Digital Lifescapes

As more organizations adapt to a hybrid working model for their distributed workforce, enterprise CIOs and CTOs are tasked with delivering new productivity-enabling applications, while also seeking ways to effectively reduce IT cost, complexity, and risk. Traditional IT hardware infrastructure is evolving to more software-based solutions. The worldwide software-defined infrastructure (SDI) combined software market reached $12.17 billion during 2020 -- that's an increase of 5 percent over 2019, according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). The market grew faster than other core IT technologies. The three technology pillars within the SDI market are: software-defined compute (53 percent of market value), software-defined storage controller (36 percent), and software-defined networking (11 percent). "Software-defined infrastructure solutions have long been popular for companies looking to eliminate cost, complexity, and risk within their data cente...

The public cloud market has shown renewed enterprise IT investment. Meanwhile, converged systems' growth continues. Worldwide converged systems market revenue increased 4.5 percent year-over-year to $3.9 billion during the first quarter of 2020 (1Q20), according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). "The overall converged systems market showed resilience during a difficult macro environment in the first quarter of 2020," said Sebastian Lagana, research manager at IDC . While the hyper-converged system market expanded, the 'Certified Reference Systems & Integrated Infrastructure' segment posted its best quarter of growth since the second quarter of 2019 (2Q19) on the strength of sales for demanding workloads in industries such as healthcare and telecommunications. Converged Systems Market Development Regarding market segmentation, the IDC converged systems view includes three vendor segments: certified reference systems ...

Global demand for enterprise data center server and storage infrastructure tends to fluctuate. According to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC), worldwide converged systems market revenue increased 3.5 percent year-over-year to $3.75 billion during the third quarter of 2019 (3Q19). "The converged systems market continues to grow despite a challenging overall data center infrastructure environment," said Sebastian Lagana, research manager at IDC . Converged Systems Market Development In particular, hyperconverged solutions remain in demand as vendors position the solutions as an ideal framework for hybrid, multi-cloud environments due to their software-defined nature and ease of integration into premises-agnostic environments. The IDC converged systems market view offers three segments: certified reference systems & integrated infrastructure, integrated platforms, and hyperconverged systems. The certified reference systems & int...

Some IT organizations prefer infrastructure solutions that offer simplified cloud deployment models for their digital transformation projects. According to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC), worldwide converged systems market revenue increased 9.9 percent year-over-year to $3.5 billion during the second quarter of 2018 (2Q18). "Data center infrastructure convergence remains an important investment driver for companies around the world," said Sebastian Lagana, research manager at IDC . "HCI solutions helped to drive second-quarter market expansion thanks, in part, to their ability to reduce infrastructure complexity, promote consolidation, and allow IT teams to support an organization's business objectives." Converged Systems Market Development IDC's converged systems market view offers three segments: 1) certified reference systems & integrated infrastructure, 2) integrated platforms, and 3) hyperconverged systems. T...

Worldwide converged systems market revenue increased 9.1 percent year-over -year to $3.6 billion during the fourth quarter of 2017 (4Q17), according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). Full-year sales surpassed $12.5 billion in 2017, representing a 9.4 percenet increase over the previous year and the first time the market surpassed $12 billion in a calendar year. Converged Systems Market Development "The number of organizations deploying converged systems continued to expand through 2017," said Eric Sheppard, research vice president at IDC . Growing demand drove the total market value. While not all market segments increased during the year, those that did grow were able to provide considerable benefits related to the most core infrastructure challenges facing today's data centers. IDC's converged systems market view offers three segments: certified reference systems & integrated infrastructure, integrated platforms, and h...

More CIOs and CTOs are seeking to gain benefits of a simplified and more manageable IT infrastructure for their organizations. As a result, worldwide integrated systems revenue is forecast to total $12.3 billion in 2018 -- that's an increase of 18.4 percent from 2017, according to the latest study by Gartner. The hyperconverged integrated systems (HCIS) segment will experience the strongest growth (55 percent). By contrast, integrated stack systems will experience a five percent decline. IT Integrated Systems Market Development "The majority of integrated systems replace existing infrastructure, which is great for cost, agility and consolidation of IT and efficiency metrics," said Naveen Mishra, research director at Gartner . When implementing this as part of a digital business initiative, however, IT organizations must look at how the potential savings of capital expenditure (capex), may be offset by potential shifts in operating expenditure (opex). According to ...

Worldwide converged systems market revenue increased 10.8 percent year-over-year to $2.99 billion during the third quarter of 2017 (3Q17), according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). The market consumed 1.96 exabytes of new storage capacity during the quarter, which was up 30 percent compared to the same period a year ago. "The converged systems market expanded on multiple fronts, most notably within hyperconverged solutions," said Eric Sheppard, research director at IDC . "While hyperconvergence is not the sole source of market growth, it has undeniably driven an expansion of this market into new environments at a very rapid pace." Converged Systems Market Development IDC's converged systems market view offers three segments: certified reference systems and integrated infrastructure, integrated platforms, and hyperconverged systems. Certified reference systems and integrated infrastructure are pre-integrated, vendor-certi...

As more CIOs and CTOs prepare for the data deluge that's driving demand for enterprise storage solutions, savvy IT infrastructure vendors are already offering next-generation systems that meet the evolving requirements of their customer's digital transformation projects. Software-defined storage (SDS) is one of several new technologies that are rapidly penetrating the IT infrastructure of enterprises and cloud service providers. SDS is gaining traction because it meets the demands of the next-generation data center much better than legacy storage infrastructure. As a result, International Data Corporation (IDC) forecasts the worldwide SDS market will see a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.5 percent over the 2017-2021 forecast period, with revenues of nearly $16.2 billion in 2021. Enterprise Storage Market Development Enterprise storage spending has already begun to move away from hardware-defined, dual-controller array designs toward SDS and from traditional on-...

Enterprise IT infrastructure requirements continue to evolve as CIOs and CTOs seek ways to support their agile DevOps methodologies. Meanwhile, IT vendors are attempting to remove complexity from the typical provisioning and deployment process via automation. The worldwide converged systems market revenues increased 4.6 percent year-over-year to $2.67 billion during the first quarter of 2017 (1Q17), according to the latest global market study by International Data Corporation (IDC) . The market consumed 1.48 exabytes of new storage capacity during the quarter, which was up by 7.1 percent when compared to the same period in 2016. Converged Systems Market Development "Converged systems have become an important source of innovation and growth for the data center infrastructure market," said Eric Sheppard, research director at IDC . "These solutions represent a conduit for the key technologies driving much needed data center modernization and efficiencies such as fla...

Demand for simplified IT infrastructure, to be used in corporate data centers, gained momentum during the last couple of years as more CIOs attempted to offer their internal users compute and storage that could be provisioned quickly -- similar to the major public cloud service providers. The worldwide converged systems market revenues decreased 1.4 percent year over year to $3.09 billion during the fourth quarter of 2016 (4Q16). The market consumed 1.6 exabytes of new storage capacity during the quarter, which was up by4 percent compared to the same period a year ago, according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). For the full year 2016, worldwide converged systems market revenues increased 5.8 percent to $11.3 billion when compared to 2015. Converged Systems Market Development "The converged systems market is going through a period of change," said Eric Sheppard, research director at IDC . "We are seeing strong growth from prod...

Integration removes complexity within IT infrastructure. Demand for pre-integrated, vendor-certified systems containing server hardware, disk storage, networking and basic element management software are growing across the globe. Solutions that provide all compute and storage functions are gaining market momentum. According to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC), the worldwide converged systems market increased revenue 1.7 percent year over year to $2.6 billion during the third quarter of 2016 (3Q16). The market consumed 1.4 exabytes of new storage capacity during the quarter -- that's up by 12.5 percent, compared to the same period a year ago. "The converged systems ecosystem is itself converging at the supplier and product level," said Eric Sheppard, research director at IDC . "On the product side, we find the strongest growth coming from offerings that have robust data services, high levels of automation, and strong lifecycle manage...

Organizations with smaller IT teams, and many others, have already adopted hyper-converged technologies. According to the latest market study by 451 Research, hyperconverged infrastructure is used at 40 percent of companies, with more deployments expected during the next two years. Nearly one quarter of survey respondents indicated that they have these systems either in a current pilot, or included in future plans. The research uncovered that hyperconverged systems are evolving from prior network edge applications into a primary component of Hybrid IT infrastructure. The latest quarterly survey results indicate that 74.4 percent of the respondent organizations currently using hyperconverged have deployed the solutions in their central data centers, signaling a key transition. Hyperconverged Systems Market Development "Loyalties to traditional, standalone x86 servers are diminishing in today's IT ecosystems as managers adopt innovative technologies that eliminate multip...

How did the Shadow IT phenomenon disrupt an established industry, when the signs of growing discontent were so clear and obvious? Many CIOs have been challenged to offer a similar experience -- easy to use, rapid provisioning of infrastructure -- to compete with the savvy public cloud service providers. Meanwhile, most of the traditional IT vendors seemed to have little appreciation for shifting customer needs -- delivering their compute and storage in the same old way, regardless of the implications. Not being oblivious to emerging market demand, new entrants seized the opportunity by creating a better way. As a result, the continued adoption of hyper-converged platforms has invigorated the waning data center IT infrastructure market. But deployment expansion reveals even more challenges ahead that legacy vendors must address to preserve sales momentum -- as the market quickly departs from complex, stand-alone hardware deployments. Hyperconverged Systems Market Development A...

While much of the news about IT innovation focuses on public cloud computing, the on-premise data center is also being transformed by new technologies. CIOs have recognized that infrastructure complexity has inhibited their ability to rapidly provision resources for new workloads, and now they're adopting a variety of converged systems to overcome their legacy constraints. According to the latest worldwide market study by International Data Corporation (IDC), the converged systems market increased revenue 11 percent year-over-year to $2.5 billion during the first quarter of 2016. The market generated 1,367 petabytes of new storage capacity shipments during the quarter, which was up 36.2 percent compared to the same period a year ago. "End users within the mid-market and even in the outer edge of the enterprise data center continue to prioritize simplicity in all aspect of the user experience. This is at the heart of the rapid growth rate within hyper-converged systems....

Every enterprise IT best practice eventually reaches obsolescence as new methods disrupt the legacy status-quo -- virtualization has reached that turning point. The worldwide x86 server virtualization market is expected to reach $5.6 billion in 2016 -- that's an increase of 5.7 percent from 2015, but demand has shifted, according to the latest worldwide market study by Gartner. Despite the overall market increase, new software licenses have declined for the first time since the virtualization market became mainstream more than a decade ago. Growth is now being driven by software maintenance revenue, which indicates a rapidly maturing market segment. "The market has matured rapidly over the last few years, with many organizations having server virtualization rates that exceed 75 percent, illustrating the high level of penetration," said Michael Warrilow, research director at Gartner . Virtualization Market Development Challenges The server virtualization market is ...

Enterprise IT infrastructure investment is now more software-defined within the typical data center. The market for hyper-converged integrated systems (HCIS) will grow 79 percent to reach almost $2 billion during 2016, according to the latest worldwide market study by Gartner. HCIS will be the fastest-growing segment of the overall market for integrated systems, reaching almost $5 billion by 2019. Although the overall integrated systems market is growing, other segments of this emerging market will likely experience cannibalization from hyperconverged systems. Gartner defines HCIS as a platform offering shared compute and storage resources -- based on software-defined object storage, software-defined compute, commodity hardware and a unified systems management interface. Gartner believes that hyperconverged systems deliver their greatest value through software tools, and thereby commoditizing the underlying hardware. Hyperconverged Systems Market Development "The integrate...

Converged systems infrastructure is gaining increased adoption for data center workloads and large-scale consolidation projects, according to the latest worldwide market study by Technology Business Research (TBR). As a result, global converged systems revenues will grow at a CAGR of 11 percent from 2015 to 2020 reaching nearly $22 billion. The forecast growth will likely occur at the expense of traditional, stand-alone server, storage and networking infrastructure. "The value of converged systems in reducing critical IT pain points such as costly and complex IT deployment and management is well known, leading to a period of mainstream adoption," said Krista Macomber, senior analyst at TBR . Moreover, TBR says that the long-standing hardware OEMs seek to maximize the success of their converged systems businesses as a strategic priority. More Converged System Use Cases Customers are deploying converged systems optimized for key use cases such as big data analytics. T...

Many traditional IT vendors were challenged in 2015. The average revenue and gross profit margin slipped year-to-year as demand for legacy hardware vendor implementations declined, according to the latest worldwide market study by Technology Business Research (TBR). However, the study's benchmarked IT vendors still achieved $23 billion in revenue and avoided more severe declines by adjusting their go-to-market portfolios and selling models to capture emerging technology opportunities. "Industry-standard server (ISS) has a growing impact on the global data center hardware market, composing an increasing share of the data center market and retaining the largest share of total revenue," said Krista Macomber, senior analyst at TBR . TBR analysts estimate that average ISS unit shipments increased by just 1.8 percent year-to-year, indicating the growing impact of hardware commoditization and the reactive low-price strategies used by many vendors. Legacy IT Storage De...

More enterprises are opting for the convenience and lower-costs of next-generation computing platforms that enable them to scale their IT capabilities rapidly. Frequently referred to as web-scale of hyper-scale solutions, these integrated systems deliver cloud-like economics within enterprise data centers. Hyper-convergence is a type of IT infrastructure with a software-centric architecture that tightly integrates compute, object storage , networking and virtualization resources -- typically in a commodity x86-based hardware platform -- which are supported by a single vendor. Upcoming data center refresh projects are driving 2016 enterprise investments in servers and converged infrastructure, according to the latest comprehensive market study by 451 Research. Hyperconverged Infrastructure Market Development Among enterprises in the study, 60 percent plan to increase spending on servers, and 79 percent plan to spend more on converged infrastructure in 2016. Spending on hyperco...

More informed CEOs and their leadership teams are asking the CIO to step-up and take on new bold goals. Meanwhile, evolving senior executive needs for substantive business-led digital transformation projects continue to fuel ongoing opportunities for hybrid cloud infrastructure vendors. Fulfilling these specific Line-of-Business (LOB) requirements is prompting IT organization shifts from traditional, stand-alone data center infrastructure to operationally efficient hyperconverged platforms, according to the latest worldwide market study by Technology Business Research (TBR). In turn, this transition creates a market that will grow at a 60.1 percent CAGR from 2014 to 2019, according to TBR's latest global market forecast. Growing Demand for Efficient IT Infrastructure "The typical customer of hyperconverged platforms requires ongoing infrastructure transformation to improve efficiency of internal processes and management of operations," said Christian Perry, practi...