nutanix took the number 3 spot with $234.3 million in revenue, which accounted for 11.5% of the market.
 

Table Notes:

^a Dell Technologies represents the combined revenues for Dell and EMC sales for all quarters shown.

Numbers in this press release may not sum due to rounding.

Vendor Note

IDC notes that previous releases of the Worldwide Quarterly Converged Systems Tracker had placed sales of HCI solutions based on VMware's vSAN ReadyNode program within Other Suppliers. As of this deliverable (and retroactive through 1Q2019), IDC has moved revenue attribution of these HCI solutions to the server vendor. While attribution of these sales shifted from Other Suppliers to individual server vendors, this shift did not change the size of the HCI market. This shift did, however, result in new branded HCI shares for some vendors.

In terms of the HCI systems' software brand, new systems running VMware hyperconverged software delivered revenue of $821.1 million in 3Q20 or 40.2% of the total market. Systems running Nutanix hyperconverged software had $512.6 million in vendor revenue during 3Q20 or 25.1% of the total market. Both amounts represent the value of all HCI hardware, HCI software, and system infrastructure software sold, regardless of how it was branded at the hardware level. As hardware sales are a major factor in these data, the chart should not be assumed to solely reflect, or completely align with, the respective companies' overall software performance.
 

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 & 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.