HP Bounces Back in Cloud Infrastructure Market; Cisco Hangs on to Lead

RENO, NV, December 19, 2013

New Q3 data from Synergy Research Group shows that despite a strong quarterly bounce from HP, Cisco managed to maintain leadership of the cloud infrastructure equipment market, having taken over the top ranking position for the first time in Q1. While Cisco achieved a historic market share high of 14.6%, long-time leader IBM saw its share of the market fall to a historic low of 12.9%. For the third time in the last four quarters, cloud infrastructure equipment revenues passed the $10 billion milestone.

Total revenues for the quarter were $10.3 billion, 1% up sequentially and 6% up on the third quarter of 2012. On a rolling four quarterly basis, annual growth has dropped off a little to 8%. Computing system’s share of total cloud infrastructure equipment revenues was 52% in the quarter, while networking and storage each accounted for 21%. The balance of the market consists of cloud management and cloud security. 

“HP had a strong quarter and got itself back into growth mode, doing particularly well in the private cloud segments” said Jeremy Duke, Synergy Research Group’s founder and Chief Analyst. “Historically the fourth quarter of the year has historically seen a peak in revenues for both HP and IBM, so we are expecting to see a tight race with Cisco to see who leads the pack at the year end. Looking further ahead we are predicting that the mix of spend will trend slowly away from computing systems and towards storage and networking, a trend which is exacerbated by the strong growth of ODMs in the server market. This will tend to tilt the playing field more in favor of Cisco.”