This article is more than 1 year old

Dell/EMC will rule the cloud, for a while

We've grabbed hold of IDC's abacus and looked into the future

Once Dell gobbles EMC for good, the combined company will rule the cloud.

That's The Register's conclusion after grabbing analyst firm IDC's abacus and having somee fun with its latest Worldwide Quarterly Cloud IT Infrastructure Tracker, the data it publishes after combining sales of servers, storage, and Ethernet switches by public and private clouds.

Here's the firm's view of cloud revenues for calendar year 2015.

Top 5 Corporate Family, Worldwide Cloud IT Infrastructure Vendor Revenue, Q4 2015 (Revenues are in Millions, Excludes double counting of storage and servers)

Vendor

4Q15 Revenue (US$M)

4Q15 Market Share

4Q14 Revenue (US$M)

4Q14 Market Share

4Q15/4Q14 Revenue Growth

1. Hewlett Packard Enterprise

$1,304

15.8%

$1,112

15.6%

17.2%

2. Dell*

$845

10.2%

$667

9.4%

26.7%

2. Cisco*

$802

9.7%

$591

8.3%

35.5%

4. EMC

$759

9.2%

$634

8.9%

19.7%

5. IBM

$352

4.3%

$345

4.8%

2.1%

ODM Direct

$1,927

23.4%

$2,138

30.0%

-9.9%

Others

$1,328

27.4%

$1,640

23.0%

37.8%













Total

$8,248

100%

$7,126

100%

15.7%

IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Cloud IT Infrastructure Tracker, April 2016

And here's what happens when we combine Dell and EMC's cloud revenues.

Vendor 2015 Revenue (US$M) 2015 Market Share 2014 Revenue (US$M) 2014 Market Share 2015/2014 Revenue Growth
Dell/EMC $5,297.00 18.20% $4,393.00 18.50% 20.90%
HP $4,549.00 15.70% $3,574.00 15.00% 27.30%
Cisco $2,777.00 9.60% $2,196.00 9.20% 26.40%
IBM $1,239.00 4.30% $1,644.00 6.90% -24.60%
NetApp $1,039.00 3.60% $1,094.00 4.60% -5.00%
ODM Direct $7,425.00 25.60% $6,618.00 27.80% 12.20%
Others $6,650.00 22.90% $4,256.00 17.90% 42.00%

Perhaps as interesting as Dell/EMC's thin margin over HP is that IBM and NetApp will emerge in a distinct third tier, with Cisco alone in a second tier. Also of note is who's not in the top 5: Oracle and Fujitsu are established enterprise players but aren't cracking the billion-dollar barrier. Lenovo and Huawei both have naked cloud ambitions, a friendly local market and rumoured imminent launches of more enterprise kit. None of the big Asian server-makers – Quanta, Inspur, SuperMicro – has enough muscle to crack the top five alone, although they're collectively kicking enterprise players' posteriors in sales to public clouds, even if they suffered a year-on-year Q4 sales dip of 9.9 per cent, to US$1,927.

Yet IDC says it's the public cloud that's where the rapid growth is to be had, according to Kuba Stolarski, research director for computing platforms. Stolarski says enterprises “are modernizing their infrastructures along specific workload, performance, and TCO requirements, with a general tendency to move into 3rd Platform, next-gen technologies.”

Which is good news for all vendors, as it shows the public cloud's not swamping everything.

For now. Which may or may not be a comfort for Dell and EMC shareholders. ®

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like