‘Cloud’ stats show dominance by HP while IBM, NetApp slip

New statistics from research firm IDC show HP is dominating the “cloud” infrastructure business these days, but Dell, EMC amd Cisco are surging. What about IBM and NetApp? The news isn’t good – at all.

This report is big news since cloud infrastructure providers are so big in the Triangle.

Sales of the gear that power the cloud swelled 22 percent in 2015 to $29 billion, and the fourth quarter was an especially good one, accounting for $8.2 billion of the total.

IDC tracks sales of “infrastructure products” such as servers, storage and Ethernet switches.

HP led in 2015 with sales of $4.5 billion, expanding its market share t0 15.7 percent from $3.6 billion and 15 percent the previous year. That growth rate of 27.3 percent enabled HP to widen its lead over Dell.

Dell came in second at $3.1 billion, good for a 10.6 market share which is up slightly from 10.3 percent the previous year. Its growth rate was nothing to dismiss – an impressive 25.5 percent.

However, Dell is trying to buy EMC for $67 billion, and a combined Dell-EMC would be the new market leader.

“The cloud IT infrastructure market continues to see strong double-digit growth with faster gains coming from public cloud infrastructure demand,” said Kuba Stolarski, Research Director for Computing Platforms at IDC.

“End customers are modernizing their infrastructures along specific workload, performance, and TCO requirements, with a general tendency to move into 3rd Platform, next-gen technologies. Options on and off premises continue to expand, along with open platforms that enhance hybrid capabilities for a variety of use cases. Public cloud as-a-service offerings also continue to mature and grow in number, allowing customers to increasingly use sophisticated, mixed strategies for their deployment profiles. While the ice was broken a long time ago for public cloud services, the continued evolution of the enterprise IT customer means that public cloud acceptance and adoption will continue on a steady pace into the next decade.”

Cisco is red hot, its fourth quarter sales leading the way in growth at 35.5 percent to $802 million and a 9.7 market share.

EMC is climbing, too. It increased sales to $759 in the quarter, up a tidy 19.7 percent.

For the year, Cisco stants third at 9.6 share with $2.8 billion in sales, up 26.4 percent.

EMC is fourth at $2.2 billion and a 7.6 percent share thanks to a 14.4 percent growth rate.

What about IBM and NetApp?

Despite all the hype about IBM’s “cloud” plays, acquisitions and new high-end servers, Big Blue sales actually tumbled 24.6 percent in 2015 to $1.2 billion and a market share of 4.3 percent, down from $1.6 billion and a 6.9 share.

As for NetApp, the news isn’t good either, thus the recent layoffs and other changes.

NetApp cloud tech sales fell 5 percent for the year to just over $1 billion. Its market share fell a full point to 3.6 percent from 4.6 percent.