Gartner: Prepare For ‘Third Wave’ Of Integrated Systems As Hyperconvergence Goes Mainstream

Analysts have today advised organisations that use hyperconverged appliances to start preparing for the ‘third wave’ of integrated systems, as the current second wave of hyperconverged appliances is set to go mainstream within five years.

“The integrated systems market is starting to mature, with more users upgrading and extending their initial deployments,” said Andrew Butler, analyst at Gartner. “We are on the cusp of a third phase of integrated systems. This evolution presents IT infrastructure and operations leaders with a framework to evolve their implementations and architectures.”

Gartner further claimed that the market for hyperconvergence will grow 79 percent and hit $2billion (£1.38bn) in 2016. Good news, then, for trendsetting vendors such as Nutanix, VMware, and VCE.

Hyperconverged integrated systems (HCIS) will be the fastest-growing segment of the overall market for integrated systems, reaching almost $5 billion (£3.5bn), representing 24 percent of the market by 2019

Third phase

The first phase, according to Gartner, hit in 2005 and lasted until last year with the peak period of blade systems. Phase 2 marks the arrival of converged infrastructures and the advent of hyperconverged integrated systems for specific use cases (2010 to 2020), and Phase 3 represents continuous application and microservices delivery on HCIS platforms (2016 to 2025).

“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.”

What to expect?

Gartner expects the incoming third wave to give users more dynamic, composable infrastructures by offering more ‘modular and disaggregated’ hardware.

Current hyperconverged use cases have been limited, added Gartner, with silos created with existing infrastructure. Progression will be dependent on multiple hardware and software advances, such as networking and software-defined organisations.

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