Who’s Leading the Global Hyper‑Converged Infrastructure Market in 2019?

Market Overview (Q4 2019)

According to IDC’s quarterly tracking of the global hyper‑converged infrastructure (HCI) market, revenue reached US$4.2 billion in Q4 2019, a 1.1% year‑over‑year increase.

Top Vendors by Revenue

Dell Technologies generated US$760 million, a 37.6% YoY growth, accounting for 33.3% of the total market.

In the HCI software segment, Dell’s VMware recorded a 26.3% YoY increase to US$938 million, representing 41.10% of the software market.

Three Main Competitive Camps

The global HCI market is dominated by three types of players:

Storage‑focused HCI vendors such as Nutanix, SmartX, Simplivity, which offer platform‑agnostic solutions that support VMware, OpenStack, KVM, Hyper‑V, Xen, etc., and provide enterprise‑grade data protection.

Virtualization platform leaders – VMware and OpenStack – which integrate their own hypervisors into HCI offerings.

Traditional server/storage vendors – HPE, Dell EMC, etc. – that are adding HCI appliances to their portfolios.

Storage‑Centric HCI Vendors

These companies emphasize two core advantages: (1) no lock‑in to a specific compute platform, enabling flexibility across VMware, OpenStack, KVM, Hyper‑V, Xen; (2) robust storage stability, performance, and enterprise data‑protection features such as remote disaster recovery, synchronous replication, and backup.

VMware vSAN

VMware leverages its dominant vSphere market share to promote vSAN, an advanced feature that integrates software‑defined storage directly into the hypervisor. While vSAN offers a tighter experience with VMware environments, it is limited to VMware’s own virtualization stack and has been criticized for “vTax” lock‑in. VMware positions vSAN toward the low‑end storage market, where its performance and data‑protection capabilities lag behind competitors.

OpenStack + Ceph

Domestic OpenStack vendors such as 99Cloud and UnitedStack adopt the open‑source Ceph storage system to build cost‑effective HCI solutions. Their competitive edge lies in operational expertise with open‑source projects, but Ceph’s stability and performance still trail commercial storage, limiting its appeal in mid‑to‑high‑end markets.

Nutanix – Global Leader

Nutanix, a pure‑play HCI vendor, combines hardware and software into an integrated appliance. Backed by investors from Google, Facebook, VMware, and Oracle, Nutanix has raised over US$300 million in five years. Its Acropolis platform runs VMs on a hypervisor with a dedicated Controller VM per node, offering distributed storage that isolates failures.

Key customers include Arca Continental, DBSystel, and JetBlue Airways. International growth has been strong, especially in APAC where 2017 growth reached 107%.

VMware’s Three‑Prong HCI Strategy

VxRail – a joint Dell EMC and VMware appliance offering the fastest, simplest deployment.

vSAN ReadyNode – pre‑validated hardware from Dell, Fujitsu, Inspur, and others with pre‑installed software and licenses.

EVO SDDC – a full software‑defined data center stack combining vSAN, vRealize, and NSX.

Traditional Vendors Expanding into HCI

HPE, EMC, and other legacy players have accelerated HCI development to protect server and storage market share. Notable examples include the 2016 Dell‑EMC merger that produced the VxRail appliance and HPE’s 2017 acquisition of SimpliVity, which boosted HPE’s automation and cloud service capabilities. IDC data from 2017 shows HPE and Dell EMC holding 5% and 8% of the global HCI market respectively, with the top four vendors (including Nutanix and VMware) accounting for 75% of market share.

Domestic Chinese Vendors

Amid a push for domestic substitution, Chinese vendors have gained significant market share. IDC data shows that in H1 2015, H3C, Huawei, and Nutanix were the top three. By 2017, Huawei led with 26% market share, followed by H3C at 24%, while Sangfor rose from 7.3% in 2016 to 13% in 2017, overtaking VMware.

Huawei – FusionCube

Huawei’s FusionCube, launched in 2013, integrates compute, storage, networking, virtualization, and management into a single appliance. It offers high performance, low latency, rapid deployment, and a proprietary distributed storage engine. Major customers span government, finance, education, and healthcare sectors.

H3C (新华三)

Backed by Tsinghua Unigroup, H3C’s H3C UIS series (UIS8000, UIS‑Cell3000‑5000) delivers a fully integrated HCI solution with compute, storage, networking, security, monitoring, and cloud platform functions. It ships with pre‑installed CAS and ONEStor, enabling a 30‑minute deployment of a complete software‑defined data center. The UIS‑Cell line also incorporates NFV capabilities for virtualized network functions.

Sangfor (深信服)

Sangfor leverages its security expertise to deliver an HCI platform that combines compute, storage, networking, and security functions on standard x86 servers. Its aSEC security suite integrates next‑generation firewall, VPN, application delivery, WAN acceleration, and web‑behavior management, all configurable via a drag‑and‑drop web UI. Additional offerings include:

aCloud – enterprise cloud services supporting critical applications such as ERP and databases.

aDesk – cloud desktop solution that unifies server, desktop, and storage virtualization.

Sangfor’s security‑centric HCI differentiates it in the market, with a strong foothold in network security products that have led the domestic market for web‑behavior management since 2015.

Other Emerging Chinese Players

Lenovo – co‑developed HX HCI product with Nutanix and launched ThinkCloudAio.

QingCloud (青云) – offers the “青立方” HCI system, serving banks, provincial agencies, and universities.

SmartX – built the largest domestic public‑cloud HCI case for Unicom Cloud’s “沃云” platform.

Overall, the HCI market is transitioning from a few global leaders to a more diversified landscape where Chinese vendors are rapidly gaining ground, driven by strong integration capabilities, cost advantages, and government‑backed domestic substitution policies.