The integrated infrastructure and platform market ‘surged' past the US$1 billion mark in 2014, according to IDC's Asia/Pacific Quarterly Integrated Infrastructure and Platform.

The integrated infrastructure and platform systems market grew 28.4% in 2014 to total US$1.11 billion, which contrasted to the 8.1% growth in vendor revenues in the server market in APeJ in 2014 compared to the previous year.

"The astounding growth in spending on integrated infrastructure and platform systems exemplifies the changing mindset and buying behaviour of CIOs and heads of IT infrastructure," says Rajnish Arora, IDC Asia/Pacific vice president enterprise computing research.

"The hyper-competitive nature of the business is putting new kinds of demands on IT to become much more agile, flexible and elastic, while delivering new applications and services leveraging a highly cost optimised model," Arora.

Integrated infrastructure systems, which give customers the flexibility and choice of applications, database and middleware, revenue surged 51% in APeJ in 2014 compared to 2013.

Almost all of the growth in the integrated infrastructure and platform systems market in 2014 in the region was fuelled by integrated infrastructure systems, which closely mirrored the global trend.

IDC predicts in the long term the demand for integrated platforms will accelerate as more ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) certify and bring to market their traditional as well as next-generation applications.

“The integrated infrastructure market is becoming the next battleground for sever and storage vendors for market leadership.

“This rapidly emerging market segment not only provides the vendors with new avenues for growth but also to establish brand equity and mindshare in the 3rd platform era,” IDC says.

HP's expanding portfolio of converged systems propelled it into the primary position in the integrated infrastructure systems market segment with 27.6% revenue share in APeJ in 2014.

VCE, which was one of the pioneering vendors in the integrated infrastructure systems segment, witnessed a 4.3% decline in revenues in 2014.

EMC leveraged the strength of its ecosystem partnerships with compute, network and infrastructure software vendors to cement its number two position in the integrated infrastructure systems market in APeJ in 2014.

Oracle remained the dominant vendor in the integrated platform systems market segment in APeJ in 2014 with its broad portfolio of engineered systems.

The divesture of System x business impacted IBM's ability to maintain strong momentum in the near term for its integrated platform systems which declined 65.1% in revenues in 2014 compared to 2013.

HP and Hitachi were the fastest growing vendors in the integrated platform systems market segment in 2014 in APEJ.