Global Converged Systems Revenue Down 1.4% YoY in Q4 2016

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According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Converged Systems Tracker, the worldwide converged systems market revenues decreased by 1.4% year-on-year (YoY) to $3.09 billion during the fourth quarter of 2016. The market consumed 1.6 exabytes of new storage capacity during the quarter, which was up a moderate 4.0% compared to the same period a year ago. For the full year 2016, worldwide converged systems market revenues increased 5.8% to $11.3 billion when compared to 2015. 

"The converged systems market is going through a period of change," said Eric Sheppard, research director, Enterprise Storage & Converged Systems. "We are seeing strong growth from products with new architectures, increased levels of automation, and heavy use of software-defined technologies. This growth has been offset by reduced spending on traditional converged systems and a conscious decision by some vendors to terminate some parts of their product portfolio."

Converged Systems Segments 

IDC's converged systems market view offers four segments: integrated infrastructure, certified reference systems, integrated platforms, and hyperconverged systems. Integrated infrastructure and certified reference systems are pre-integrated, vendor-certified systems containing server hardware, disk storage systems, networking equipment, and basic element/systems management software. Integrated Platforms are integrated systems that are sold with additional pre-integrated packaged software and customized system engineering optimized to enable such functions as application development software, databases, testing, and integration tools. Hyperconverged systems collapse core storage and compute functionality into a single, highly virtualized solution. A key characteristic of hyperconverged systems that differentiate these solutions from other integrated systems is their scale-out architecture and their ability to provide all compute and storage functions through the same x86 server-based resources. 

During the fourth quarter of 2016, the combined integrated infrastructure and certified reference systems market generated revenues of $1.57 billion, which represented a year-over-year decrease of 15.7% and 50.8% of the total market. Dell Technologies was the largest supplier of this combined market segment with $705.1 million in sales, or 44.9% share of the market segment.

Integrated Platform sales declined 8.6% year over year during the fourth quarter of 2016, generating $823.5 million worth of sales. This amounted to 26.6% of the total market revenue. Oracle was the top-ranked supplier of Integrated Platforms during the quarter, generating revenues of $406.9 million and capturing a 49.4% share of the market segment.

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