Cisco, HP Lead Cloud Infrastructure Market
New Synergy Research Group data showed that Cisco Systems (CSCO) and HP (HPQ) maintained their status as cloud infrastructure market leaders during the fourth quarter of 2014. Together, Cisco and HP controlled 27 percent of the cloud infrastructure market.
Synergy found that Cisco had a clear lead in public cloud infrastructure, while HP was the leader in private cloud. However, the market intelligence firm also noted that both vendors saw their share of the total cloud market fall between the third and fourth quarters.
Microsoft (MSFT) ranked third among cloud infrastructure providers, followed by Dell (DELL). IBM (IBM), meanwhile, fell from third to fifth; Synergy attributed the drop to Big Blue’s sale of its x86 server product line to Lenovo on Oct. 1.
Other Synergy findings included:
- HP was the market leader in cloud servers.
- Microsoft had “total dominance” of the server operating system segment and was one of the leaders in virtualization applications.
- IBM remained a “major player” in both servers and storage.
Synergy reported that Q4 cloud infrastructure equipment revenues exceeded $13 billion, which represented a 9 percent year-over-year increase. Additionally, Synergy founder Jeremy Duke pointed out that cloud infrastructure now accounts for nearly half of all data center infrastructure shipments.
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So where does the cloud infrastructure market go from here? A Synergy spokesperson told Talkin’ Cloud that it could be tough for vendors to challenge Cisco and HP.
“Microsoft is getting closer from a numbers perspective, but its position is almost entirely down to a single segment – server OS,” the spokesperson said. “Other challengers either lack the ability to grow dramatically enough to get near Cisco and HP, or are focused primarily on specific segments.”
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