Converged systems have moved from a conversation of potential to real market opportunities. Currently, “20 percent of IT are demanding that they buy converged systems,” said Tom Joyce, SVP & General Manager of HP Converged Systems. In a live interview from this week’s HP Discover event, Joyce stated that customers wanting to make a decision for the future of their data center typically compare HP against very few competitors.

There are two main drivers for converged system demand, according to Joyce, analytics – with a high demand for converged systems for SAP HANA, as well as HP Vertica, and virtualization to the cloud, with most customers demanding to buy building blocks for their cloud infrastructure.

The importance of converged infrastructure

Asked why converged systems was such an important technology, Joyce said “clearly they want to collapse the cost of infrastructure management, they want to roll new systems faster. It’s really consolidation and cutting cost.”

“There is a need now in the mid market for VDI,” Joyce said. “We just announced today that we can have a converged system, running VMware,” and do a dedicated appliance, providing IT as a service as an appliance, he continued.

Commenting on the customers his company approaches, Joyce said, “almost any customer you talk to is doing something with HP. We’re very engaged with them. Because so many customers are in this design wind space, we get baked off against VCE, VBlocks and a couple others. Customers are trying to decide ‘what the next wave of my datacenter is going to look like.’”

• How HP converged systems is faring

Asked about results in the past six months, Joyce explained that HP launched the converged systems division in December 2013, “so it’s only been six months. We’ve sold six converged systems to a customer,” he said, highlighting one of his department’s bigger deals, “but they are probably going to do 20. It’s definitely early,” but HP is already gaining its market share, Joyce insisted.

HP’s take on current market trends

Commenting on IBM’s decision to exit the x86 server market, Joyce said “the server business has gone through a shift. IBM made a decision to exit. They want to be a services company, and they are good at being a services company.  We decided to stay in the server business, launched Moonshot, and we’re launching a new converged system 9000 for HANA. We’ve decided that compute is important, and we’re going to continue to invest in it.”

“We have a great partnership,” Joyce said, talking about HP’s partnership with VMware. “We’ve sold more VMware on HP systems in the history of VMware and last year.”