​Customers are increasingly turning from legacy data center technologies to hyperconverged platforms to shift IT from a cost center to an enabler of business productivity, according to Technology Business Research’s most recent Hyperconverged Platforms Customer Research report.

Customers’ desire to deploy a broad range of workloads, coupled with ongoing increases to their overall satisfaction, leads TBR to project the hyperconverged platforms market will grow 53.1% to $7.2 billion by 2020.

However, vendors must manage emerging pain points around time to deployment, overall cost-effectiveness and scalability with refined up-front vision matching, as well as partner-supported platform and services innovation.

  • VIDEO: A background report on hyperconverged systems from HPE. Watch it at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaENNv3bhKE

“Hyperconverged platforms are on track to become staples of next-generation data centers,” said Krista Macomber, TBR’s senior analyst, data center. “Customers are experiencing additional, business-centric value above and beyond IT-level efficiency and innovation because of migrating to hyperconverged platforms. It is important for vendors to set clear expectations up front with customers, especially around cost efficiencies, and to track and address brewing pain points, such as around time and complexity of deployment, to maximize growth.”

Customers’ initial workload targets for deployment on hyperconverged platforms remain heavily centered on data-centric workloads, such as analytics and backup and recovery, as historically highpriced, overprovisioned and cumbersome legacy SAN environments increasingly weigh on business advantage. Validation of hyperconverged platforms’ ability to run point workloads with sufficient or superior productivity is resulting in rising customer interest in deploying traditional, business-centric workloads, such as ERP, as well as other workloads, such as development and operations (DevOps), that support modern business competitive advantage, on the architecture.

TBR’s most recent study unveiled a strengthened concentration from hyperconverged platforms customers on utilizing the architecture to address cost- and IT-related pain points, such as outdated and underperforming storage environments. As base-layer efficiency and functionality requirements are met and as more line-of-business executives influence IT purchase decision making, TBR anticipates businessrelated concerns, such as improving the efficiency of internal processes, will increasingly drive migration to hyperconverged platforms.

“The hyperconverged platforms revenue opportunity is substantial in size, fast-growing and disruptive to long-standing business models, but nearly 40% of current adopters are unsure if they will invest in additional hyperconverged platforms. We all see customers’ expected budgets for hyperconverged offerings declining slightly,” Macomber noted. “This indicates customer requirements around fast and simplified time to deployment, cost-effectiveness and scalability are not being effectively addressed by vendors.”

TBR’sresearch shows the majority of hyperconverged platforms customers are interested in a servicebased delivery model to enhance cost-effectiveness and scalability while speeding deployment. As such, rising investment from HyperGrid and others in hyperconverged platforms “as a Service” offerings could potentially threaten the sales of on-premises appliance and software solutions to SMB and enterprise customers. TBR anticipates close conversations with customers around security, latency and overall return on investment, coupled with enhanced hybrid integration and brokerage capabilities, will increasingly differentiate hyperconverged platforms vendors.

(C) TBR