Gartner 2022 China Hyper‑Converged Infrastructure Market Report Overview

Gartner recently released its 2022 China Hyper‑Converged Infrastructure (HCI) market competitive landscape report, updating the 2019 analysis and outlining market trends, growth forecasts, and the evolving vendor ecosystem.

According to Gartner, HCI integrates storage, compute, and networking into a single system to simplify data‑center complexity and improve scalability. The Chinese HCI market has entered an early mainstream stage, with both SMBs and large enterprises adopting HCI solutions. While the global HCI market is expected to grow at a 14% CAGR, China’s HCI market is projected to expand from $1.8 billion in 2021 to about $3 billion by 2025.

Application scenarios are expanding from general workloads and VDI to hybrid cloud, cloud‑native, and edge use cases, driving vendors to add capabilities such as containers, networking, security, infrastructure management, and cloud management.

Gartner classifies Chinese HCI vendors into three categories:

Large Data‑Center Infrastructure Vendors (e.g., Huawei, H3C, Inspur, Lenovo) – strong in hardware cost, market coverage, and cloud services.

Specialist HCI Vendors (e.g., ArcherOS Software, SmartX, Zettakit) – industry‑specific strengths, hardware‑neutral and cloud‑neutral solutions.

Crossover Vendors (e.g., China Mobile, EasyStack, QingCloud, Sangfor, Topsec, ZStack) – cross‑selling customer bases, bundled solutions, and cloud services.

Huawei offers the FusionCube line, supporting KVM‑based FusionSphere and vSphere, with simplified SKUs for general workloads (FusionCube 1000) and ROBO/edge cases (FusionCube 500). Its advantages include a full IT portfolio, strong vertical market presence, and integration with 5G and Kunpeng processors.

H3C provides the UIS solution, featuring KVM virtualization, storage (ONEStor 3.0), network security (UIS‑Sec), and SmartNIC integration for high VM performance, supporting private, hybrid, and edge clouds as well as public cloud deployments via UniCloud.

Inspur delivers InCloud Rail and inMerge, combining KVM‑based InCloud‑Sphere, storage, network virtualization, and unified management for both private and public clouds, with a focus on hardware‑centric appliance delivery.

Lenovo offers ThinkAgile (based on Nutanix, VMware, Microsoft) and the domestically developed AIO, supporting vSphere, KVM, VDI solutions, and edge deployments with single‑node and dual‑node options.

ArcherOS Software (安超云) provides KVM and vSphere‑based hyper‑convergence, extending capabilities to networking, security, and VDI, available as appliances or pure software with subscription models.

SmartX (志凌海纳) focuses on distributed block storage (ZBS) and offers SMTX OS for VMware, Citrix, and native virtualization, supporting both software and appliance delivery for finance and manufacturing customers.

Zettakit (泽塔云) emphasizes CPU+GPU dual‑compute HCI solutions, offering GPU virtualization across NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel GPUs for GIS, remote sensing, and other verticals.

China Mobile (CMCC) leverages its “cloud‑network‑edge” strategy, building a large‑scale distributed cloud infrastructure (N+31+X) to support edge computing and high‑availability services.

EasyStack positions itself as a neutral cloud‑native provider, evolving from OpenStack to Kubernetes and offering cloud‑native private‑cloud foundations for HCI migration.

QingCloud delivers the QingCube hyper‑converged system, integrating compute, storage, and networking with a full‑stack cloud platform for digital transformation.

Sangfor combines its KVM‑based aSV, aSAN, aNET, and aSEC components into a unified HCI solution, also offering VDI and managed cloud services.

Topsec (天融信) integrates security functions into its HCI offering, providing compute, storage, network, and security virtualization for sectors such as healthcare, education, and energy.

ZStack offers the ZStack Cube, a next‑generation IT infrastructure platform that integrates compute, storage, network, GPU virtualization, and multi‑cloud management.

Overall, the report highlights rapid market growth, increasing vendor diversity, and a shift toward cloud‑native, edge‑focused HCI solutions in China.