Table of Contents
- Summary
- Market Categories and Deployment Types
- Key Criteria Comparison
- GigaOm Radar
- Vendor Insights
- Analyst’s Take
- Methodology
- About GigaOm
- Copyright
1. Summary
Hyperconvergence for the enterprise market is both mature and consolidated. VMware vSphere holds the lion’s share of the market in terms of enterprise deployments and boasts technology leadership as well. Most vSphere deployments integrate with a hardware vendor’s tooling to simplify updates and upgrades, and some are tightly integrated with the VMware tool set. At the same time, alternative solution stacks are gaining popularity by offering compelling value and innovative approaches.
In fact, interest has shifted from core virtualization features to the platform ecosystem and integration of core, cloud, and edge components. Other aspects of hyperconvergence infrastructure (HCI) that are quickly gaining traction include automation, orchestration, and cloud integration. Kubernetes support is commonplace, with container orchestration deployed alongside virtual machine (VM) orchestration as key infrastructure services. The overall goal is to build hybrid cloud infrastructures that can provide a consistent user experience (UX) across different environments while further enabling applications and data mobility.
As the Covid-19 pandemic persisted and remote work became the new normal, it accelerated efforts around digital transformation and uptake of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) farms. This trend has created some intriguing opportunities around HCI, as newly optimized infrastructures add resources that can support cutting-edge applications. For example, adoption of VDI has increased the number of GPUs available in the data center. Most of these graphical processing units (GPUs) are engaged with VDI workloads during working hours, leaving them available at other times to drive machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) processing for improved business and industrial processes.
This GigaOm Radar report highlights key enterprise HCI vendors and equips IT decision-makers with the information needed to select the best fit for their business and use case requirements. In the corresponding GigaOm report “Key Criteria for Evaluating Hyperconverged Infrastructure Solutions,” we describe in more detail the key features and metrics that are used to evaluate vendors in this market.
How to Read this Report
This GigaOm report is one of a series of documents that helps IT organizations assess competing solutions in the context of well-defined features and criteria. For a fuller understanding, consider reviewing the following reports:
Key Criteria report: A detailed market sector analysis that assesses the impact that key product features and criteria have on top-line solution characteristics—such as scalability, performance, and TCO—that drive purchase decisions.
GigaOm Radar report: A forward-looking analysis that plots the relative value and progression of vendor solutions along multiple axes based on strategy and execution. The Radar report includes a breakdown of each vendor’s offering in the sector.
Solution Profile: An in-depth vendor analysis that builds on the framework developed in the Key Criteria and Radar reports to assess a company’s engagement within a technology sector. This analysis includes forward-looking guidance around both strategy and product.