Keep an eye on your lunch, integrated systems. Hyper-convergers are hungry

Gartner gets out the crystal ball

The hyper-converged integrated systems (HCIS) market is set to engulf the integrated systems market by 2019, according to Gartner.

HCIS are racing ahead of integrated systems. They are predicted to grow by 79 per cent this year, and will reach almost $5bn in sales, taking up 24 per cent of the market by 2019, the analyst predicts.

HCIS can mean different things to different people. Gartner's sticking its flag in the ground around the definition as a system that employs software-defined storage and compute running on commodity hardware under a unified management interface.

Andrew Butler, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner, said: “The integrated systems market is starting to mature, with more users upgrading and extending their initial deployments.”

The evolution of HCIS began in 2005 as the use of blade systems peaked. This paved the way for specialising converged infrastructures. The current third phase will bring in microservices that further enhance HCIS.

Despite growth in HCIS, their use has been limited. Future progress will depend on making systems more open and more advanced so that existing hardware can be integrated through software. "HCIS is not a destination, but an evolutionary journey," said Butler.

"While we fully expect the use cases to embrace mission-critical applications in the future, current implementations could still pose constraints on rapid growth toward the end of the decade." ®