What Drives China's HCI Market? A Deep Dive into Vendor Landscape and Trends

Gartner’s 2022 China Hyper‑Converged Infrastructure (HCI) report provides a comprehensive analysis of the market’s current state and the leading vendors. It concludes that China’s HCI market has entered the early mainstream phase, driven by diverse customer types, richer application scenarios, and the rise of local technologies.

Definition : According to Gartner, HCI integrates storage, compute, and networking into a single system to simplify data‑center complexity and improve scalability, allowing multiple servers to form a shared resource pool.

Market demand and growth : Both SMBs and large enterprises are adopting HCI as a core component of their data‑center infrastructure. While the global HCI market grows at a 14% CAGR, China’s HCIS market is projected to rise from USD 1.8 billion in 2021 to roughly USD 3 billion by 2025.

Application scenarios : The report notes a shift from general workloads and desktop‑cloud (VDI) toward hybrid cloud, cloud‑native, and edge deployments. Consequently, HCI solutions now need capabilities beyond compute and storage, including containers, networking, security, infrastructure management, and cloud management.

Performance and reliability : Vendors must enhance RAS (Reliability, Availability, Serviceability) and optimize workloads such as Oracle and SAP HANA.

Edge requirements : Edge use cases demand smaller footprints (e.g., two‑node solutions), container orchestration, and seamless extension to public clouds.

Competitive landscape : International players like VMware, Nutanix, and Dell are losing market share due to domestic policies favoring localization, creating opportunities for Chinese vendors. The report classifies Chinese HCI vendors into three categories:

Large DCI Vendors

Huawei, New H3C (新华三), Inspur, Lenovo – advantages: hardware cost advantage, extensive market coverage, and integrated cloud services.

Specialist HCI Vendors

AnChao Cloud, Zhiling Haina, Zeta Cloud – advantages: strong industry‑specific solutions, hardware‑neutral and cloud‑neutral approaches.

Crossover Vendors

China Mobile, EasyTravel Cloud, QingCloud, Sangfor, Tianrongxin, Yunzhou Tech – advantages: cross‑selling customer bases, bundled solutions, and cloud service offerings.

Vendor profiles :

AnChao Cloud

AnChao Cloud is a specialist HCI provider that has expanded its capabilities to networking, cloud management, and digital workspaces. Its ArcherOS platform supports both vSphere and a KVM‑based hypervisor (ArcherOS Stack), and can be delivered as an appliance or pure software with subscription options. Competitive advantages include a rich KVM/vSphere feature set, focus on the "buy local" market, and a VMware‑replacement migration service based on CDM.

New H3C (新华三)

The UIS product line, on the market for years, offers a KVM‑based virtualization platform (CAS) with compute, storage (ONEStor 3.0), networking security (UIS‑Sec), and SmartNIC acceleration. UIS provides unified management for VMs, containers, and bare metal, supporting private, hybrid, and edge clouds, and can be deployed on public clouds via UniCloud. It is available as an appliance or software with license and subscription models.

Huawei

Huawei’s FusionCube, sold for several years, runs on a KVM‑based platform (FusionSphere) and supports vSphere. Since 2021 it offers two SKUs: FusionCube 1000 for general workloads and FusionCube 500 for ROBO/edge scenarios. It emphasizes modular delivery with integrated power, networking, and remote management, and supports VDI solutions such as VMware Horizon, Citrix XenDesktop, and Huawei FusionAccess. Huawei leverages its extensive IT portfolio, 5G technology, and Kunpeng processors to deliver customized edge solutions.

Inspur (浪潮)

Inspur offers two HCI lines: InCloud Rail (its own software‑defined solution) and inMerge (based on Nutanix and VMware). InCloud Rail runs on the KVM‑based InCloud‑Sphere platform, providing compute, storage, network virtualization, load balancing, and unified management for VMs, containers, and bare metal. It can manage workloads across private and public clouds via InCloud Manager, a lightweight cloud‑management platform. The product is primarily delivered as an appliance, with software options for large projects.

Sangfor (深信服)

Sangfor’s HCI integrates its KVM‑based virtualization platform (aSV), distributed storage (aSAN), network virtualization (aNET), and security (aSEC) into a single solution, also offering the Sangfor Cloud Platform (SCP) for cloud management. Its VDI solution aDesk and the two‑node Express edition target ROBO, edge, and small‑to‑mid‑size enterprises. Delivery options include appliance or software with license and subscription models. Competitive strengths are brand recognition in the SMB market, hardware‑neutral stance, and certifications from major Chinese hardware vendors.

Overall, the Chinese HCI market is rapidly evolving, with domestic vendors gaining traction through localized offerings, comprehensive feature sets, and strategic alignment with emerging edge and cloud‑native workloads.