VMware, Nutanix Clash For Hyperconverged Software Gold

CRN breaks down Nutanix, VMware, Cisco and HPE’s worldwide hyperconverged software market share numbers for the second quarter 2020, according to new IDC data.

Hyperconverged Software Market Share In Q2 2020

The two hyperconverged software titans of VMware and Nutanix dominated the market again in the second quarter of 2020, combining for nearly 60 percent of the worldwide HCI software market.

Both San Jose, Calif.-based Nutanix and Palo Alto, Calif.-based VMware have been on an software innovation tear in 2020, unveiling a slew of new capabilities around red hot markets such as Kubernetes while also forming strategic partnerships with public cloud leaders.

The global hyperconverged systems market generated sales of $1.86 billion in the second quarter of 2020, up 1 percent year over year, according to new data from IT research firm IDC.

IDC offers two ways to rank technology suppliers within the hyperconverged systems market: by the brand of the hyperconverged solution, and by the owner of the software providing the core hyperconverged capabilities. CRN breaks down IDC’s top four market share leaders based on the owner of the hyperconverged software.

(IDC declares a statistical tie when there is a difference of one percent or less in the share of revenues. For the second quarter of 2020, IDC declared a statistical tie for third place between Cisco and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.)

Tied No. 3: Cisco

Q2 Market Share: 4.1%

The longtime networking market share king tied for third place in hyperconverged software market share by generating $76.7 million in HCI software revenues during the second quarter of 2020, down nearly 33 percent year over year. In second quarter 2019, Cisco reported hyperconverged software sales of $114 million.

The San Jose, Calif.-based network leader won 4.1 percent share in the second quarter, down from 6.2 percent share year over year.

Cisco HyperFlex supports multiple hypervisors, and its CSI interface offers persistent storage for containers. Enterprise-class features includes stretched cluster and logical availability zones, making the HyperFlex stack highly dependable.

Cisco has been on an acquisition tear recently around video collaboration acquiring the likes of video analytics provider Modcam as well as noise and speech specialist BabbleLabs.

Tied No. 3: Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Q2 Market Share: 4.5%

Although HPE witnessed massive sales growth in hyperconverged systems during the second quarter 2020, the company’s hyperconverged software revenue dropped nearly 5 percent year over year. HPE generated $83.3 million in hyperconverged software sales in second quarter 2020, compared to $87.6 million in second quarter 2019.

Hewlett Packard Enterprises’ won 4.5 percent share in the global hyperconverged software market, down from 4.8 percent share year over year.

In terms of IDC’s worldwide hyperconverged systems market numbers, HPE had one of its best quarters ever by generating $130 million in total hyperconverged system sales, up 53.5 percent year over year.

In a blockbuster move this week, HPE completed its $925 million acquisition of SD-WAN standout Silver Peak, setting up a fierce battle against enterprise networking rival Cisco.

No. 2: Nutanix

Q2 Market Share: 29.8%

The hybrid cloud and hyperconverged superstar grew hyperconverged software revenues more than any other vendor in the world during the second quarter of 2020. Nutanix generated $554.1 million in HCI software sales, up 6.2 percent year over year.

The sales growth enabled Nutanix to win 29.8 percent share of the worldwide hyperconverged software market, representing a solid increase from 28.4 percent share in second quarter 2019.

Nutanix, which no longer sells its own hyperconverged hardware, also ranked No. 2 in global hyperconverged systems market share during the second quarter of 2020 by winning 13.6 percent share.

According to Forester analysts, Nutanix has the best ranked hyperconverged software product in the world with Nutanix AOS. In the new Forrester Wave: Hyperconverged Infrastructure Q3 2020 report, Nutanix AOS version 5.16 scored near perfect scores in terms of product offering, strategy and market presence – receiving higher marks than VMware vSAN version 7, Cisco HyperFlex version 4.02a, NetApp HCI version 2.10 and HPE SimpliVity version 4.0.1.

No. 1: VMware

Q2 Market Share: 38.9%

VMware continues to be the worldwide market share leader in hyperconverged software, winning a whopping 38.9 percent share of the global market as the company aggressively enhances its software portfolio.

The virtualization superstar generated approximately $723 million in hyperconverged software sales during the second quarter, up 3 percent year over year compared to $702 million in second quarter 2019.

VMware’s HCI software products are VMware vSAN and VMware Cloud Foundation which run on a variety of servers, including on server market leaders Dell Technologies and HPE, as well as the public cloud. vSAN software is certified with 500 server platforms as vSAN ReadyNodes in offerings including Dell EMC VxRail, Fujitsu PRIMEFLEX, HPE Integrated ReadyNodes, Hitachi UCP and Lenovo ThinkAgile VX.

This month, VMware unveiled a new vSAN Data Persistence platform to enable stateful services such as object storage and NoSQL databases to integrate with the underlying infrastructure. The new platform will allow developers to use Kubernetes APIs to provision and scale stateful services on-demand in a self-service model with little administrator intervention.