As data center customers tackle unprecedented levels of infrastructure complexity, emerging technologies such as hyperconverged platforms are taking center stage as effective alternatives to stand-alone hardware and traditional converged systems. In turn, those markets stand to lose share to hyperconverged platforms from a wide - and growing - roster of vendors. Technology Business Research Inc.'s (TBR) 1Q15 Hyperconverged Platforms Market Landscape estimates the global hyperconverged platforms market will grow at a five-year CAGR of 71.6% from 2013 to 2018, compared to a five-year CAGR of 18.4% for the overall converged infrastructure market.

"Hyperconverged platforms, including both software and appliances, are changing the game for data center hardware vendors," said TBR Principal Analyst Christian Perry. "Customers want better control over their storage ecosystems, particularly as data stores grow. They want a more streamlined virtualization experience. Hyperconverged is delivering on those requirements and displacing traditional, complex storage arrays."

Over the last two years, hyperconverged vendors such as Nutanix, SimpliVity, Scale Computing, Nimboxx, Maxta, Pivot3, Gridstore and Atlantis gained recognition among customers and share from major storage OEMs due to their unique technology. But pure plays are now joined by hardware OEMs, which are developing their hyperconverged appliances and allying with software platform developers. For example, Dell partnered with Nutanix in June 2014 and Cisco partnered with SimpliVity in August 2014. Furthermore, Dell, EMC, Fujitsu, HDS, HP, NetApp, SuperMicro, Net One and Inspur joined VMware's EVO:RAIL partner ecosystem to offer EVO:RAIL appliances.

"Customers are increasingly deploying hyperconverged platforms over traditional storage and converged systems for select workloads such as virtual desktop infrastructure and virtualized enterprise applications such as Microsoft Exchange," said TBR Data Center Analyst Stephen Belanger. "Advantages such as cost, scalability and flexibility, as well as built-in storage functionality like compression and deduplication, are accelerating customer adoption."

Over the next five years, organizations will deploy hyperconverged solutions for a wider variety of workloads. The target use cases for hyperconverged platforms will expand from virtualized workloads to areas such as cloud, ERP, transactions and analytics, which will increasingly threaten the traditional disk and converged systems markets. Consequently, hyperconverged solutions will account for a larger share of the overall converged infrastructure market, increasing from 3.5% in 2014 to 11.5% in 2018, according to TBR's 1Q15 Hyperconverged Platforms Market Landscape.

Competition in the global hyperconverged platforms market will remain intense as customers decide between niche vendors, such as Nutanix, SimpliVity and Scale Computing, and major OEMs, such as HP, Dell, Cisco and EMC. Hyperconverged platforms OEMs will invest heavily in portfolio development and use aggressive pricing to differentiate. Furthermore, TBR believes the hyperconverged platforms market is a prime target for acquisitions, as there are multiple companies with unique IP and major OEMs seek to establish leadership in the nascent hyperconverged platforms market.

TBR's Hyperconverged Platforms Market Landscape includes research on Atlantis, Cisco, Dell, EMC, Fujitsu, Gridstore, HDS, HP, Huawei, Inspur, Maxta, Net One, NetApp, Nimboxx, Nutanix, Pivot3, Scale Computing, SimpliVity, SuperMicro, VMware and Yottabyte.

For additional research and findings related to the report, check out TBR's webinars Data center convergence: Infrastructure transformation shifts go-to-market strategies and Data center (r)evolution: The growing impact of software-defined infrastructure.