Gartner 2020 HCI Software Magic Quadrant: Changes, Inclusion Criteria, and Market Overview

On December 7, Gartner published its first Magic Quadrant focused solely on HCI software for 2020, marking a shift from evaluating integrated hardware‑software appliances to assessing pure software solutions.

The quadrant shows Nutanix and VMware as the only Leaders, Microsoft as the sole Visionary, an empty Challenger quadrant, and seven vendors crowded in the Niche quadrant, including Chinese players DeepSecurity and Huayun Data.

Traditional server vendors such as Dell EMC, HPE, Cisco, and Huawei disappeared because the 2020 criteria consider only software; their offerings support only their own hardware, failing the new portability and multi‑vendor requirements.

Compared with the 2019 quadrant, five vendors were removed for reasons such as the exclusion of HCIS solutions and narrowed use‑case focus (e.g., Red Hat). Two Chinese vendors were added, reflecting market growth.

Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

Functional standards : integrated software stack with unified management, software‑defined compute, storage (and optional networking), VM‑centric deployment on the same physical servers, local direct‑attached storage, and built‑in data services.

Business criteria : at least 50 profitable production customers across two major regions, multi‑level support (1st‑ and 2nd‑level, optional 3rd‑level), coverage of at least four of the defined use cases, delivery of evaluated products by June 30 2020, and portability on x86 servers from at least two of the top‑10 global OEMs.

The market definition explains that HCI software provides virtualized compute, storage, and networking with a single‑instance deployment on server hardware, evolving from the earlier HCIS (hardware‑centric) model.

As public cloud adoption accelerates, HCI software is positioned as a hybrid‑cloud enabler, offering software‑defined, API‑driven management that can integrate with public‑cloud tools, and some vendors are even offering their own cloud services.

Conclusion

Globally, the HCI market has moved from appliance‑focused to software‑focused, with Nutanix and VMware leading. In China, the market dynamics differ; pure‑software sales are less common, and the separation of hardware and software complicates deployment, limiting the emergence of a distinct HCI‑software‑only trend.