Synergy: Cisco maintains lead over HP in the cloud infrastructure market

In the cloud infrastructure market, Cisco continues to cling onto its No. 1 position, marginally increasing the gap between second-ranked HP, according to first-quarter data from Synergy Research Group.

Cisco, which gained a market share of 14.8 percent, first gained the top-ranking position in the first quarter of 2013. Meanwhile, HP's market share dropped to 13.7 percent during the recent quarter, while IBM fell off due to what Synergy said was declining server revenues, which the company is selling off.

Overall first-quarter 2014 cloud equipment revenues nearly made the $10 billion mark.

Synergy Research said that Cisco's dominant position is due to its strong position in the networking segment and its movement into the server market, while HP is the market leader in cloud computing systems, a main challenger in storage and also part of the pack chasing Cisco in networking.

"Cloud infrastructure leadership is becoming a bit of a two-horse race" said Jeremy Duke, Synergy Research Group's founder and chief analyst. "IBM will of course remain strong in many segments, but declining server sales and divestment of some product lines means that its cloud infrastructure revenues no longer match those of Cisco and HP."

Duke added that Chinese vendors are also becoming a bigger factor in the cloud infrastructure market segment, "with Inspur already featuring among the bigger server vendors and Lenovo soon to make a much bigger impact – providing that the IBM/Lenovo server deal gets the required regulatory approval."

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