According to new research published by Synergy Research Group (SRG), Cisco has surpassed IBM in the cloud infrastructure equipment market and taken the top spot with 15 per cent at the end of 1Q13. The news comes just one quarter after IBM’s market share hit a two-year high of 19 per cent.
Synergy says there was a $9.7 billion market in the first quarter of 2013 for hardware to support either service providers building public clouds, or businesses building private clouds. But, the market faces headwinds as providers are increasingly looking to buy cheap, commodity hardware and enterprises are opening up to the idea of outsourcing their operations to vendors, which combined reduce the need for hardware from traditional vendors.
There’s also been a shift in spending habits to focus on the networking functions in the cloud, which propelled Cisco to overtake IBM as the top supplier in this market, despite Big Blue hitting a two-year high for supplying cloud equipment in the fourth quarter of last year.
Compute server sales dropped somewhat on a year-over-year basis in the first quarter to represent 46% of cloud equipment sales, while networking and storage equipment each made up about a quarter of the market. The slip in compute servers being sold negatively impacted IBM and HP’s standing as the top providers for cloud equipment. “Cisco has been steadily and consistently building its share in this market and now finds itself in the leadership position,” said Jeremy Duke, Synergy Research Group’s founder and chief analyst in a press release announcing the results of the organization’s quarterly review of cloud infrastructure marketing selling.
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Date: June 10, 2013