Oracle sweeps integrated systems market share, VCE and Cisco standouts: IDC
Enterprise hardware vendors continue to fight for dominance in the highly competitive converged infrastructure market.
Global sales in the space for the first quarter of 2015 reached $2.1 billion, an 8.3 percent increase year-over-year, according to data from IDC.
The landscape for integrated infrastructure vendors is not only cut throat, it's also in a constant state of flux, said IDC analyst Kevin Permenter, noting that "key competitors undergo major reorganization, rebranding and realignment; all with the intent to strategically position themselves in one of the faster growing segments of the datacenter infrastructure market".
IDC actually splits the integrated systems sector into two separate segments, with platforms and infrastructure garnering their own growth metrics.
IDC defines platforms as combination systems sold with pre-packaged software such as applications, databases and integration tools. Oracle and IBM clock in as the top two platform vendors -- however, as you can see in the table below, Oracle is clearly the runaway market leader.
IDC categorizes infrastructure systems as general purpose use, covering integrated compute, storage and networking building blocks designed for multiple workloads with varying performance profiles.
Infrastructure sales are growing much faster than platform. The segment accounted for $1.3 billion in quarterly sales, a more than 15 percent increase over the last year. VCE tops the infrastructure vendor leaderboard, coming in above Cisco/NetApp and HP.
EMC recently bought out Cisco to control VCE. However, Cisco has its Unified Computing System and enjoys solid revenue streams via storage partnerships with NetApp and EMC.
According to IDC's metrics, the top three account for a majority of growth in the segment, with "All Others" apparently losing market share.
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