Converged systems revenue hits $3 billion mark

The worldwide converged systems revenue continues to grow, increasing 8.5% year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2015, surpassing $3.1 billion in value, according to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Systems Tracker.

IDC found the market generated 1,547 petabytes of new storage capacity shipments during the quarter, which was up 26.9% compared to the same period a year ago. For the full year 2015, worldwide converged systems market revenue increased 8.3% to $10.6 billion when compared to 2014, IDC says.

"We are seeing some of the market demand move into deals with lower average selling prices (ASPs), which is driving a shift from traditional converged systems to hyperconverged systems," says Kevin Permenter, IDC enterprise servers senior research analyst.

"Right now, most of the growth is coming from the mid-market, which is heavily skewed toward hyperconverged systems. We are expecting to see this trend continue into the near term," he says.

Converged systems: Breaking it down into segments

IDC distinguishes between three market segments: integrated systems, certified reference systems, and hyperconverged systems.

Integrated systems are pre-integrated, vendor-certified systems containing server hardware, disk storage systems, networking equipment, and basic element/systems management software.

Like integrated systems, certified reference systems are pre-integrated, vendor-certified systems containing server hardware, disk storage systems, networking equipment, and basic element/systems management software. Certified reference systems, however, are designed with systems from multiple technology vendors.

Hyperconverged systems collapse core storage and compute functionality into a single, highly virtualised solution. A key characteristic of hyperconverged systems that differentiate these solutions from other integrated systems is their ability to provide all compute and storage functions through the same server-based resources.

According to IDC, during the fourth quarter of 2015, the integrated systems market generated revenues of more than $2.0 billion, which represented a year-over-year increase of 6.7% and 65.6% of the total market value. VCE was the largest supplier of Integrated Systems with $743 million in sales, or 36.3% share of the market segment. This was followed by HPE with $399 million in revenue and 19.5% in market share, and Oracle, with $362 million in revenue and 17.7% of market share.

Certified reference systems sales declined 13.1% year over year during the fourth quarter of 2015, generating more than $718.6 million worth of sales. This amounted to 23.0% of the total market value. Cisco/NetApp was the top-ranked supplier of certified reference systems in the quarter, generating revenues of $336.72 million and capturing a 46.86% share of the market segment. EMC followed with 32% of market share and $229.8 million in revenue. Hitachi was the third top vendor with 9.4% market share and $67.86 million in revenue.

IDC also found hyperconverged sales grew 170.5% year over year during the fourth quarter of 2015, generating more than $355.9 million worth of sales. This amounted to 11.4% of the total market value.