SimpliVity, a leader in hyperconverged infrastructure that's revolutionising enterprise IT, today announced the results of the "2016 State of hyperconverged Infrastructure Market Report" from ActualTech Media.

The report, sponsored by SimpliVity, found that both enterprise and midmarket companies adopting hyperconverged infrastructure is being adopted by to reduce data centre costs and improve operational efficiency. The report also noted that the use cases for deploying hyperconverged infrastructure are becoming more diverse as the technology is supporting more tier-one and mission-critical workloads.

"The report is clear – the hyperconverged infrastructure market has dramatically grown over the last year and, with the large number of organisations planning to adopt within the next two years, that growth is accelerating," said Marianne Budnik, CMO at SimpliVity. "We believe this report signals that we've reached an important inflection point in the market. Hyperconverged infrastructure adoption is moving beyond single-system use cases to support all IT services and applications, including business and mission-critical, for organisations around the globe. And after signing our largest, multi-million dollar deal to date to replace all legacy IT equipment at a global Fortune 50 financial services firm, we believe that SimpliVity will lead the next wave of hyperconverged infrastructure adoption."

Customers worldwide are using hyperconverged infrastructure for mission-critical workloads

The 2016 global report surveyed over 1,000 IT professionals and assessed the top IT infrastructure challenges organisations are facing, and how hyperconverged infrastructure addresses these challenges. Cost reduction and operational efficiency were common themes for survey respondents, and were listed as the top two drivers for hyperconverged adoption. The report also noted that hyperconverged infrastructure is being used for mixed workloads and a wider variety of use cases.

Key takeaways from the global report include:
· Reduced costs is the top benefit expected by planned adopters and being realised by current adopters, and improved operational efficiency ranked in the top three for both current and planned adopters.
· Forty-two percent of those planning to adopt hyperconverged infrastructure rank operational efficiency as their top IT priority.
· Organisations want to improve their disaster recovery and data backup/recovery capabilities, evidenced by these IT priorities being ranked numbers two and three, respectively, for those interested in deploying hyperconverged infrastructure.
· Adoption of hyperconverged infrastructure almost doubled in the midmarket, with a year-over-year increase of 80 percent.
· Eighty-eight percent of those with plans to adopt hyperconverged infrastructure are planning to do so within the next one to two years, a 15 percent increase over 2015 results, indicating that adoption is accelerating.

EMEA is ahead of the curve in adopting hyperconverged infrastructure

The survey found that although EMEA organisations are lagging slightly in virtualising servers, with only 48 percent of EMEA organisations, more than 60 percent virtualised compared to 58 percent for all respondents worldwide, meaning that they are ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to adoption of hyperconverged infrastructure. The increased interest in hyperconverged infrastructure may be a result of companies' revitalised focus on server virtualisation, as this ranked in the top three IT priorities in the survey. The report noted that operational efficiency and cost savings were again major drivers among planned adopters for EMEA respondents.

"Adoption of hyper-convergence is increasing a steady pace in the South African market, more and more companies are looking at a hyper-converged strategy to reduce the complexity and costs in their data centres," explained Anton Jacobsz, MD at Networks Unlimited. "Hyper-convergence also allows for easier management of the virtual environment."

Significant findings from the report include:
· Adoption of hyperconverged infrastructure in EMEA jumped from 27 percent in 2015 to 46 percent in 2016 – a 70 percent increase.
· Improving operational efficiency, improving data backup/recovery, and increasing server virtualisation are the top three IT priorities for EMEA organisations that are planning to adopt hyperconverged infrastructure.
· Cost/ ROI and scalability are the top criteria for evaluating hyperconverged solutions for planned adopters and current adopters, indicating that organisations are focused on ensuring they are making the most of IT investments.
"Today, hyperconverged infrastructure is beginning to enjoy mainstream adoption and attention. It is consistently being adopted for a wider range of use cases and is gaining serious momentum with enterprise customers," said Scott Lowe, ActualTech Media. "While in past years, we were predominately seeing hyperconverged infrastructure being attached to more niche use cases like VDI and ROBO, we are now seeing widespread adoption for a more diverse and mission-critical selection of use cases."

Value-added distributor, Networks Unlimited, distributes SimpliVity's hyperconverged IT platform in southern Africa. For more information please contact Jared Bloom, SimpliVity product manager at Networks Unlimited at jared.bloom@nu.co.za.