Worldwide converged systems market revenue increased 9.1 percent year-over -year to $3.6 billion during the fourth quarter of 2017 (4Q17), according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC).
Full-year sales surpassed $12.5 billion in 2017, representing a 9.4 percenet increase over the previous year and the first time the market surpassed $12 billion in a calendar year.
Converged systems market development
"The number of organizations deploying converged systems continued to expand through 2017," said Eric Sheppard, research vice president at IDC.
Growing demand drove the total market value. While not all market segments increased during the year, those that did grow were able to provide considerable benefits related to the most core infrastructure challenges facing today's data centers.
IDC's converged systems market view offers three segments: certified reference systems & integrated infrastructure, integrated platforms, and hyperconverged systems. Certified reference systems & integrated infrastructure are pre-integrated, vendor-certified systems containing server hardware, disk storage systems, networking equipment, and basic element or 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.
The certified reference systems & integrated infrastructure market generated $1.7 billion in revenue during the fourth quarter, which represents a 3.4 percent year-over-year decline and 47.1 percent of the total converged systems market value.
Revenue from hyperconverged systems sales grew 69.4 percent year over year to $1.25 billion during the fourth quarter of 2017. This amounted to 34.3 percent of the total converged systems market. Full-year sales of hyperconverged systems surpassed $3.7 billion in 2017 — that's up by 64.3 percent from 2016.
Integrated platforms sales declined 18.1 percent year over year during the fourth quarter of 2017, generating revenues of $675.5 million. This amounted to 18.6 percent of the total converged systems market value.