Converged Systems Revenue Increased 9.1% in 4Q17

According to IDC, worldwide converged systems market revenue increased 9.1% year over year to $3.6 billion during the fourth quarter of 2017 (4Q17). Full-year sales surpassed $12.5 billion, representing a 9.4% increase over the previous year and the first time the market surpassed $12 billion in a calendar year.

IDC's converged systems market view offers three segments: certified reference systems & integrated infrastructure, integrated platforms, and hyperconverged systems. 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.

The certified reference systems & integrated infrastructure market generated $1.7 billion in revenue during the fourth quarter, which represents a 3.4% year-over-year decline and 47.1% of the total converged systems market value. Dell was the largest supplier in this market segment with $735.0 million in sales and a 42.9% share. Cisco/NetApp generated $565.6 million in sales, which was the second largest share at 33.0%. HPE generated $289.3 million in sales and captured 16.9% market share.

Revenue from hyperconverged systems sales grew 69.4% year over year to $1.25 billion during the fourth quarter of 2017. This amounted to 34.3% of the total converged systems market. Full-year sales of hyperconverged systems surpassed $3.7 billion in 2017, up 64.3% from 2016.

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 second table of this press release and rankings based on the owner of the hyperconverged software can be found in the third table within this press release. Both tables include all the same software and hardware, summing to the same market size.

In the branded solution view, Dell was the largest supplier in this market segment with $346.8 million in revenue and a 27.8% share. Nutanix generated $243.0 million in revenue with the second largest share of 19.5%. HPE and Cisco were statistically tied for the quarter, with $61.6 million and $56.3 million in revenue and 4.9% and 4.5% market share, respectively.

On the basis of HCI software, systems running VMware's hyperconverged software represented $405.1 million in fourth quarter vendor revenue, or 32.4% of the total market segment. Systems running Nutanix's hyperconverged software represented $368.4 million in fourth quarter vendor revenue, or 29.5% of the total market segment. Both values represent all software and hardware, regardless of how it was ultimately branded.

Integrated platforms sales declined 18.1% year over year during the fourth quarter of 2017, generating revenues of $675.5 million. This amounted to 18.6% of the total converged systems market value. Oracle was the top-ranked supplier of integrated platforms during the quarter, generating revenues of $360.5 million and capturing a 53.4% share of the market segment.