Modest Growth in 2014 Led by Commercial Segments over Academia, Government
SUNNYVALE, CA—July 9, 2015—The worldwide HPC market will grow to reach $36.1 billion in 2019, according to a new report released by Intersect360
Research, “Worldwide High Performance Computing 2014 Total Market Model and 2015–19 Forecast.” The report includes the faster-growing High Performance
Business Computing (HPBC) segment in addition to traditional research, science, and engineering applications in the High Performance Technical Computing
(HPTC) segment.
Despite ongoing weakness in the public sector, commercial usage of HPC was strong enough to drive the HPC market to $29.4 billion in 2014, representing
a year-over-year growth of 2.8% from 2013. As applications for high-performance technologies continue to expand, the research firm expects the market
to grow at a compound annual rate of 4.2% through the forecast period.
Market numbers for HPC are comprised of all product and services spending, including servers, storage, software, networks, services, and cloud computing.
Servers represent the largest segment, totaling $10.8 billion in 2014. Vendor shares in the server segment are changing dramatically as a result of
Lenovo’s acquisition of IBM’s x86-based server business, which completed in 2014. IBM fell from the number-one vendor share position it had held since
Intersect360 Research began reporting in 2007, ceding the leadership spot to Dell, very narrowly ahead of HP. For 2014, IBM was third, Cray fourth,
and Lenovo fifth, but Intersect360 Research notes that those positions are likely to change in 2015, as the shares of Lenovo and IBM settle to a full
year of post-acquisition levels.
“We continue to believe the fundamental growth drivers of the HPC market remain strong,” the report notes. “However, we believe that spending in public
sectors is currently constrained by a long-term shift towards government austerity policies, particularly in the United States and Europe. Thus we
expect commercial and industrial spending to become an increasingly important part of the overall HPC market, with HPTC lagging HPBC in growth due
to its large public-sector constituency and greater maturity.”
The storage and cloud segments both grew substantially in 2014, though cloud computing still represents only a small portion of the HPC market. Intersect360
Research projects cloud will continue a strong 14.1% compound annual growth rate from this modest base.
“Cloud computing is attractive mainly for entry-level users who don’t have any existing infrastructure or for established users who need only occasional
bursting over their peak capacity, and either of those tends to be a low-volume use case,” said Chris Willard, Chief Research Officer of Intersect360
Research. “Although we see limited spending on cloud in the overall HPC market, our surveys have begun to reveal selected pockets where on-premise
HPC will be replaced by public cloud, and that is reflected in the growth rate going forward.”
The full report is available to download at no cost to members of the HPC500 user group and to subscribers to the Intersect360 Research HPC market
advisory service. Following a newly announced pricing structure, other parties can purchase the full report for $950 by contacting Intersect360 Research
at sales@intersect360.com.
About Intersect360 Research
Intersect360 Research is a market intelligence, research, and consulting advisory practice focused on high-performance data center trends, including
High Performance Computing (HPC), high-performance enterprise, cloud, big data, and hyperscale. Intersect360 Research utilizes both user-based and
supplier-based research to form a complete perspective of market dynamics, trends, and usage models, including both technical and business applications.