The worldwide converged systems market revenue grew 0.3% year over year to $3.9 billion during the third quarter of 2020, according to IDC.

“The overall converged systems market remained resilient in the face of the global pandemic in the third quarter, growing at a relatively flat rate of 0.3% year over year,” said Greg Macatee, research analyst, Infrastructure Platforms and Technologies Group at IDC. “The hyperconverged systems market followed a similar trajectory during the quarter with 0.6% year-over-year growth.”

“A handful of geographic regions produced stronger results, most notably in China and Japan, which each grew at double-digit rates,” added Mr. Macatee. “Certified reference systems and integrated infrastructure also grew modestly while integrated platforms declined on a year-over-year basis.”

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

  • The certified reference systems & integrated infrastructure market grew revenues 2.5% year over year to $1.4 billion in 3Q20, which represented 36.7% of all converged systems revenue.
  • Integrated platforms revenues declined 7.7% year over year to $438 million in 3Q20. This amounted to 11.2% of total converged systems market revenue.
  • Revenue from hyperconverged systems grew modestly at 0.6% year over year during the quarter to $2.0 billion. This represented 52.1% of the total converged systems market.

Dell Technologies was the largest supplier with $676.8 million in revenue and a 33.2% share. Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) finished second during 3Q20 with $262.7 million in revenue and a 12.9% share of the market. Nutanix took the number 3 spot with $234.3 million in revenue, which accounted for 11.5% of the market.

Taxonomy Notes

Photo Greg Macatee, research analyst, Infrastructure Platforms and Technologies Group at IDC
“The overall converged systems market remained resilient in the face of the global pandemic in the third quarter, growing at a relatively flat rate of 0.3% year over year,” said Greg Macatee, research analyst, Infrastructure Platforms and Technologies Group at IDC.

IDC defines converged systems as pre-integrated, vendor-certified systems containing server hardware, disk storage systems, networking equipment, and basic element/systems management software. Systems not sold with all four of these components are not counted within this tracker. Specific to management software, IDC includes embedded or integrated management and control software optimized for the auto discovery, provisioning and pooling of physical and virtual compute, storage and networking resources shipped as part of the core, standard integrated system.

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. Integrated platforms are integrated systems that are sold with additional pre-integrated packaged software and customized system engineering optimized to enable such functions as application development software, databases, testing, and integration tools. Hyperconverged systems collapse core storage and compute functionality into a single, highly virtualized solution. A key characteristic of hyperconverged systems that differentiate these solutions from other integrated systems is their scale-out architecture and their ability to provide all compute and storage functions through the same x86 server-based resources. Market values for all three segments includes hardware and software but excludes services and support.

IDCIDC considers a unit to be a full system including server, storage, and networking. Individual server, storage, or networking ‘nodes’ are not counted as units. Hyperconverged system units are counted at the appliance (aka chassis) level. Many hyperconverged appliances are deployed on multinode servers. IDC counts each appliance, not each node, as a single system.