07.09.2015
The software-defined capabilities of hyperconverged platforms are helping customers overcome challenges related to internal IT processes and infrastructure management, according Technology Business Research Inc.’s (TBR) inaugural semiannual Hyperconverged Platforms Customer Research. With strong budgets allocated for future hyperconverged purchases, TBR estimates a $10.6 billion U.S. addressable market over the next 12 months.
“IT customers are smashing into roadblocks with traditional server and storage infrastructure. But they are finding quickly that there are alternatives that provide improved efficiency and better management,” said Christian Perry, principal analyst and data center practice manager.
“Hyperconverged platforms take converged infrastructure to the next level of streamlined, virtualized solutions, and customers are adopting for a wide range of use cases,” said Perry. “These initial deployments represent tremendous opportunity for vendors across hardware, software and services.”
TBR believes alternate infrastructures, such as hyperconverged, are quickly growing more acceptable in all sizes of IT organizations. Customers continually point to challenges with complexity and burdensome management, particularly in environments with heavy storage requirements. These storage-centric challenges provide vendors of hyperconverged platforms with an edge over vendors of stand-alone infrastructure and traditional converged systems, as many hyperconverged platforms are built to improve the performance and management of storage-centric workloads.
But while customers are more open to purchasing these infrastructures, they still rely heavily on the vendor to help them with the technology — from the rollout through ongoing management. Customers expect hyperconverged rollouts will be streamlined and quick, but many point to time and resource investment as a surprising sticking point. As a result, customers are buying services to help them reduce the burden on their in-house IT staff.
“A mere 11% of customers told us they did not purchase any services with their hyperconverged platform, so the opportunity is strong for services bundling. In fact, for every dollar spent on hyperconverged platforms, customers are spending $1.07 on services, and these are services spanning everything from integration and implementation to break/fix support,” Perry said.
Although customers are generally satisfied with their hyperconverged platforms, room for improvement exists, and services can help customers overcome at least some of these challenges. For example, some customers expressed the unexpected need for training of internal staff to work with or manage the systems. However, another issue is customer unfamiliarity with hyperconverged platforms vendors due to the nascence of the overall market. TBR believes vendors can expand customer mindshare with messaging that targets IT challenges and business requirements directly.
TBR’s Hyperconverged Platforms Customer Research includes detailed analysis into customer purchasing behavior, budget expectations, workload drivers and deployment plans, IT purchase drivers, system attribute expectations and satisfaction, additional purchases (hardware, software and services), customer environment variables and in-depth customer insight across multiple hyperconverged vendors.
TBR’s research is available for purchase. For more information on TBR’s Hyperconverged Platforms Customer Research, contact Vice President of Sales James McIlroy at 603.758.1813 or mcilroy@tbri.com.
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