The hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) marketplace has gained significant momentum. Customers are consolidating and standardizing the use of this infrastructure; many vendors have launched their own offerings based on HCI appliances. HCI is experiencing a strong tailwind. In just the past couple of years, notable HCI vendors were acquired, new vendors joined the race, and some dropped out.* Forrester clients look to us for help in navigating this market, technology shifts, and making the right decision for their companies.

I led Forrester’s evaluation of software-based HCI vendors this year. It was incredibly exciting to perform this assessment and publish the research findings in “The Forrester Wave™: Hyperconverged Infrastructure, Q3 2018!” We identified and assessed the 11 most significant vendors in the market: Cisco, DataCore, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Huawei, Maxta, NetApp, Nutanix, Pivot3, Scale Computing, Stratoscale, and VMware.

We developed a comprehensive set of 36 criteria in three high-level buckets: current offering, strategy, and market presence. The criteria and their weightings are based on past research and user inquiries.

If you’re looking to HCI as your new infrastructure or want to see how the vendors rank in this rapidly changing market, this Forrester Wave is the best starting point for you. As your needs may differ, you may put different weights on criteria than I did. And that’s the beauty of a Forrester Wave — you can customize it to your needs. I recommend that you use the base Forrester Wave graphic and:

  • Download the Excel sheet associated with the graphic.
  • View the detailed product evaluations in the scoring guide.
  • Adapt the criteria weightings to fit your needs and see your (potential) vendor’s custom ranking.

If you would like Forrester’s help in selecting an HCI vendor — for example, through analyst inquiry or advisory or through project consulting work — just say the word. If you believe you had significant experiences with HCI vendors and would like to share, I am eager to listen.

 

* Cisco acquired Springpath, and HPE acquired SimpliVity. Source: Richard Fichera, “HPE Acquires Simplivity – Strong Tactical Move with Strategic Ramifications for the HCI Landscape,” Forrester Blogs, January 23, 2017 (https://www.forrester.com/blogs/17-01-23-hpe_acquires_simplivity_strong_tactical_move_with_strategic_ramifications_for_the_hci_landscape/). Also, NetApp recently launched HCI solutions built on SolidFire technology.