Summary
Hyperconvergence is making inroads in enterprises, as major system vendors acquire startups or bundle servers with HC software offerings. I&O leaders should focus on the capabilities and limitations of HCI software, which is offered by a wide range of server platform vendors via OEM partnerships.
Strategic Planning Assumption
By 2020, 20% of business-critical applications currently deployed on three-tier IT infrastructure will transition to hyperconverged infrastructure.
Market Definition/Description
In prior years, Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Integrated Systems evaluated vendors within four classes of integrated systems: integrated infrastructure systems (IIS), integrated stack systems (ISS), hyperconverged integrated systems (HCIS) and integrated reference architectures (IRA). There are four important changes in this year’s Magic Quadrant when compared to the “Magic Quadrant for Integrated Systems” published in 2016. This Magic Quadrant:
- Focuses exclusively on vendors and offerings in the hyperconverged software segment.
- Drops the system hardware requirement, which is part of the HCIS appliance model.
- Defines the market segment as hyperconverged infrastructure, allowing for software-only/bring-your-own-hardware, and as-a-service cloud delivery models.
- Limits the evaluation of integrated storage and data management capabilities to those technologies for which vendors have primary development responsibility and ownership.
We have made these changes because Gartner clients routinely compare hyperconverged integrated systems (appliances) to hyperconverged infrastructure software that is supported on a broad set of certified reference or OEM hardware partners’ systems. Additionally, Gartner clients are placing increasing emphasis on public and private cloud capabilities and as-a-service procurement options.
Readers should note that HCIS forecasts and vendor market share data (see “Market Definitions and Methodology: Integrated Systems” ) will not correlate with this HCI Magic Quadrant and its companion Critical Capabilities document. The HCIS statistics and forecast are based upon a hardware appliance view of the market, irrespective of the developer of the underlying software-enabled capabilities. Thus, vendors with revenue and market share within the HCIS market have been excluded from this Magic Quadrant if they partner for the core technology. Likewise, vendors appearing within this report may not appear on the HCIS market share report, because they do not offer a hardware appliance under their own brand. Additionally, given the change in definition and focus for this year’s Magic Quadrant, readers should make no direct comparisons to vendors or dot positions within the 2016 “Magic Quadrant for Integrated Systems.”
Magic Quadrant
Source: Gartner (February 2018)
