Nutanix, VMware Battle For HCI Software Market Share Lead

The worldwide hyperconverged infrastructure software market was a two-way race between VMware and Nutanix in the first quarter of 2020. Here’s who took home the gold.

VMware, Nutanix, Cisco And HPE Lead Software Charge

VMware and Nutanix own a combined 70 percent of the worldwide hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) software market as the two continue to battle for market share leadership.

In the first quarter of 2020, the worldwide hyperconverged market generated $1.98 billion in revenue, up 8.3 percent year over year, according to new data from IT research firm IDC. Hyperconverged systems have now taken over the converged infrastructure market with HCI sales now representing 51 percent of the total $3.9 billion converged system market on a global basis.

IDC offers two ways to rank technology vendor within the hyperconverged systems market: by the brand of the hyperconverged solution and by the owner of the software providing the core hyperconverged capabilities. IDC declares a statistical tie in the market when there is a difference of 1 percent or less in the share of revenues among two or more vendors. In this case, there was a statistical third-place tie for global market share between Cisco and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Here are the top four market leading vendors when it comes to providing the hyperconverged software.

3 (tied). Cisco

Market Share: 4.3%

Hyperconverged systems running Cisco’s HCI software represented $85 million in total first quarter sales, up 3.5 percent from $82 million during the same quarter one year ago. The San Jose, Calif.-based networking giant captured 4.3 percent share of the global hyperconverged software market, slightly down from 4.5 percent share year over year.

Cisco’s HCI HyperFlex product line includes HyperFlex hybrid nodes for general purpose workloads, HyperFlex all-flash and NVMe nodes for mission critical workloads, HyperFlex Edge for remote and branch offices, and HyperFlex compute-only nodes. Cisco recently unveiled plans to acquire networking monitoring specialist ThousandEyes for a reported price tag of nearly $1 billion.

3 (tied). Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Market Share: 5.1%

HCI systems running Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s software represented $102 million in the quarter, up 21 percent year over year compared to $84 million in first quarter 2019. HPE was able to capture 5.1 percent share of the worldwide hyperconverged software market, up from 4.6 percent share year over year.

HPE upped the price/performance ante in the hyperconverged market by outfitting both SimpliVity and its Nimble Storage dHCI platforms with AMD’s EPYC Rome processors. The updates are targeted at the virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) markets including work-at-home and medical and emergency services, which have experienced a significant increase in demand amid the coronavirus pandemic.

2. Nutanix

Market Share: 28.3%

The San Jose, Calif.-based company, who began exiting the HCI hardware industry nearly three years ago, won the silver medal in terms of global hyperconverged software share. Systems running Nutanix hyperconverged software represented $562 million in the first quarter, an increase of 6.7 percent compared to $526 million in first quarter 2019. Nutanix was able to win 28.3 percent share of the worldwide HCI software market, slightly down from the 28.7 percent share year over year.

Nutanix CEO Dheeraj Pandey said the coronavirus pandemic is making many IT hardware vendors “irrelevant” as many businesses speed up their digital transformation projects and seek new cloud solutions. “Hardware companies are scratching their heads on how they’ll help in this public cloud transition—and they can’t,” said Pandey in an interview with CRN this month. “They become irrelevant. Hardware companies, especially proprietary hardware companies, are having to think really hard about how they can actually help in this transition to the cloud.”

1. VMware

Market Share: 42.4%

The virtualization superstar reigned supreme in the hyperconverged software market in the first quarter of 2020 by capturing a whopping 42.4 percent market share, up from 41.5 percent share year over year. Systems running VMware software represented $841 million in the first quarter, a revenue increase of nearly 10 percent year over year.

VMware jointly engineers alongside Dell Technologies, which owns a majority stake in VMware, the world’s leading HCI system: VxRail. In its biggest launch in years, Dell and VMware launched this week its new VxRail E-Series, which for the first time ever has AMD-based processors, as well as a new VxRail D-Series that has a starting price point of only $20,000.

The new compact D-Series is only 20 inches deep and designed for the edge to withstand extreme temperatures, sustain 40G of operational shock and operate at up to 15,000 feet. The VxRail 1U E-Series includes 2nd generation AMD EPYC professors that offer customers up to 64 high performance cores and support for PCIe 4.

VMware vSAN software is certified on around 500 server platforms as vSAN ReadyNodes and in appliances such as Dell EMC VxRail, Fujitsu PRIMEFLEX, HPE Integrated ReadyNodes, Hitachi UCP and Lenovo ThinkAgile. vSAN software is also included in VMware Cloud Foundation available both on-premises and in every major public cloud including AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.