EMC's virtue is its VCE, but Cisco and NetApp's Flexpods slightly floppy

IDC’s Converged Systems Tracker for 2015’s fourth quarter shows EMC’s VCE unit is doing very well, Flexpod reference architecture systems are limp, and hyper-converged system growth is properly perky.

Over all the converged systems market grew revenue 8.5 per cent year over year to $3.1bn in 2015’s last quarter. Within this market there are VCE-like integrated systems, the certified reference architecture systems and hyper-converged systems such as those produced by Nutanix and Simplivity.

In the integrated systems market, totalling $2.045bn, VCE led with a 36.3 per cent share, up 42.1 per cent year-on-year to $743mn. HPE was in second place with $398.97mn revenue, a 19.5 per cent share and 10.5 per cent y-o-y growth. Third place was given to Oracle with -3.6 per cent change y-o-y to $362.48mn and a 17.7 per cent share. This segment of the overall converged systems market grew 6.7 per cent y-o-y and EMC’s VCE unit dominates it.

The certified reference systems market declined 13.1 per cent y-o-y to $718.63m. Cisco/NetApp (Flexpod) led it with a 46.86 per cent share and $336.72m revenues, down 15.1 per cent y-o-y. EMC (VSPEX class systems) was in second place with a 32 per cent share at $229.84m, down 25.3 per cent on the year.

Hitachi did very well, and was in third place with $67.86m revenues, a 9.4 per cent share, and up 15.8 per cent y-o-y. The Others category took 11.7 per cent at $84.22mn, growing 31.9 per cent on the year.

Pride of place in the growth stakes went to hyper-converged systems, where sales grew 170.5 per cent year on year to $356m. It's the smallest segment of the three but growing the fastest.

IDC thinks there was more demand for lower priced systems in the overall converged systems market which encouraged a shift from converged to hyper-converged systems. Most of the growth came from the mid-market which is focused more on hyper-converged products. That’s expected to continue. ®